US President George W. Bush yesterday toured a memorial to the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, saying that the "horrors" remembered there show that the world cannot let such violence go unchallenged, as he opened the third leg of a week-long Africa tour.
"It's a moving place that can't help but shake your emotions to their very foundation," Bush said after laying a wreath near mass graves that memorial officials say hold remains from 258,000 people.
The 1994 genocide saw the slaughter of about 800,000 people, mostly from the Tutsi minority, by Hutu extremist militias and government troops.
Reporters visited the displays that Bush was to see on his visit, including a devastating display on children killed in the violence.
Patrick Gashugli Shimirwa, a five-year-old with a striped T-shirt, smiles broadly from one of the large black and white photos of some of the genocide's youngest victims, above a plaque that describes the life taken from him.
"Favorite sport: Riding his bicycle. Favorite food: Meat with fries and eggs. Best Friend: His sister, Alliane. Personality: Very calm, a well-behaved boy. Cause of death: Hacked apart with a machete," the plaque says.
Bush was later to meet Rwandan President Paul Kagame on the third stop of a five country tour that has taken the US president to Benin and Tanzania, and will see him travel to Ghana and Liberia.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS