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Formerly enslaved people in Guyana embraced collective action | Letter

Your report (British corporation continued trafficking of enslaved Africans to Guyana 40 years after abolition, 23 August) tells one important part of Guyana’s post-slavery history. There is another that deserves to be better known. In 1839, little more than a year after full emancipation in British Guiana, 83 formerly enslaved men and women pooled their savings to buy the 200-hectare (500-acre) Northbrook plantation. They renamed it Victoria. Other purchases by other groups followed, developing into what became known as the communal African village movement. These were not simply individual acts of property ownership. Many had kept their hard-earned savings buried for safekeeping; the first payment for Northbrook was reportedly carried to Georgetown in coins in a wheelbarrow. Formerly enslaved people went on to buy land collectively, establish villages and devise their own arrangements for managing roads, land and other shared resources. Victoria had established its own code of local government by 1845. Having worked in Guyana, I have always found this one of the most remarkable parts of its history. At almost the same moment that plantation interests were trying to perpetuate the old system, people emerging from slavery were demonstrating an extraordinary capacity for collective action, self-government and mutual endeavour. The history of emancipation is not only the history of what was done to formerly enslaved people, but of what they chose to build once they were free. Prof Kathryn A Monk Bristol

Pope Leo urges healing of ‘deep wounds’ before meeting child sexual abuse survivors in France

The pope has called on the Catholic church to heal “deep wounds” and “painful errors”, before a meeting survivors of child sexual abuse as he continues his four-day visit to France. Addressing a crowd in a large field near the Catholic shrine of Lourdes on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV called on the church to reckon with its past, without directly referencing sexual abuse scandals in France that affected at least 330,000 children over seven decades. “In order to heal the deep wounds, infidelities and ⁠painful errors that have occurred within [the church], we must humbly place ourselves under the Lord’s purifying gaze,” the first US pope told the estimated crowd of 150,000 people. Leo met seven survivors of child sexual abuse by French clergy privately on Sunday after leading an open-air morning mass at Lourdes, one of the most popular Catholic sites for pilgrims and reputed as a place of healing. The survivors said the pope had listened to them, was informed of their cases and said more work was needed to respond to the scandal. Five of the seven held a press conference in Lourdes . Jean-Marie Delbos said he never thought the day would come when he would meet a pope. He asked Leo to bless a photo of his grandmother, which he did. “It was extraordinary,” he said. During a homily to the faithful, the pope also attacked medically assisted dying as immoral “false compassion” in a staunch articulation of the Catholic church’s teaching that all human life must be defended from conception until natural death. After years of debate, France formally adopted legislation last month allowing incurably ill adults the right to “aid in dying”, joining a small number of countries with similar laws, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Canada. The pope said: “It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral.” The pope was due to take part in six events while in Lourdes, including a meeting with staff and patients at the shrine’s care centre. Lourdes has drawn millions of sick and disabled believers seeking a cure from its spring waters since the Catholic church officially recognised visions of the Virgin Mary reported by a local girl in 1858. Arriving there in a white popemobile on Saturday night, however, Leo would have been reminded of the church’s dark and painful legacy, as he passed boarded-up mosaics by a Jesuit priest who is accused of abusing women over three decades. Marko Rupnik, one of the Catholic church’s best-known mosaic artists, is on trial in a Vatican court, accused by more than two dozen women of having psychologically, spiritually and sexually abused them from the 1990s, including during the creation of his artworks. The bishop of Lourdes ordered the works covered up, reasoning that survivors of abuse seeking succour at the site should not be forced to see them. Rupnik is not known to have commented publicly on the allegations, Reuters reported. Among the survivors who met the pope was a former pupil of the nearby Catholic boarding school Notre-Dame de Bétharram. Former students have recounted their experiences of violence, rape and sexual assault in what is thought to be the biggest child sexual abuse scandal at a school in French history. In an interview published last year, the pope spoke of a crisis of clerical sexual abuse in the church. He also said “victims must be treated with great respect and with an understanding that those who have suffered very deep wounds because of abuse, sometimes carry those wounds for their entire life”, according to a transcript on Vatican News, the Holy See’s official news site. The first official papal visit to France in 18 years follows an announcement last week by the country’s Independent National Authority for Recognition and Reparation that about 2,000 people who reported sexual abuse by clergy or other church representatives were seeking reparations. France’s Catholic bishops conference agreed to provide compensation after a landmark report in 2021 estimated that 330,000 children were sexually abused over seven decades by predatory priests or other Catholic figures. The two-and-a-half-year independent inquiry found that vast numbers of children were subjected to sexual violence by priests and clergy and that the crimes were covered up in a “systemic way” by a deliberate “veil of silence” in the church. On the day Leo arrived in Paris, a group of survivors published an open letter voicing fears that his visit would change nothing, criticising that the seven he was due to meet in Lourdes were “carefully selected” by the church, rather than survivors’ groups. “You will merely ask us for forgiveness. This is not enough. One does not ask for forgiveness for a crime; one is responsible for a crime,” they wrote in the letter published in the newspaper Libération. The pope arrived to celebrate mass on Sunday morning to a rapturous reception from the faithful, who waved flags and cheered, as they thronged the streets of Lourdes to catch a glimpse of him. The Holy See’s live stream showed Leo making stately progress in his popemobile, stopping frequently to greet and bless babies that were passed to him. The south-western town near the Spanish border is one of the most important Catholic sites in the world, attracting 3 million pilgrims a year. The Associated Press reported that the pope’s visit had caused accommodation prices to soar, with the price of some one-night hotel stays reaching more than €2,000 (£1,700). • In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International

Swiss voters reject stricter neutrality rules that would have curbed Nato cooperation

Swiss voters have decisively rejected a proposal for a strict definition of neutrality that would have required Switzerland to curb cooperation with Nato and abandon sanctions against Russia. All cantons and about 70% of voters rejected the proposal for a strictly defined version of neutrality to be ⁠written into the Swiss constitution, final results from the Federal Statistical Office showed. The motion had been promoted by the far-right Swiss People’s party (SVP). Although the defeat was expected, it will be a relief across Europe, amid increasing strains in maintaining EU unity on sanctions against Russia. Switzerland’s centuries-old neutrality was formally recognised after the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. Critics of current government policy claim that status has been eroded by Switzerland’s decision to mirror EU sanctions against Russia, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Voters were asked to decide on enshrining the principle of “perpetual and armed neutrality” in the constitution and barring Switzerland from joining any military alliances or imposing sanctions on warring states, unless mandated by the UN. The outcome is a heavy defeat for the SVP’s billionaire backer, Christoph Blocher, who was a prominent supporter of the initiative, reported by Bloomberg to have spent 2m francs (€2.1m, £1.8m) on the campaign. Opponents welcomed the results. “Voters understood what the SVP wanted: it wanted Switzerland to isolate itself internationally and shirk its responsibilities when international law is being trampled on,” said Sibel Arslan, a lawmaker for the Green party. The Swiss government, along with most political parties, opposed the measure, arguing “Switzerland would cease to be a reliable partner in international security policy”, leaving the country less secure in the event of an attack and heavily restricting its ability to cooperate with Nato. Although not a member of Nato, Switzerland has cooperated with the transatlantic military alliance for 30 years. Analysts said the result showed Swiss people were content with how the government interpreted Swiss neutrality. “The people have spoken: they accept that neutrality is an instrument that can evolve, leaving the government with room for manoeuvre to adapt its application faced with geopolitical upheavals,” wrote Katy Romy, a correspondent for SwissInfo, the online service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. She also wrote that the yes campaign was unable to shed perceptions it was acting in Russian interests. Russia’s foreign ministry had praised the initiative, while criticising Switzerland’s adoption of EU sanctions and claiming the country was abandoning neutrality. The SVP accepted the defeat and said it had no current plans for further action.

Lime bike profits double as rider numbers surge in England

Love them or hate them, Lime ebikes are an increasingly common sight on England’s roads with new figures showing annual profits more than doubling thanks to a surge in riders. Lime’s average number of monthly users jumped 31% to approaching 700,000 as it added more than 4,500 ebikes and scooters to its fleet, taking the total to almost 38,000, the company’s UK arm, Lime Technologies, said in accounts filed at Companies House. Sales rose by a third to £148m in 2025 and profits more than doubled to £4.7m from £1.7m, as first reported by the Sunday Times. The progress followed expansion into new cities, including Oxford in 2024 and Nottingham in 2023, adding to its presence in London, Milton Keynes and Salford. Despite the surge in trade, Lime’s UK accounts show it employed just 54 people in 2025, up from 39 a year before, largely because it relies on self-employed contractors to shift and service its ebikes and scooters. The company, whose parent, Neutron Holdings, listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange last year valued at $1.7bn (£1.3bn), is part-owned by US ride-hailing app Uber. Lime was founded in 2017 in San Francisco, California, and now operates in about 230 cities across 29 countries, mostly in Europe. At the time of the listing, Wayne Ting, the chief executive of Lime, said the company was having “conversations with lots of other [UK] municipalities”. The English devolution bill, passed in April, gives local authorities in England fresh powers to license rental ebike operators and set requirements around parking, safety and accessibility standards. London’s transport body estimated in 2024 that one in 10 of the 1.5m daily cycle journeys in the capital are made on dockless ebikes such as Lime, Forest and Voi. The schemes have fuelled a surge in cycling in London, helped by the patronage of celebrities such as Timothée Chalamet and most recently Kim Kardashian. However, there have been mounting concerns about safety for riders and pedestrians. Rented ebikes were reportedly responsible for almost a third of cyclist collisions with pedestrians that required police intervention. Meanwhile, riders have been injured by defective ebikes while cycling or suffered fractures caused by the weight of the bicycle falling on them, a phenomenon known as “Lime bike leg”. Lime recently began introducing on the UK a new, smaller version of its ebikes, with batteries repositioned towards the back wheel, after safety criticism. More than 1,500 of the new models are now in operation in England. The company has said that more than 99.99% of Lime trips in London last year ended without a reported incident. Charities representing blind residents and people with limited mobility have also raised concerns about the difficulty in navigating parts of London amid chaotic parking of rental ebikes on pavements. London boroughs have seized at least 3,000 ebikes this year, 2,000 of which were Lime ebikes, a Guardian investigation found, as hire companies face growing calls to stop bicycles littering streets and blocking pavements.

Britain knew about the Holocaust as it happened. A new exhibition reckons with that truth

The “complex and unsettling” story of what Britain knew during the Holocaust is being explored amid plans to create a new permanent national memorial. An exhibition highlighting how news of the atrocity reached Britain much earlier than is commonly understood will tour the country after being viewed privately by MPs at Portcullis House on the parliamentary estate at Westminster in September. The research draws upon newspaper reporting, broadcasts, academic scholarship, witness testimony and government archives. The exhibition is a sample of a more extensive, permanent exhibition for the national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, which is planned for a site in London. Martin Winstone, the senior historical adviser to the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: “There’s a feeling today that Britain really only found out about the Holocaust at the end of the war. But in 1942, the year in which most victims of the Holocaust were murdered, you couldn’t really escape this information in Britain. It was in every newspaper. It was on the BBC. “The Manchester Guardian was the newspaper that reported most extensively on the Holocaust, taking a crusading position that there was more the British government and allied governments could be doing.” For years, the Manchester Guardian, which was banned from Germany in 1933 for highlighting Adolf Hitler’s antisemitism, called for immigration restrictions to be lifted for Jews, lobbied for pressure to be applied to neutral nations to open their borders to refugees and for special rescue measures, realising that “the Nazis were aiming at the complete elimination of an entire group of people”. Much of the information about the Holocaust, including the locations of death camps, was smuggled out of Poland – where the murders were “happening in plain sight” – by couriers to the London-based Polish government-in-exile. Winstone said: “It was a challenging situation. There were lots of things the government had to deal with. And for much of that war, Britain was on the defensive. “On one level, the government’s response was always, ‘we’ll win the war, that’s how we stop this’; while critics said, ‘there’ll be nobody left to save, if that’s what you’re waiting for’.” During the second world war, the government commissioned reports on antisemitism in Britain, with agents opening people’s mail and recording conversations overheard in air raid shelters to gauge public opinion. In what Winstone described as a “complex and unsettling story”, Ministry of Information bulletins revealed that while there was mass public sympathy for Jews in occupied Europe, it contended with anti-migration and antisemitic sentiment. Winstone added: “Nearly everybody in Britain was disgusted about these mass murders, but at the same time you start getting more antisemitic discourse about Jews in Britain – that Jews were running the black market, avoiding military service and spreading panic. “Even before the mass murder began, during the 1930s, there was a significant body of opinion which felt Britain should not be admitting refugees.” Winstone said UK immigration laws in the 1930s were highly restrictive, in part because of antisemitism earlier in the 20th century. But after the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938, Britain relaxed restrictions to some extent, allowing Jewish children to come from Europe without visas. The Manchester Guardian reported how Jewish communities and Quakers in the city set up organisations to support refugees. British women – from MP Eleanor Rathbone, to grassroots fundraisers and those who found themselves interned alongside Jews in France – were at the forefront of humanitarian efforts, Winstone said. A 2021 survey by Claims Conference found 21% of the British public knew the UK government was aware of the mass murder of Jews as early as 1941. UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation is co-chaired by the broadcaster and former Labour politician Ed Balls and the Tory peer Eric Pickles, who said the exhibition would give an early insight into the work being developed for the forthcoming memorial. The exhibition will be at the Northern Ireland assembly from 30 October until 13 November; the Scottish parliament from 7 to 10 December; before travelling to Cardiff from 16 January to 4 February 2027, coinciding with Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January. It is also expected to visit Manchester, with a date and venue yet to be confirmed. The UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, which would be at Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster, does not have a confirmed opening date yet, as a planning application is being redetermined by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The Holocaust Memorial Act 2026 received royal assent this year, granting legal clearance and government funding for the project.

‘Hell on earth’: last residents eat weeds to survive in Russian-occupied Oleshky

The phone message sent out of Russian-occupied Oleshky was grimly matter-of-fact: food had finally run out for the 2,000 or so civilians, including 50 children, remaining in the city and its surrounding villages. “We’re in Oleshky [and] we can’t get out. We’re going hungry … Right now, I’ve got absolutely nothing to eat,” read the message from a woman in the besieged city who was waiting to be evacuated by the occupying forces. Before the war, she had weighed 110kg (17st); now she weighed just 67kg, she wrote. “At first I was glad [to lose some weight], but now I realise I’ll die without proper protein-rich food. It’s very hard. The house where we stayed last winter was also destroyed and burned down. Just like our own home … We’re still alive.” Oleshky, across the Dnipro River from the southern city of Kherson, has become “a hell on earth”, according to Ukrainians familiar with conditions there. This weekend, military authorities in Kherson carried out a large-scale airdrop of emergency food, water and medical supplies into the city and surrounding areas, using large drones, after Russia reportedly again rejected a ceasefire to evacuate civilians. The military governor’s office in Kherson said an operation had dropped about four tonnes of food to 100 locations, but it was unclear how much the Russian military had intercepted. The Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, raised the situation in Oleshky at the UN general assembly in New York this week. A “Save Oleshky” banner was lifted at a Ukraine-Hungary Nations League football match on Friday. In a statement published on Monday, Sybiha warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” and called for an immediate evacuation, accusing Russia of standing as “the only obstacle”. He said in an address during the general assembly: “Russia is deliberately making life there impossible. They are starving them to death.” The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, this month acknowledged the “critical situation” in Oleshky but accused Ukrainian forces of blocking humanitarian supplies intended for its residents. Until May, food supplies were still getting through to residents of a city that had once been home to 24,000. But since May, as the occupying Russian forces expanded minefields and drone cover, the trickle of supplies has entirely halted. Compounding the issue for civilians is the fact that Ukraine’s highly successful summer drone campaign against Russian supply lines has caused shortages for the invading forces’ frontline troops, who in turn steal what little food Ukrainian civilians have managed to save. In messages shared with the Guardian, residents said they were down to one meal a day: soup without potato, made with courgette grown in what once were the flower boxes of the city’s apartment houses, sometimes with the addition of foraged purslane, an edible weed. “We’re running out of everything,” said a resident early in the summer. “By August, the situation will be critical for us. And come autumn, we’ll definitely die. I’m already dying. I’m getting weaker by the day.” On 1 September, a food convoy heading to the city was attacked. Moscow blamed the Ukrainian armed forces for the attack, while Kyiv blamed Russian troops. Ukrainian officials say attempts to drop food by drones have done little to help: the supplies are seized by Russian soldiers and in at least one case the intended recipient was arrested. Commenting on the airdrop over the weekend, Kherson’s military governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, described it as the largest operation of its kind so far. “Food was delivered directly to 100 distribution points. And now I would like to address the Russians,” he said. “Civilians have absolutely nothing to do with the Ukrainian armed forces. Because of the conditions you have created in Oleshky, people simply have no choice but to take food. Do not deprive people of the chance to survive and avoid starvation. “Russia, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide people with food, medicines and adequate conditions for healthcare and hygiene. If its own resources are insufficient, the occupying authorities must consent to humanitarian operations by international organisations and other states. Instead, we are seeing the opposite.” He continued: “Russian occupying forces are obstructing the provision of aid to the civilian population. They are destroying vehicles attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies. And they are killing people trying to bring in food and medicines. They are also blocking all initiatives and agreements regarding the evacuation of people from Oleshky.” According to Tetiana Hasanenko, a Ukrainian official serving from the western side of the Dnipro as the head of the Oleshky military administration, problems began in earnest late last year as access to the city from the Russian side for Ukrainian civilians became ever more difficult. “The density of the minefields has become very high,” she told the Guardian. “From December onwards, food deliveries became much less frequent because vehicles were hitting mines and being targeted by drones. By winter, supplying food had already become very difficult. “And it’s already been very hard. There’s no other infrastructure, electricity, therefore no ATMs, no cash. Oleshky isn’t functioning. People used to grow food in their vegetable plots before the war. There was not only enough for themselves but they used to sell it to Crimea and Kherson city. Now they cannot even grow it for themselves.” Hasanenko described a reported incident where a 74-year-old man was digging out a cellar that had been flooded with mud after Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam in 2023, looking for stored food. Refusing to allow the soldiers into the cellar he was excavating, he was murdered by the soldiers. “Some people have been digging out these cellars looking for canned vegetables, pickled vegetables and canned meat that people were storing up for winter,” she said. Despite the horrific conditions in the city, Ukrainian officials believe the occupying forces are dragging their feet with the evacuation of the remaining civilians in order to discourage a Ukrainian counterattack. Hasanenko said: “The Russians are afraid that an offensive [against Oleshky] will start from Kherson city and they are just keeping people, civilians, as human shields.” She added: “It’s an old city. It has existed for almost a thousand years – and in all this time, people never lived in such horrible conditions, in such a hell like they do now. There are dead bodies not only in the basement of the hospital, but all over the city. They’re just lying there because you cannot pick up the dead body. The drones are flying constantly and then the dogs are eating the bodies.” In a text message, another resident said simply: “All supplies are running out.” Another messaged: “A week ago, the orcs [a Ukrainian term of abuse to describe Russian soldiers] came into people’s yards and dug up all the potatoes, onions, and garlic. “They took all the food supplies from the elderly women. When one of the grandmothers started shouting, they replied that people ‘soon to be living in heaven’ like them should subsist on nothing but water.”

‘Viscerally dedicated to social issues’: behind Lula’s drive to win final term in Brazil’s crunch election

On 1 January 2023, a few hours after being sworn in for his third stint as Brazil’s president, a ravenous Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sneaked away from a celebratory cocktail party packed with politicians and diplomats to grab a snack with one of his oldest friends. “This is your penultimate term,” that friend, the Dominican theologian and writer Frei Betto, recalls telling Lula as the pair chewed the fat in a back room of the foreign ministry in Brasília. Betto says Lula laughed off his provocation, insisting: “No, Betto! It’s the last one. I’m done!” But the theologian was unconvinced. “I’m certain that in four years’ time you’ll stand for a fourth,” he assured the leftwing veteran during their 40-minute tête-à-tête. “And sure enough, he did,” Betto added last month, as his forecast came true. On 4 October, just a few weeks shy of his 81st birthday, Lula will indeed seek to extend his legendary five-decade career in what will be the former union leader’s seventh presidential election since his first in 1989. Lula ran three unsuccessful campaigns before finally making history as Brazil’s first elected working-class president in 2002 and winning re-election in 2006. In 2022 he staged a sensational comeback, defeating the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, before thwarting a coup attempt masterminded by his rival a week into his third term. Four years later, Lula will face Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator, in October’s election, with the pair neck and neck in the polls. “I honestly don’t see how we can lose this election. I really don’t,” Lula told a podcast recently, although analysts say the vote is too close to call. During a recent rally in the country’s north-east, a region traditionally associated with Lula, who was born into rural poverty there in 1945, Bolsonaro claimed: “You’re looking at the next president of Brazil.” Betto, whose full name is Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo, remains confident his comrade of more than four decades will prevail and narrowly win one last term as president. “Politics is his calling,” he says of Lula. “He’s a political animal – he breathes it 25 hours a day.” But the social activist fears that if his latest prediction is wrong, the consequences for Brazil’s 214 million citizens will be dire. “What’s at stake is the return of a neo-fascist government that washed its hands during the pandemic and dismissed as insignificant the deaths of 700,000 people in Brazil from Covid-19,” Betto says of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, when the president’s anti-scientific response and sabotage of vaccination efforts was widely blamed for the high death toll. Betto’s greatest fear is that a second Bolsonaro presidency would help Donald Trump to tighten his grip on Latin America, where he is trying to reassert Washington’s dominance as part of the so-called “Donroe doctrine”. The most dramatic episode of that campaign came in January, when US special forces invaded Venezuela, abducting President Nicolás Maduro and in effect capturing the government he left behind. Cuba, which Betto has visited regularly since becoming friends with Fidel Castro after they met in 1980, is also in Trump’s crosshairs. The US has been trying to topple its communist government by suffocating the economy and cutting off the country’s fuel supply. Betto, 82, believes another Bolsonaro presidency would bring “complete alignment with the US”. “We would become what Venezuela is today: an American protectorate,” he says. “There would be a devastating wave of privatisations, and social issues would get much worse. Rightwing governments are focused on the elites, focused on the financial markets, and aren’t concerned with the people.” This week Lula’s campaign accused Trump of seeking to “colonise” Brazil and trying to sway the election in Bolsonaro’s favour to capture its natural resources. The theologian also fears a Bolsonaro win would deal a body blow to the democracy he and Lula were trying to rescue when they became friends in São Paulo’s industrial heartlands in the early 1980s. While Bolsonaro’s 2023 putsch flopped, Betto believes Brazil’s failure to punish those responsible for abuses during the 1964-85 military regime has left the door open to future power grabs. “The problem is that we didn’t investigate the crimes of the dictatorship the way Chile, Argentina and Uruguay did,” he says. “So there’s a very strong dictatorial residue in the Brazilian armed forces … that could resurface at any moment.” The civilians and soldiers responsible for the failed 2023 coup were arrested, tried and jailed during Lula’s third presidency. The ringleader, Jair Bolsonaro, received a 27-year sentence – hence his oldest son seeking the presidency in his place. “All of this could be overturned with Flávio Bolsonaro’s election, because he would have the power to pardon them,” Betto says. Before the 2022 election there was a powerful outpouring of concern – in Brazil and around the world – over Bolsonaro’s overtly authoritarian plans. But Betto, who has personal experience of the dangers of authoritarian rule, does not detect the same level of alarm now at the prospect of Bolsonaro’s son winning power. Betto was jailed twice during Brazil’s dictatorship: first suffering 15 days of beatings at the navy’s secret service base in Rio, then spending nearly four years behind bars in São Paulo for helping political dissidents to flee abroad. “Honestly, the possibility of living under a dictatorship again is truly terrifying,” he says. “The only people who could possibly think a dictatorship is a good thing are those who haven’t experienced it first-hand, like I have.” Betto says part of the blame for the far-right’s advance lies with the left, which has lost ground to evangelical churches and conservative forces in poor communities, where leftwing Catholic activists such as him were once deeply embedded. “We have to go back to the favelas,” he says. “We have to go back to rural areas. We have to go back to all the places where there are marginalised or excluded people.” The bestselling writer also worries that Lula – who will be 85 by the end of his fourth term, if he wins – has failed to groom an heir. “I don’t see anyone in the Workers’ party today who has his charisma or political potential,” he says, calling possible successors too inexperienced or lacking in popular appeal. Speaking during a recent visit to Rio, Betto described his euphoria at his friend’s historic victory nearly 25 years ago. “It was a moment of immense joy for all of us – and of immense hope for Brazil,” says the activist, who recalls reading Lula a passage from Psalm 72 at his home a few hours before his election was confirmed. The psalm says: “He shall have pity on the weak and poor. He shall preserve the lives of the needy.” Betto believes Lula’s decision to seek re-election stems from his obsession with social justice – even if the theologian sometimes thinks his friend is insufficiently leftwing and missed a historic opportunity to implement agrarian reform when he first came to power. “Lula is someone who is completely, viscerally dedicated to social issues, because of his personal experience with childhood hunger and abandonment,” he says, noting how four of the 12 children Lula’s mother, Dona Lindu, had died of starvation and extreme poverty. “I hope Lula wins and I will do everything I can to make that happen,” he adds of next week’s crunch election, before admitting: “But things aren’t easy.”

61m tonnes of rubble: Gaza aid workers face delicate task of clearing ruins concealing up to 10,000 bodies

It took all day to clear a section of road in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City. At the end of it, Ahmed Alyan, a UN engineer, was exhausted, surrounded by mountains of rubble despite the day’s work. “I feel as if we are holding a spoon and trying to empty the sea,” Alyan said, beads of sweat trickling down his forehead after a long, hot summer day. Alyan is part of a World Food Programme (WFP) team who have been working on Beirut Street, once a busy main thoroughfare lined with shops, offices and homes and filled with traffic and people. But now it is virtually deserted. The road was blocked by piles of rubble, stones and the wreckage of destroyed shops. Nearby, a tower stood tilted after some of its concrete foundations were damaged, while displaced families continued to live inside. In some parts of the road, sewage flowed from the ground after the drainage system was damaged and blocked by Israeli bombardment. The UN estimates that removing the bulk of the rubble in the Gaza Strip could take at least seven to 10 years and cost billions of dollars. That would make the removal of war debris in Gaza one of the largest rubble-clearance operations in modern history. “The estimate of the total amount of rubble in Gaza is 61m tonnes. It is approximately 20 times the amount of rubble generated in all wars across the world over the last 18 years,” said Jaco Cilliers, the UN Development Programme’s special representative in Palestine. The task is being carried out in extremely difficult and hazardous conditions. The clearance teams are working in ruins containing countless dead bodies and unexploded bombs. So far, 580km of roads have been cleared, which has in turn made possible the movement of aid trucks, relief teams and residents. However, the reconstruction of Gaza is a huge challenge facing international and local organisations. After more than two years of work, about 907,000 tonnes of rubble have been removed and more than 300,000 tonnes recycled and reused. But this represents only about 1.5% of the total rubble. To make things more difficult, the Israeli authorities have banned the necessary equipment from entering Gaza on the grounds that almost any aid that is not food or medicine could be “dual-use” and could somehow benefit Hamas. Initially, the WFP work was limited to removing debris from the roads and pushing it to the sides to create a passage for trucks. But the sheer quantity was overwhelming, and continuing Israeli bombardment during the nearly year-old ceasefire kept adding to the gargantuan task. Some roads had to be reopened several times. Meanwhile, the so-called yellow line, a demarcation established at the start of the ceasefire last October, keeps creeping forward as Israeli troops seize more of the territory. The area still accessible to people and aid workers is barely 30% of the whole Gaza Strip, making the problem of what to do with the rubble even more acute. “One of the ways we have tried to address this problem is by recycling and reusing the rubble in different ways,” Cilliers said. The UNDP has begun managing five rubble-crushing sites across Gaza, where debris collected from roads and damaged critical infrastructure is processed for reuse. The rubble is first sorted to remove non-concrete materials, including metal and steel rods. The concrete is then crushed into smaller pieces, eventually down to roughly the size of a marble or a very small rock. UNDP relies on seven crushers across Gaza, all of which were already in the territory before the war. Two of the seven were reconstructed by local engineers in Gaza over the past year, based on models they had available, as they were unable to bring new machinery into the strip. At one of the crushing sites, a large space that had previously housed UN warehouses, piles of rubble are stacked across the yard. Trucks arriving with large amounts of debris stop on a weighbridge before tipping their cargo on to the piles. There is a constant roar in the area as the mechanism breaks the concrete into smaller pieces, and the air is thick with dust. The condition of the machinery poses a big challenge for the teams carrying out the work. Most of the equipment available in Gaza has become severely worn out. The machinery frequently breaks down during operations, partly because of the acute shortage of spare parts, engine oil and other resources needed to maintain and operate it. With major restrictions on the entry of construction materials still in place, engineers are reusing the crushed rubble for a number of essential purposes. Much of it is used to repair roads and fill potholes, while some is placed beneath tents and shelters to raise them above rainwater and sewage. Nehal Abu Hassan, a member of the WFP team, said: “These materials cannot be compared with the natural materials normally used to build roads. Their quality is lower, and they are difficult to work with. But there is no alternative. These solutions have been imposed on us by the reality we are living in.” Removing some of the rubble has already had a big impact. “The road has become wider, the problem of rodents and insects has decreased and cars can pass through more easily,” said Ibrahim Daradona, a displaced man from Jabaliya who is living in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City. “The rubble was even a danger to children playing here.” More than 2.1 million displaced people are living in tents and temporary shelters, as dire humanitarian conditions persist after nearly three years. Rubble has become part of the environment in which they live every day. The removal of rubble has also helped revive Gaza’s local economy by creating space for people to start new activities and reopen shops and small businesses. “One of the things we have seen is that when we clear rubble in front of damaged shops and businesses, many of them reopen within around 20 days,” Cilliers said. Despite all the efforts to remove rubble and restore access to residential areas, the remains of homes carry a particular sensitivity. Every metre of rubble may conceal things that cannot be seen from the outside. “Rubble in some areas does not represent just debris to people; it represents their entire life and memories. In some cases, there may be bodies still under the rubble. That is why removing it is a very sensitive issue for families and communities,” said Abu Hassan. The presence of human remains still buried under the rubble remains one of the most urgent humanitarian issues in Gaza. According to estimates cited by the UNDP, between 8,000 and 10,000 bodies may still be buried. UNDP has said it is working with organisations including the International Committee of the Red Cross to identify locations where human remains may be buried and prioritise them during rubble-removal and recovery operations. “We are also working on a forensic process to identify remains, [to] ensure that they are handled properly and that religious burial rights are respected, and [to] provide the necessary documentation and certificates for families. This is extremely important for families in Gaza,” Cilliers said. Unexploded ordnance in rubble and on roads is a serious challenge for teams clearing the debris. UNDP and WFP teams coordinate with the UN mine-clearing arm, Unmas, the British charity the Halo Trust and other organisations before beginning clearance work, to identify unexploded ordnance and protect workers and returning families. Given the limited capacity to remove explosive ordnance in Gaza, these organisations cannot disarm or remove all unexploded items. But they can identify hazardous areas and mark them. Alongside the danger from explosives, rubble may contain other hazardous materials, including asbestos, which can pose a serious health risk when its fibres are inhaled. Partly standing damaged buildings pose another risk. Some families return to their homes believing they are safe, only for the structures to collapse suddenly. Assessing the safety of damaged buildings before residents return is therefore an important part of the recovery process. “The progress in early recovery is slow, we are trying to do what we can despite the limitations on bringing in the equipment and services we need,” Cilliers said.