GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – An uneasy peace lies over Cairo and other parts of Egypt after the Egyptian army Thursday offered a public apology for the deaths that occurred earlier this week when protesters took to the streets. A truce between the two groups appears to be holding. Army leaders made it clear shortly after offering the apology that they do not intend to relinquish power in the short term.
Strong reactions at home and abroad have put pressure on the army after 38 people died. Aljazeera reports that 3,000 have been wounded in the fighting.
Army leaders promised that they will let elections go ahead as scheduled Monday.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, Guardian, New York Times
[Video] David Cameron, Britain’s new prime minister, apologized to Northern Ireland Tuesday 15 June for the deaths of 14 unarmed civilians in Londonderry, called Derry in Ireland, in 1972. His apology accompanied the long-awaited publication of the 5,000 Saville Report on the shootings. “What happened should never, ever have happened,” he said during a speech watched by a crowd assembled at Guildhall Square, where the unauthorized civil rights march was headed when British soldiers opened fire. Cameron said the report shows clearly that the military made mistakes and that those shot, including 13 who were injured in addition to the dead, were unarmed Catholics who in no way posed a threat to the soldiers. The march aimed to give Catholics more rights in the British province, but after the shootings it drove many of the more moderate Catholics into the secessionist camp.
The report, ordered in 1998 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair, was the costliest in British history, according to Reuters, at a cost of £200 million, with evidence taken from 2,500 people over a six year period. It reverses a 1972 report, now widely considered to have been a coverup, where soldiers said those shot were carrying arms.
Bloody Sunday was a turning point in Northern Ireland, with a hardening of the lines between Catholics and Protestants, and the IRA (Irish Republican Army) getting more support from a wider base. It became the bloodiest year in the long conflict’s recent years, with 500 deaths.
Links to other sites: BBC, Belfast Telegraph, Irish Times, Telegraph, UK, Reuters
Video, Telegraph, UK
Update 3 / 14 June Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss businessman Max Goeldi, freed from prison in Libya 10 June, is en route home to Switzerland, news agency AFP reports his lawyer as saying Sunday night, possibly via Tunis.
Switzerland and Libya signed a “plan of action” Sunday in Tripoli, with Germany and Spain also signatories, to end the diplomatic impasse between the Swiss and Libyan governments. Max Goeldi, Swiss businessman and ABB employee who has been held in Libya for nearly two years, is scheduled to fly home from Tripoli, via Madrid, Sunday. Goeldi’s prison sentence in Libya for visa irregularities has been at the centre of the diplomatic tussle that began with the arrest in Geneva in July 2008 of Hannibal Qadaffi, son of Libya’s leader.
Swiss Secretary for Foreign Affairs Micheline Calmy-Rey made the announcements about Goeldi’s flight home and the action plan as she came out of a meeting in Tripoli with her Libyan counterpart, Moussa Koussa. She also met with Libya’s leader Muammar Qadaffi in his reception tent, along with Spanish leader Miguel Angel Moratinos and Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, as well as other European leaders.
The plan of action includes the following:
- a tribunal will be created to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest in Geneva of Hannibal Qadaffi in July 2008, to which then-Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz agreed in principle in August 2009;
- Switzerland will offer Libya an official apology for the theft of a police mug shot of Hannibal Qadaffi from police files, and for their publication in the Tribune de Geneve newspaper, and those who stole the material will be prosecuted (it was revealed that a criminal case has already been opened);
- Max Goeldi’s request for a judicial pardon from Libya will be expedited.
TSR, Swiss public television, reports that Tripoli says Geneva has already paid CHF1.5 million euros to Hannibal Qadaffi, a sum that has not been verified and that runs counter to statements made earlier by Bern.
Swiss Secretary for Foreign Affairs Micheline Calmy-Rey made the announcements about Goeldi’s flight home and the action plan as she came out of a meeting in Tripoli with her Libyan counterpart, Moussa Koussa.
Background, GenevaLunch
An estimated 1,000 people known as Forgotten Australians were part of a large crowd that attended a ceremony in Canberra, Australia Sunday 15 November where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the estimated 70,000 people who were abused in state care from about 1930-1970, many of them part of a group of British children forced to migrate to Australia and work as forced labour on farms, some of them sexually abused as children. The British prime minister will also formally apologize in 2010 for the British forced migration policy, his office has announced.
Links to other sites: ABC, Australia, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald
