International roundup

By Agencies
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Residents of five small gold-mining villages in southern Peru’s Arequipa region struggled Tuesday to salvage belongings after landslides caused by strong rains killed at least 12 people and dragged mud, water and rocks that turned precarious homes and other buildings into rubble.

In the Mariano Nicolás Valcárcel municipality, on the edges of a depleted mining extraction area in Camaná province, people desperately searched for anything they could salvage amid the mud.

One of them was Mauro Noa, a community leader in the Posco Miski village who has been trying to reach local leaders to obtain first aid and food to help more than 1,000 of his neighbors who have been stuck on the side of a mountain since Sunday and are unable to leave due to the accumulation of mud and rocks.

“They’re hungry and thirsty,” Noa said. “Nobody thinks about them.”

Noa said this is the first time in 18 years he has seen a landslide of this magnitude and neighbors have compiled a list of 14 Posco Miski residents whose whereabouts are unknown. 

“The neighbors who couldn’t leave their houses were taken by the wave of mud,” Noa said. “Children have been left traumatized by the rain and the landslide.”

Law enforcement has sent 15 rescue workers to the area and they were expected to arrive in Secocha late in the afternoon because the road has blocked by mud, police officer Giancarlo Vizcarra said.

Vizcarra said that after they arrive in Secocha the rescue workers will try to get to the most remote villages to search for bodies that may be buried under the mud with the help of two dogs that have been trained to search for people after earthquakes.

A local Civil Defense official said Monday that at least 36 people had died in the landslides, but on Tuesday a prosecutor told The Associated Press they had confirmed only 12 deaths and three people were listed as missing.

The landslides destroyed key access roads into the remote villages, making it difficult to confirm the death toll. Peru’s government had yet to release any official numbers, although the president traveled to the affected area Tuesday.

The slides that began Sunday and continued Monday from the highest mountains in the area destroyed everything in their path.

NICARAGUA

A Nicaraguan court has sentenced four Roman Catholic priests to 10 years in prison on conspiracy charges stemming from long-standing government allegations that the church backed illegal pro-democracy protests.

A human rights group in the Central American country quickly denounced the sentences handed down Monday and made known by lawyers of the Legal Defense Unit.

It was the latest chapter in a crackdown on the church by President Daniel Ortega.

On Sunday, a fifth priest was sentenced to 10 years in prison on the same charges.

The priests were convicted in closed-door trials in which government-appointed defenders acted as the priests’ attorneys.

Those sentenced Monday had worked with Matagalpa Bishop Rolando Álvarez, and one had been rector of the privately run Juan Pablo II University in the capital of Managua.

Álvarez is under house arrest on charges of conspiracy and “damaging the Nicaraguan government and society,” and is set to be sentenced soon.

Two seminary students and a cameraman who worked for the diocese were also sentenced Monday. 

All six of the defendants were arrested last year, and all were stripped of the right to ever hold political office.

The Nicaraguan Human Rights Center described the sentences as “a legal aberration.”

“This is an insult to the law, an insult to people’s intelligence, an insult to the international community and the international agencies for the protection of human rights,” the center said in a statement Tuesday.

Alvarez, the bishop, had been a key religious voice in discussions of Nicaragua’s future since 2018, when a wave of protests against Ortega’s government led to a sweeping crackdown on opponents.

On Sunday, Rev. Óscar Danilo Benavidez, a priest in Mulukuku in northern Nicaragua, was sentenced for conspiracy and spreading false information. He had been arrested Aug. 14.

The government arrested dozens of opposition leaders in 2021, including seven potential presidential candidates. They were sentenced to prison last year in quick trials that also were closed to the public.

Ortega has contended the pro-democracy protests were carried out with foreign backing and with the support of the Catholic Church. Last year, he expelled the nuns from Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity religious order and the papal nuncio, the Vatican’s top diplomat in Nicaragua.

CHINA

China said Tuesday it will “resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” over the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon by the United States, as relations between the two countries deteriorate further.

The balloon prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a highly-anticipated visit to Beijing this week that had offered slight hopes for an improvement in relations.

China claims it was a civilian balloon used for meteorological research but has refused to say to which government department or company it belongs.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday reiterated that the “unmanned airship” posed no threat and entered U.S. airspace accidentally.

Mao again criticized the U.S. for overreacting rather than adopting a “calm, professional” manner, and for using force in bringing the balloon down Saturday in the Atlantic Ocean just off the U.S. coast.

Asked if China wanted the debris returned, she only reasserted that the balloon “belongs to China.”

“The balloon does not belong to the U.S. The Chinese government will continue to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” Mao said at a daily briefing without giving further details.

Beijing’s attitude has hardened considerably following a surprisingly mild initial response on Friday, in which it described the balloon’s presence as an accident and expressed “regret” for the balloon having entered the U.S.

Subsequent statements have grown firmer, in the same tone used to confront the U.S. over issues from Taiwan to trade, technology restrictions and China’s claim to the South China Sea. 

China says it lodged a formal complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, accusing Washington of having “obviously overreacted and seriously violated the spirit of international law and international practice.”

Recent developments have laid bare the extremely fragile nature of what many had hoped could be a manageable economic, political and military rivalry.