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Sheila MacKay obituary

My friend Sheila MacKay, who has died aged 75, was a community worker, an educator and a lifelong activist for peace and justice. She spent her life exploring what it means to tackle inequality by working within groups where people supported one another. She was also immense fun. With her lifelong partner, Margaret Bremner, Sheila was in 1984 one of the founder members of the Gareloch Horts, a women’s nonviolent direct-action group that, more than 40 years on, is still protesting against the UK’s nuclear weapons. She took part in many eye-catching actions at the nuclear bases at Faslane, Coulport and Greenham, at international arms fairs and at the parliament buildings in Scotland and London, for which she was arrested many times. Born in Glasgow to Kathleen (nee Reid), a welfare officer, and James MacKay, a chartered accountant, Sheila grew up sharing her parents’ social concerns and ideals. Her fight against injustice started in childhood when she realised that her brother’s shorts had pockets, but hers did not. After Glasgow high school for girls, Sheila did an arts degree at Glasgow University, graduating in 1972, then spent two years on a VSO assignment in Brunei. Back in the city, she completed her training in community education at Jordanhill College and went on to community work in Clydebank, then adult education in Maryhill, creating women’s training courses in areas such as confidence building and women’s health, as well as basic education. After two years as a youth worker at Runshaw College in Preston, Lancashire, Sheila moved to Edinburgh in 1992, where she worked as a women’s project leader at Save the Children, as an outreach worker with Edinburgh Rape Crisis (1994-99), for the Scottish Centre for Nonviolence (1994-99), and as a team leader with East Lothian community and adult education (2002-12). Sheila’s nephews Patrick and Alistair both lived with a rare genetic disease which, in their teens, left them using wheelchairs. Like their contemporaries, they wanted to travel the world, so in 2003 Sheila and Margaret put together the audacious and amazingly successful Wicked World Tour, which took both boys to the US, Australia, New Zealand and south-east Asia. With a choir called San Ghanny (meaning “we shall sing” in Arabic), Sheila twice went to Palestine, in 2012 and 2017, to sing alongside and in solidarity with oppressed communities in the occupied West Bank. I met Sheila when I joined the Horts in 2001. She lived with a sense of wonder and openness, inviting people to be the best version of themselves, but at the same time loving everyone exactly as they were. She and Margaret had a civil partnership in 2008. Margaret survives her, as do her brother, Hamish, and her nephews, Steven and Gavin. Her sister, Jean, and Patrick and Alistair, predeceased her.

Deaths in France surged 30% during hottest week of record June heatwave

The number of deaths recorded in France surged by nearly 30% during the hottest week of the record-breaking heatwave that scorched much of Europe last month, the public health authority has said, adding that it expected the toll to rise further. Public Health France said on Friday there had been “an increase of 29.1%, corresponding to 2,025 additional deaths compared with the previous week”. It said the figure was probably an underestimate and “mortality will rise further”. The new and still incomplete figures doubled the preliminary estimate of at least 1,000 additional deaths given by the authority last Sunday. That earlier estimate covered just three of the hottest days of extreme heat. Belgium’s health ministry said excess mortality totalled about 1,200 between 18 and 29 June, with 530 of the ⁠deaths among people 85 or older. The Dutch government said the heatwave had led to about 480 excess deaths, mainly of elderly people. The updated French tally covers the week of 22 to 28 June, during which France registered its hottest-ever days, with previous day- and night-time highs shattered in cities and towns across the country. Hundreds of records also fell in other parts of Europe. Public Health France said it had counted 8,973 deaths so far for that week but cautioned that the number was still only partial. It said the preliminary total was 29% more than the 6,948 deaths registered for the previous week of 15-21 June. It said the increase was concentrated almost entirely among people aged 45 and over, with the over-65s worst-affected. “Although we are seeing a clear rise among 45- to 64-year-olds, people aged 65 and over account for the largest share of deaths,” it said. Deaths in the home recorded the biggest increase, nearly doubling within a single week, and Paris was the worst-affected region; the number of deaths recorded in the capital rose by 62% week on week, Public Health France said in its weekly report. Nicolas Revel, the director general of the Paris public hospital system, has said he expected the death toll from the June heatwave to be lower than that of 2003, but “probably” higher than an extreme heat episode last year that claimed 5,700 lives. More than two-thirds of Europeans experienced 35C-plus temperatures during the June event, AFP said, basing its calculations on temperature data from the European Drought Observatory and population figures from the Joint Research Centre. The environmental consequences of the extreme heat have been felt across Europe. In Italy, droughts have left several waterways in a “critical state”, according to the Po River Basin Authority. Lake Maggiore, at the foot of the Alps, is only 48% full; elsewhere, dry sections of the Po riverbed have been left exposed. In response to the drought, the Veneto region declared a state of emergency on Thursday. The heat has also caused a Glacier Loss Day on 29 June on Switzerland’s Rhône Glacier, causing excessive melting of decades or centuries-old snow. The resulting water could have filled an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 6 seconds for two weeks, Matthias Huss, director of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland, told Reuters. Elsewhere, all-time temperature records were broken in Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia and Hungary, as well as June records in the UK and Switzerland, while France’s average temperature measured across the country also hit an absolute high. These temperatures would have been virtually impossible in June without climate change, say climatologists from the World Weather Attribution.

Pope praises US history of welcoming immigrants in implicit rebuke to Trump

Pope Leo has used his first major address to his home country to praise the US history of ⁠welcoming migrants, urging Americans to live up to the ideals put forward in the ⁠Declaration of Independence. In his latest implicit rebuke to Donald Trump, the first US leader of the Roman Catholic church said the word “America” had become ‌a “byword for freedom” across the world because of the way the country welcomed migrants. In a speech given live from the Vatican to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia ‌as he received the Center’s Liberty Medal, Leo said he hoped that ideals of “unity, justice and peace” held by the founding fathers would guide the US as it celebrated its 250th anniversary. “This historic anniversary presents ⁠us with the opportunity to reflect once again on the nation’s founding principles in the hope that America will remain ever true ‌to the dream that has earned it the title of land of the free and home of the brave,” the pope said. Leo will mark the US’s 250th anniversary on Saturday with a brief visit to the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, one of the main entry points to Europe for people making the perilous sea crossing from north Africa in search of refuge. Leo will arrive in Lampedusa by helicopter early on Saturday morning and make his first stop at a cemetery where there are many unmarked graves of people who died during the Mediterranean journey. He will then visit the Porta d’Europa (Gateway to Europe), a migrant memorial monument, before blessing a plaque on a pier named after his late predecessor, Pope Francis, who denounced the “globalisation of indifference” when he visited the island in July 2013 on his first official papal trip. Like Francis, Leo has clashed with Trump over his immigration policies, calling in November for “deep reflection” in the US about the treatment of people held in detention. Relations with the Trump administration worsened further after the pontiff strongly condemned the US-Israeli war in Iran. Days before Leo’s trip to Lampedusa, JD Vance, the US vice-president, said the Vatican’s views on immigration were “troubling”. Leo is yet to take up Trump’s invitation to the White House, made by Vance during a meeting at the Vatican the day after Leo’s inaugural papal mass in May last year. The US is not on Leo’s overseas itinerary for 2026, although there were reportedly expectations among some in Trump’s administration that he would attend the Fourth of July celebrations. Marco Politi, a Vatican journalist and author, said: “Leo’s trip to Lampedusa is strongly symbolic and is also a political sign. He is focusing on the theme of immigration. This means reaffirming what he recently said in Spain about the dignity of every human being, but the trip is also a political message against the persecution of immigrants and what is being done by ICE agents in the US. “Furthermore, it is a strong political message against all the parties in Europe who sow hatred and polarise.” Andrea Vreede, the Vatican correspondent for the Dutch broadcaster NOS, said Leo’s trip was partly to pay homage to Francis but also to make a point to Trump. “The pope is telling Trump what is important to him, and that is migrants. He chose 4 July to make this point.” Lampedusa, home to roughly 6,000 residents and located closer to Tunisia than mainland Italy, has for decades been the first port of call for people crossing the Mediterranean in flimsy boats from north Africa. More than 182,000 people have transited the island’s reception centre in the past three years, Vatican News reported this week, citing data from the Italian Red Cross. Since 2014, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has recorded tens of thousands of deaths of people who set off from Tunisia or Libya. Despite a sharp drop in arrivals along Italy’s southern shores in recent years, the fatalities continue. Between January and early April, the IOM reported nearly 1,000 people either dead or missing in the Mediterranean. Leo will celebrate mass and speak to people who have survived the journey as well as humanitarian workers in Lampedusa before leaving shortly after midday. Kandeh Abdourahman, a cultural mediator who works on the island for the International Rescue Committee, said: “I was one of those thousands who crossed the Mediterranean and landed in Lampedusa in 2015, exhausted and uncertain. The pope’s visit speaks to every one of us – a reminder that our stories are seen, that ‘welcome’ is not just a word but an act of humanity that can help us reach all 118 million people displaced in the world today.”

New pipeline in Canada to proceed after C$150bn pledged to ease BC and First Nations concerns

The governments of Canada and the province of Alberta will move forward on a major new oil pipeline after the pair announced a plan to ease concerns of British Columbia and First Nations on the Pacific coast. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, shuttled between British Columbia and Alberta on Thursday to announce more than C$150bn in new investments in both provinces, part of a broader project of reducing trade with the United States and expanding his country’s presence in overseas markets. Leaning on the familiar framing of a “more dangerous and divided world”, Carney pledged to strengthen domestic industries, saying in Vancouver that the country needed to “move faster, build bigger and work together”. Carney promised billions for a port expansion in Vancouver, expanded power infrastructure for a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal and investments in new protections for the endangered southern resident killer whale. But the marquee project is a new pipeline that follows the route of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline before diverting at the end to a new terminal. The project will transport 1m barrels a day, according to the Alberta government. Carney said Canada and Alberta would be “equal partners” in the pipeline project, and there would be “a meaningful ownership stake for Indigenous communities”. The two governments would also work to achieve “substantial” methane reductions. Consultations will begin immediately with Indigenous communities, provinces and territories. Carney said his government would leave in place a longstanding federal ban on tankers loading or unloading oil from British Columbia’s north coast – an environmental safeguard that First Nations have long said is non-negotiable. Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, who had long advocated the northern route – which would have required overturning the tanker ban – said on Wednesday the planned southern route represented “the fastest, most cost-effective path to expanding Canada’s energy exports”. Smith is also under growing pressure from a separatist element in her province to demonstrate that Alberta can sign major energy deals with the federal government. The shift from a northern pipeline to a southern route reflects both a major shift from Alberta – and a recognition by governments that Indigenous opposition would dramatically slow any new project. British Columbia’s premier, David Eby, said his government would not fight the pipeline after they “found out the hard way” when they lost a court battle over the original expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline. He said the new deal had strong safeguards and residents would be “fairly compensated for the environmental risks we would take on any new pipeline project”. Marilyn Slett, president of the Coastal First Nations and elected chief of the Heiltsuk Nation, called the announcement a “good day” following news that the tanker ban would remain in place. “British Columbians, Canadians and the First Nations who call this place home want this region to remain protected. There is no technology that can clean up an oil spill at sea, and a single oil spill could destroy our way of life,” she said in a statement. “Protecting our coast is not a barrier to economic prosperity, it is the source of it.” A number of First Nations had previously pledged to withdraw support for multibillion-dollar LNG projects if the 50-year tanker ban was lifted. The Climate Action Network said it agreed with Carney’s framing that Canada was in a “treacherous moment of geopolitical instability” but said climate change – not trade partners – was the biggest source of instability. “Continuing to expand fossil fuel production when Canadians are already living with climate chaos is simply dangerous,” the group said. Expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline represents one of largest and most expensive infrastructure cost overruns in Canadian history. While the pipeline has proven strategically beneficial, it is unclear if taxpayers will ever recoup their investment. “If this was a smart economic venture, if there was any kind of reasonable return on investment to be made, a private company or companies would have put up the cash,” Chris Severson-Baker, executive director of the Pembina Institute, an independent Canadian clean energy thinktank, said in a statement. “Instead, Albertan and Canadian taxpayers will now shoulder the cost of 90% of this project – which will likely run into the tens of billions of dollars.”

In Thailand’s sex tourism hub, bright lights flash, loud music blares – and underage girls are exploited

Sky Kanyarat was playing pool in the early hours of the morning in one of Thailand’s most famous red light districts when a middle-aged foreigner with a heavy gait approached her. She had often seen him walking past the bar where she worked in Pattaya, a city about a two-hour drive from Bangkok. But this was the first time Kanyarat had seen him come in. As he passed under the bunting of flags from around the world, it appeared “he was drunk from somewhere else because he walked wobbly,” says Kanyarat, who identifies as a ladyboy, a term commonly used in Thailand’s transgender community. He sat with her colleague, Tang, on a rattan cane couch, bought them both a drink and began nuzzling and massaging her. The man asked Tang to go home with him, but she didn’t want to, and he left the bar at about 2am. It would be more than two days before Kanyarat would see his face again – and this time, it was on the news. The man was Simon Peter Carman and he had been charged with murder. Soon after leaving the bar on 25 June, police allege Carman went to the nearby palm-tree lined beach strip and met a 17-year-old girl named Thunchanok Donhomla who had only arrived a week before in Pattaya from Kalasin, an area in north-east Thailand with high levels of poverty. Police allege CCTV footage captured Donhomla holding Carman’s hand as they waited for an elevator in his condo’s lobby. She was not seen alive again. The following night, her naked body and her belongings – her clothes, vape and platform sandals – were found in a suitcase left in high grass near the railway tracks. Donhomla’s death has drawn international headlines and her family are demanding justice. Experts say her death speaks to broader issues in Thailand’s sex industry – including the underage girls exploited by it. Thailand’s sex tourism capital Pattaya is known as the sex tourism capital of Thailand – despite locals’ attempts to fight it. At night, sex workers lean against palm trees fanning themselves, as a constant flow of songthaew – or converted trucks – pick up and drop off male tourists. On the city’s garishly lit walking street, loud music blares from go-go clubs and people wave menus in multiple languages, offering everything including ping-pong shows. There are clubs targeted at specific clientele – “Russian Girls Show” and “Bollywood Night”. About 116,000 Thai nationals are registered as living in the city, as well as about 40,000 to 70,000 foreigners living either full-time or for extended periods. There are also an estimated 60,000 sex workers. Many come from underdeveloped rural provinces. Three kilometres away from the main strip, the more relaxed suburb of Jomtien caters to retirees and long-stay visitors – like Carman. Here the bars are clustered along a lane, where fruit sellers push carts full of watermelons and bananas. Some of the bars have traditional palm-thatching and names that evoke paradise or Australiana. The clientele are mostly older, white men, some with their arms draped around a woman’s waist or placed on her thigh. It’s not far from here that police allege Carman met Donhomla. Donhomla had come to visit a friend who had moved to Pattaya from their home province of Kalasin. Police are investigating whether the friend worked in the adult service industry. Carman told police he took Donhomla to the condo where he lived. He claimed they had an argument, and he killed her in self-defence. Police said a medical examination found Donhomla likely died from suffocation. According to police, Carman said he did not know what to do with Donhomla’s body and put her in a suitcase in his bathroom. Police allege CCTV footage shows Carman leaving the condo with a suitcase at about 9pm. The next day, Donhomla’s friend reported her missing to the police before going to Carman’s condo. Within hours Carman was arrested and later charged with murder, concealing a corpse in an attempt to hide the cause of death, and abduction of a minor over 15 but not yet 18 years of age for indecent purposes, and taking a person over 15 but not yet 18 for indecent purposes, even if the person consents. He denies the charges. Donhomla’s stepmother, Oradee Bussarakum, told Reuters she wants Carman “to face the full consequences”. “We just hoped it wouldn’t turn out the way we feared. Now our eyes are swollen from crying,” she says. The lane shaken by Donhomla’s death On the Tuesday after Donhomla’s death, Kanyarat is back at the blue-walled bar, sitting on a red-plastic covered stool and putting on makeup. She is barefoot – it’s early evening, and the lane is just coming to life. Most of the chairs in the bar are still empty. Immediately after she saw the news, Kanyarat texted her friends who work in the lane. They all felt the same – “scared”. After she heard about the alleged murder, Tang says she couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t felt unsafe when she was with him – he seemed “normal”, like the other customers. But, as Kanyarat puts it, normal in a Jomtien bar is working in an environment where for every 10 customers of hers, four “are not good”. “Some clients have used force against me, locked me in their arms or strangled me, pulled my hair,” Kanyarat says. Sometimes she has run away, not waiting for anything worse to happen. “If those clients come back to the bar, I won’t go out with them again. In one case [a client] strangled me so strongly I kicked him because I was about to suffocate. After kicking him I grabbed my wallet with my payment and ran away.” Despite this, Kanyarat says she likes her work. But others in the lane are shaken – another woman who asked not to use her name says she’s so scared, she doesn’t want to continue working. The regulars’ bar For months, Carman had lived in a condo in a featureless grey apartment block, one of three identical buildings next to each other about a 20-minute walk from the lane. Carman’s favourite bar was just downstairs in the adjacent building. In the early afternoon on the Tuesday after Donhomla’s death, wind chimes tinkle in the distance and many regulars are already drinking and smoking. “Happy birthday” bunting is still hung up for one customer whose birthday was the day before. “Hello darling,” one regular says to the owner as they walk in. When asked if he knew Carmen, the customer – who moved to Jomtien from the UK almost a year ago – says yes. “We all knew him around here.” The owner of the bar, who did not want to provide her name, says she was shocked when she heard the news. She had known Carman for at least eight years – he used to live in the area but had moved back to Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic. While he was in Australia, he called her from his farm and showed her his tractor. She rented him a room in November when he came back and since then, he came to the bar every day. Her customers are normally friendly, she says – they offer to help her if she’s carrying something heavy, for instance. But Carman wasn’t necessarily well liked. The Finnish man, who, like the others, did not want to provide his name for reasons of anonymity, says Carman was not his friend. The British customer says Carman “wasn’t my cup of tea. Bit strange.” A ‘massively concerning’ industry Pattaya’s red-light district image goes back to the Vietnam war era when it became an R&R spot for American soldiers. Authorities and businesses are now trying to push the city as a family-friendly destination, says Dr Pipatpong Fakfare, an associate professor specialising in researching tourism at Bangkok University. But “that history never really left the city’s brand,” Fakfare says. Despite sex tourism operating openly, prostitution is illegal, and there are specific laws preventing sexual activity with people under 18. But the laws are inconsistently enforced – and even result in sex workers being punished. Some politicians and advocacy groups in Thailand are actively pushing for sex work to be decriminalised. Thai feminist organisation the Manushya Foundation said Thai sex workers endure routine violence “just to survive”, including homicide rates 17 times higher than the general female population and widespread abuse by clients, pimps, and even police. “The influx of Western tourists seeking ‘exotic experiences’ perpetuates exploitative dynamics, while women involved remain stigmatised and criminalised instead of protected.” Australians make up a high proportion of tourists who engage in the sexual exploitation of children under 18 in south-east Asia and the Pacific, according to an article published last year in the Bond Law Review. Laura Parker, CEO and co-founder of the Exodus Road, a not-for-profit dedicated to combating human trafficking, says the demand for sex tourism is “massively concerning”. But what concerns her most is how easily the exploitation of minors can be concealed when there’s a normalised commercial sex market. “When buying sex is treated as ordinary, the trafficking of children and coerced adults becomes harder to see and easier to ignore,” Parker says. Fakfare says the sexual exploitation of children in Thailand’s sex industry is directly linked to poverty and tourism demand. “It deserves to be treated as its own serious problem, not folded into the general debate about adult sex work.” Destiny Rescue Australia, which works to find and help children being exploited in Thailand, consistently finds children rarely enter exploitation by choice. “Instead, they are groomed, manipulated, deceived or coerced by offenders who deliberately exploit existing vulnerabilities,” says the group’s CEO, Greg Bradley. Questions remain over why Donhomla came to Pattaya. But back in Kalasin, her community is feeling the toll of her death. Hundreds of people attended her funeral and there was “tremendous grief”, Phra Vichien, the abbot of the monastery where her funeral was held, told the ABC. The victim’s father, Thongchai Donhomla, told Reuters he was struggling to come to terms with the loss. “My daughter had ⁠no mother, so whenever she wanted anything, she would find a way herself, and she always helped me, too.”

Spain’s conservatives and far-right Vox increase ties with Andalucía coalition

The prospect of a national coalition between Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox party has drawn closer still after the two groupings sealed another deal that will allow the PP to continue ruling the southern region of Andalucía. The PP, which has governed the former socialist bastion for the past seven years, lost its absolute majority in May’s regional election, forcing it to look to Vox to help it stay in power in Spain’s most populous region. The incumbent PP regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, had hoped to govern alone to avoid depending on Vox, which has been seeking to drag the PP further to the right in regional coalitions by insisting Spanish-born people receive priority over those born abroad for housing and public services. Although Moreno had rubbished Vox’s so-called “national priority” policy as “a sensationalistic but empty slogan” during the campaign, the coalition agreement, signed on Thursday, explicitly guarantees “national priority in accessing public benefits”. The agreement also rejects the immigration policies of Spain’s socialist-led central government and says Andalucía will not accept any more unaccompanied migrant children. Other priorities include opposing “the imposition of ideological agendas when it comes to caring for the environment”, defending intensive livestock farming “in the face of criminalisation from the animal rights lobby and the climate policies developed in Brussels”, and protecting and preserving bullfighting. As in other regions where the PP and Vox govern in coalition – Extremadura, Aragón and Castilla y León – the new Andalucían government wants to overturn legislation that was introduced four years ago to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the civil war and the subsequent Franco dictatorship. It intends to replace it with a so-called “harmony law”, which the national government, historical memory associations and UN experts have all decried as a blatant attempt to whitewash, justify or eradicate the horrors of the Franco era. Moreno hailed the coalition pact as a “sensible, fair and legal legislative agreement” that would bring four years of stability, while his boss, the national PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, paid tribute to the returning regional president’s “commitment, capacity for dialogue, and vocation of service”. Vox’s leader in Andalucía, Manuel Gavira – who will serve as a regional vice-president – said the deal would ensure a government “that defends common sense and improves the lives of the people of Andalucía”. May’s regional election proved a disaster for the Spanish Socialist Worker’s party (PSOE), which is led by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. It dropped from 30 seats to 28 in the 109-seat regional parliament – its worst ever result in Andalucía. The PP, despite finishing first, decreased its seat count from 58 to 53, while Vox picked up another seat to finish with 15. The leftwing Adelante Andalucía party climbed from two seats to eight, and the leftist coalition Por Andalucía held on to the five seats it won four years ago. Sánchez’s inner circle and his party are being battered by a series of corruption cases as Spain gears up for next year’s general election. The polls suggest the PP will finish first but may struggle to secure an outright majority, leaving it dependent on Vox to govern nationally. Feijóo has repeatedly refused to rule out a national coalition with Vox. In a recent TV interview, the PP leader – who was touted as the man who would bring the party back to the centre ground when he was appointed four years ago – said that while he hoped to govern alone, he had no intention of “demonising” Vox. “If it turns out that we need to make a deal for a coalition government, we’ll sit down and we’ll form a government coalition that’s in line with the basic principles of our parties and we’ll set out a series of red lines that I won’t cross,” he told Antena 3’s El Hormiguero last month. The PSOE’s organisational secretary, Rebeca Torró, said the Andalucía deal showed that there was no such thing as a “moderate PP” or a “hardline PP”, adding: “There’s only a PP that’s exactly the same as Vox.” Torró said that each such alliance followed a familiar playbook: “Backward steps in equality, attacks on the rights of LGBTI people, a weakening of public services, a questioning of climate change, and the normalisation of speech that jeopardises rights and freedoms that were hard-won over the course of decades.” Feijóo’s predecessor Pablo Casado was weakened by his inability to decide how to respond to growing competition from Vox. Despite relying on Vox to prop up three regional PP governments, he eventually turned on the far-right party in an incendiary speech to congress six years ago. “You brag about being populists with your demagoguery that offers easy – and usually fake – solutions to complex problems,” said Casado. “The People’s party doesn’t want to be another party of fear, of rage, of resentment and revenge, of insults and skirmishes, nor of manipulation, lies and backwards opposition.”

Ali Khamenei’s six-day funeral expected to draw millions in Iran

In the small hours of Friday the police roadblocks, stalls, posters and army vans were starting to appear across Tehran, as millions of Iranians prepared to attend the long-delayed six-day funeral ceremony for Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader for 36 turbulent years. Khamenei was killed aged 86 in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli attack on the country in February, and the final farewell ceremony is intended to be an epic display of personal mourning, national power, resilience and social cohesion. By Thursday, knots of mourners carrying flags and blankets were already gathering along roads festooned with banners showing the red fist, the symbol of the funeral, alongside the slogan: “We must rise.” Many were heading to special hostels being set up across Tehran for the pilgrims. In Revolution Square a giant statue of a clenched fist was being installed. At an indoor ceremony late on Thursday dedicated to the families of those killed in the war, Khamenei’s coffin was displayed for the first time and the emotion poured out as the crowds pushed forward, throwing scarves for attendants to brush against the coffin. Gen Ahmad Vahidi, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), broke cover for the first time since 8 February. He had been instrumental in crushing the January protests, and also had a hand in the asymmetric warfare strategy that allowed the Iranian government to claim that its military survival in the 40-day war was a great diplomatic victory. Later, the body was taken across Tehran to the vast Grand Mosalla mosque, carried high out of a van across a sea of hands into the Great Hall, where it is to lie for three days. The scale of the funeral has been conceived to relay political and religious messages of resistance to the rest of the world. As many as 30 million people may attend. At the request of Iraqi politicians, Khamenei’s body will also be carried through the Iraqi Shia cities of Kerbala and Najaf. On Friday it was the turn of Iran’s thinned-out political, judicial and military establishment to pay their respects as the coffin was covered with the sacred flag of the shrine of Imam Husayn. Mohsen Rezaee, a senior IRGC commander, cried openly, while the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, a man that has to tread delicately around the authority of the supreme leader, shed a tear. The sight of the tiny coffin of Khamenei’s 14-month-old granddaughter, killed in the same blast that killed him along with three other members of the family, reflected the personal cost of war. A collection of foreign dignitaries then entered the mosque, but their station reflected Iran’s historical isolation from regional leaders. Leaders from Iraq, Pakistan, Armenia and Tajikistan attended at the most senior levels, but so did 12 heads of parliament, mainly from Arab states. No western leaders were invited. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, accused European countries of standing on the “wrong side of history” and called their stance on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran “truly shameful”. For the funeral organisers, the true test comes over the next three days as ordinary Iranians are asked to come to show their respects not just to a leader, but to the Islamic Revolution. The context of an uncompleted war with the US and Israel poses security threats from terrorism and crowd control. The burials of the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989 and the IRGC leader Qassem Suleimani in 2020 were marked by chaos, with the body of Khomeini nearly lost as crowds pressed forward tearing at his shroud. Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Reza Aref, who is the lead funeral organiser, said the ceremony, which begins on Saturday in Tehran and will end with Khamenei’s burial on Thursday in Mashhad, would be “the most important event of this century” and the most attended event in Iran since the 1979 revolution. Throughout Friday, Iran’s leadership increasingly drove home the message of resistance to the west, and even revenge. Vahidi vowed Iran would never surrender. Khamenei, he said, “has a place in our hearts and souls, and for all of us, for our beloved Iran, and for the Islamic nation, he is permanent and eternal, and we will never say goodbye to him”. The head of the judiciary told western leaders to open their history books. Other hardline MPs spoke of blood vengeance, not mourning. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and speaker of the still-suspended parliament, said: “We must rise up and convey the nation’s call for bloodshed to the world so that the world knows that the honourable and noble nation of Iran will not remain silent in the face of oppression and arrogance and will not spare the blood of its imam. “Iran stands on the threshold of creating one of the greatest scenes in its history, a day when a nation, with hearts full of love, loyalty and the pain of separation, comes to bid farewell to a great man.” Nevertheless, there remains a great absence and question mark about the coming days. Despite the many posters of Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, walking with his father in a garden, projecting continuity, Mojtaba is not expected to make an appearance at his father’s funeral. He was severely injured in the same US-Israeli strike on a government residence in Tehran at a little after 8am local time on 28 February that killed many of his family. The extent of Mojtaba’s injuries is unknown and he has so far issued only written statements, including one that distanced himself from the ceasefire negotiations, but sanctioned their continuation. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, threatened to kill him this week, saying he was marked for death – remarks that prompted hardliners to call for a re-examination of Iran’s fatwa against possession of nuclear weapons. His physical absence, as the rival political factions claim his support and inflation soars, is putting Iran’s flexible yet secretive political system under great strain. But this is a government that has shown a surprising capacity for resistance and renewal, which it wants the west to see as Iranians bid their farewells. A 6 mile (10km) procession through central Tehran is planned for Monday from Imam Hossein Square to Azadi Square, the site of the 1979 revolution that ultimately led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic that Khamenei led after Khomeini’s death in 1989 from natural causes. The funeral organisers, aware that a glorification of Khamenei’s life without any acknowledgment of the current economic suffering of millions of Iranians could provoke a backlash, have put up posters proclaiming “a bright future for Iran”. The funeral date coincides with the Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, a time when Shia Muslims congregate to commemorate the seventh-century martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, who refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliph Yazid I, a ruler he regarded as tyrannical. The parallels with Khamenei’s own death resisting the west are self-evident. In one of his last speeches, on 17 February, Khamenei referenced this Shia symbol of defiance, saying: “Someone like me does not pledge allegiance to someone like Yazid. A nation with the culture of Iran does not pledge allegiance to corrupt leaders like those in America.”

‘I can only describe it as a war zone’: the rescuers navigating Venezuela’s post-quake hellscape

When twin earthquakes tore through Venezuela’s northern coast last week, Israel Rivas was at home hundreds of miles away in the industrial city of San Félix. As the scale of the catastrophe became clear, the 24-year-old knew he had to react. A mechanic and budding photographer, Rivas gathered the money he had been saving to buy a new camera lens and jumped on a bus to make the 12-hour journey to La Guaira, the coastal state that has suffered the most damage. “I couldn’t eat well. I couldn’t sleep well, knowing that my brothers and sisters from this country are dying, so I … came here and I’m doing the best I can,” he said on Wednesday, exactly a week after the disaster, as he stood outside Residencia La Gabarra, a 12-storey block of beachside apartments that had collapsed into a jumble of reinforced concrete and bricks with at least three children inside. Roaming the devastated streets of Caraballeda, a resort town east of La Guaira’s capital, Rivas stumbled across a group of British search and rescue workers who had flown in from Merseyside, the West Midlands and Wales. “If you need me, I’m here,” he remembers telling them. They told him that they did. Since then, Rivas, who is a fluent English speaker, has been working as the interpreter for the UK’s International Search and Rescue team (UK ISAR) as its members navigate a hellscape of broken properties to try to find life beneath the debris. “It’s a hard job. It’s hard to see so many dead people around you. It’s hard to say we can’t recover the body because it is 10 floors down and we don’t have the equipment. It’s hard,” Rivas said as his British colleagues and searchers from Ecuador investigated possible signs of life detected under the wreckage of La Gabarra. “But that’s one side of the coin, which is death. The other side of the coin is life. Coins are always flipping and we are always [hoping they land] on life.” Rivas is one of thousands of Venezuelan volunteers who have mobilised in the aftermath of two giant earthquakes that – in the space of 39 seconds – brought death and destruction to La Guaira, created a major humanitarian crisis and made the country’s already uncertain political future even more unpredictable. The official death toll so far is 2,595, but with 400 bodies reportedly being delivered to La Guaira’s morgue each day, that figure is certain to rise. At least 12,400 people have been injured while one estimate, based on satellite data, suggests more than 58,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed. “Along the coastline what we’re seeing is buildings of 20 storeys plus [that have] collapsed – pancake collapses, total collapses, where it’s floor upon floor upon floor. Buildings that are leaning over,” said Russ Gauden, UK ISAR’s national coordinator and team leader in Venezuela. “It’s [such] an apocalyptic scene that you’d think you’d seen … a disaster film.” A few hundred metres along Los Corales beach in Caraballeda, one of Gauden’s teams has been deployed to use life-scenting dogs and a seismic and acoustic listening device to confirm whether someone was still alive under the wreckage. Early on Wednesday, they gathered around the building’s rubble-filled swimming pool, seeking shade under dust-caked parasols from a ferocious Caribbean sun. “It’s pretty extreme. I can only describe it as a war zone in terms of collapse,” says Tristan Bowen, a firefighter from south Wales, as his crew plotted its next move. Bowen said the 72-hour “golden window” for finding survivors had closed but believed it was still possible to find people alive. Hours later, a 43-year-old security guard is pulled from the collapsed basement of a nearby shopping centre after eight days under the rubble. “People have survived many days beyond that [golden] window, but … it depends entirely on where they are within that structure,” Bowen said. Rivas was also optimistic. “It doesn’t smell bad which means there are no dead bodies in there, [which means there is] a higher chance for them to be alive,” he said, as British and Ecuadorian searchers crawled into cramped tunnels they had dug into the ruins and used a loudhailer to communicate with anyone who might be caught below. A hundred metres away, in the remains of a neighbouring high-rise, the distraught relatives of one of those thought to be trapped inside wait for news of eight-year-old Ronald. The boy’s name is a double tribute to the Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and the Venezuelan baseball star Ronald Acuña. “Ronald is such an intelligent, calm, respectful boy,” said his 50-year-old grandmother, Olivia Sandoval, breaking down as she described her vigil outside what is left of La Gabarra. Her grandson had been playing with his two cousins, 10-year-old Victoria and eight-year-old Leonardo, when the earth shook and the building came crashing down. Ever since the earthquakes, Sandoval has knelt down by the pool or in the rubble to beg for divine help. “I just can’t get my head around how such a monstrous thing could happen to these children,” she said as the search continued. Sandoval – and many other Venezuelans – are struggling to comprehend something else: how in the hours and days after the earthquakes, Venezuela’s government failed to come to their aid. Sandoval has seen rescue teams from Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Peru on the frontline of the emergency response – not to mention scores of Venezuelan volunteers such as Rivas who have poured into La Guaira carrying shovels and axes and water and food. But the government has been largely missing in action. “That’s the saddest thing,” Sandoval said as the minutes ticked by without any news of her grandchild. Outside the wreckage of Residencia Costa Brava, a neighbouring tower which buckled into a chaos of masonry, mattresses and piping, there was fury at the official reaction. Government critics and experts blame the sluggish response on years of corruption, economic mismanagement and investment in political repression and domestic security rather than emergency services and healthcare. Crippling US sanctions have further enfeebled the Venezuelan state. Adolfo Guedes’ hands shake uncontrollably with rage as he thinks about what he would tell the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, if she visited the shack he now occupies beside the property in La Guaira where his 23-year-old daughter, Alexandra, remains buried. “What would I say? That I curse the day this wretched revolution entered Venezuela. This is what ruined us,” the 56-year-old says of Rodríguez’s Chavista movement which has ruled since Hugo Chávez took power in 1999. Under his heir, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela fell into economic catastrophe and dictatorship. Maduro was abducted on Donald Trump’s orders in January, with Rodríguez, his former vice-president, filling his shoes with the US president’s support. “Look at how we are sleeping! Look at how we are living! Look at the state we are in!” sobbed Guedes, sitting on a donated mattress, propped up by cinder blocks scavenged from his daughter’s pulverised home. On the bed next to him, his wife, Yaritza, grips a pillow and weeps. Outside a third mangled building where Mexican and British rescue workers are hunting for a survivor entombed in a stairwell, Jesus David de Oliveira laments the lack of government action. Oliveira, a 27-year-old civil engineer, complains that in the days after the quakes, Venezuelan soldiers hit the streets with machine guns when they should have been carrying spades. “As you can see, the international help is really all the help that we have,” he added as members of the Miami-Dade fire and rescue department arrived on the scene. “We are alone.” At a press conference, Rodríguez bristled at claims her administration had reacted slowly, dismissing them as tendentious and offensive “generalisations”. She has vowed to work “tirelessly, morning, noon, night for Venezuela” and defended the armed forces, noting that one army commander was working at a camp for displaced people despite losing his entire family. “We did everything in our power and we will continue to do everything in our power,” Rodríguez told reporters, showing off WhatsApp messages on her phone she claimed demonstrated a swift response. “They are carrying spades. They are pushing wheelbarrows,” she said of her troops. Back at La Gabarra, as night falls, the British rescue team has been substituted with a group of Brazilian firefighters who have sent a border collie called Megan into a crevice they have carved out of the building’s facade with heavy-duty tools. Ecuadorian searchers are sure their listening devices indicate a survivor is trapped inside. “They have detected movement. They have detected the sound of breathing – it might be a child or a younger person, or someone who is completely sheltered. This is enough to give us hope,” said Capt Diego Assunção, a firefighter from São Paulo. Nearby, Olivia Sandoval sits alone in the shadows, keeping faith that her grandson and his two cousins will soon be found after seven agonising days. “It’s the kids! It’s the kids!” she said excitedly after a burst of activity around the pool misleadingly raised her hopes. But another hour passes, then another, and still there is no sign of a breakthrough as rescuers struggle to cut through the steel rods that once held the building together. By daybreak there is still no good news but the rescue teams and Venezuelan volunteers work on across this ruined stretch of coast. On the collapsed side wall of Residencia Don Peppino, to La Gabarra’s left, someone has scribbled a message for the authorities who largely failed to show up. “Where the government is absent, the people abound,” it proclaimed. The rubble below the graffiti is littered with residents’ possessions, hurled out into the street by the force of the quakes. A blue toy car. A pink cot and baby photo album. A children’s purse emblazoned with the faces of Elsa, Anna and Olaf from the Disney film Frozen. And a family card game called Fibber that the building’s former inhabitants once played. Additional reporting by Clavel Rangel