UK apologises for 'pervasive racism' over imperial war dead

Yahoo – AFP, James PHEBY, April 22, 2021 

New report says the British Empire did not treat all World War I dead equally.

Britain on Thursday offered an "unreserved apology" after a new report said hundreds of thousands of African and ethnic minority soldiers who died fighting for the British Empire in World War I were not properly commemorated due to "pervasive racism". 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "deeply troubled" by the findings of a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) probe, which suggested soldiers were not treated as fairly in death as their white British counterparts. 

"During the First World War, millions of people from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East fought for Britain in the struggle against tyranny," he said in a statement. 

"Their contribution to victory was immense, not just in numerical terms but in their courage and valour, and many paid the ultimate price so that we might live in peace and freedom today. 

"I am deeply troubled by the findings... that not all of our war dead were commemorated with equal care and reverence. On behalf of the government, I offer an unreserved apology." 

Imperial attitudes 

Johnson's statement followed Defence Secretary Ben Wallace's verbal apology in parliament as Britain reckons with the legacy of its colonial past and links to slavery, against a backdrop of anti-racism and Black Lives Matter protests. 

Last month, there was a backlash at a government-commissioned report which concluded prejudice persists but the country is not "institutionally racist", enraging equality campaigners. 

The CWGC said the failure to honour the troops was "influenced by a scarcity of information, errors inherited from other organisations and the opinions of colonial administrators". 

"Underpinning all these decisions, however, were the entrenched prejudices, preconceptions and pervasive racism of contemporary imperial attitudes." 

The CWGC was set up during World War I to remember Britain's war dead. It cares for war graves at 23,000 locations in more than 150 countries, commemorating nearly 1.7 million people.

'Equality in death' 

The CWGC, offering its own apologies, has promised to try to right the wrongs of the past and build digital or physical structures to honour the dead. 

The Great War pulled in close to 70 million soldiers on five continents, leaving some 10 million dead in battle and claiming many million more lives through hunger and disease. 

The Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), which became the CWGC, was founded on the principle of "equality of treatment in death", regardless of rank, class, religion or provenance. 

But while that aim was achieved in Europe, "the promise of equality had limits elsewhere" where there was fighting during the conflict, the report said. 

"In conflict with the organisation's founding principles, it is estimated that between 45,000 and 54,000 casualties -- predominantly Indian, East African, West African, Egyptian and Somali personnel -- were commemorated unequally," it said. 

"For some, rather than marking their graves individually, as the IWGC would have done in Europe, these men were commemorated collectively on memorials. 

"For others who were missing, their names were recorded in registers rather than in stone. 

"A further 116,000 casualties (predominantly, but not exclusively, East African and Egyptian personnel) -- but potentially as many as 350,000 -- were not commemorated by name or possibly not commemorated at all." 

'The Unremembered' 

CWGC director general Claire Horton said: "The events of a century ago were wrong then and are wrong now." 

The study was set up following a TV documentary on the issue by David Lammy, who is the main opposition Labour party's spokesman on justice. 

"No apology can ever make up for the indignity suffered by The Unremembered," Lammy wrote on Twitter. 

"However, this apology does offer the opportunity for us as a nation to work through this ugly part of our history -- and properly pay our respects to every soldier who has sacrificed their life for us." 

Commonwealth should 'acknowledge' past wrongs, says Prince Harry

Yahoo – AFP, July 6, 2020

Harry, Duke of Sussex, seen here in conversation with Formula 1 champion Lewis
 Hamilton, had already spoken out last week against institutional racism (AFP
 Photo/PETER NICHOLLS)

London (AFP) - Prince Harry has urged the Commonwealth, which his grandmother heads, to acknowledge its uncomfortable colonial past, in video extracts published on Monday.

The 35-year-old royal and his wife, Meghan, joined a video conference call with leaders organised by the Queen's Commonwealth Trust (QCT) from their base in the United States.

The sessions were set up in response to the growing Black Lives Matter movement, sparked by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, during a US police arrest.

Harry last week outlined his personal commitment to tackling institutional racism, saying it had "no place" in society but was still too widespread.

On the July 1 call, posted on the QCT website, he said: "When you look across the Commonwealth, there is no way that we can move forward unless we acknowledge the past.

"So many people have done such an incredible job of acknowledging the past and trying to right those wrongs but I think we all acknowledge there is so much more still to do.

"It's not going to be easy and in some cases it's not going to be comfortable, but it needs to be done, because, guess what, everybody benefits."

Queen Elizabeth II is the head of the Commonwealth, a non-political organisation of 54 countries, most of which have links to the British Empire.

It comprises 2.4 billion people -- a quarter of the world's population -- of which 60 percent are aged under 30.

The QCT was set up to give younger people from member nations a platform to share ideas and insights.

The chief executive of the QCT, Nicola Brentnall, has said the body is studying how the Commonwealth's colonial past and its legacy should shape its future.

Harry and Meghan stepped down from frontline royal duties this year and have set up a non-profit organisation focusing on the promoting of mental health, education and well-being.

Meghan, a mixed-race US former actress, has previously talked about her own personal experience of racism and unconscious bias.

Former army officer Harry has also complained about the "racial undertones" of media coverage of his wife.

The couple are president and vice-president respectively of the QCT.

Chagos islands: The fight over Africa’s last British colony

DW, 22 November 2019

A piece of Britain lies between Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. To date the Chagos Islands are still under British control and their inhabitants live in exile. But the UK has missed a deadline to return them.

   

The anger in his voice is clearly audible. There is a lack of goodwill on the side of the British government, Olivier Bancoult says. The fight over the Chagos archipelago has been dragging on for too long. "We are continuing to put pressure [on the British government]," Bancoult told DW. As a young boy, Bancoult was one of the Chagos residents who were forced to resettle. Today he lives in Mauritius and as a lawyer has been fighting for the people of Chagos and their descendants to return to the islands. On Friday, November 22, the United Nations deadline for the return of the islands to its people. Bancoult is amongst the organizers of a demonstration outside the British High Commission in Mauritius.

Mauritius, which had once been part of the same colonial territory as the Chagos islands, gained its independence in 1968. Between 1968 and 1973, up to 2,000 residents of the Chagos archipelago were forced to move to Mauritius, the Seychelles and UK in order to establish a military base on the main island, Diego Garcia. In the meantime, the UK has leased it to the US until 2036. Chagos served as a military base for both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The largest island, Diego Garcis, serves as a US military base

Geostrategic importance

"We were poor people who are living in peace and harmony until they made the decision to giv one of the largest islands to America to make a military base. Since that time our nightmare started. Many of us were forcibly removed from our native land to live in Mauritius and the Seychelles," Bancoult told DW. In February the International Court of Justice in The Hague, ruled that the archipelago is legally a part of Mauritius. The court said that Britain had illegally separated the islands from Mauritius and should give them back.

The British government rejected the ruling. "The UK has no doubt as to our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814," read a statement by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The statement, however, alleged that Britain had pledged  to hand over the islands to Mauritius when they are no longer needed for defense purposes.

In May, the UN General Assembly also called on the UK to handover the islands. The deadline for the handover expired on November 22, but the resolution is not binding and the UK seems to have no intention to make such a move in the near future.

The strategic location and the military role of the island, make the very calls for its independence very difficult.  Philippe Sands, a British lawyer who advises the Mauritian government on the Chagos matter, believes that talks between the UK, the US and Mauritius will continue to take place. "Mauritius has indicated that the military base could even remain on the island," Sands told DW.

Read more: The Commonwealth: Still relevant for Africa today?

The archipelago belings to the same island group as Mauritius which
gained independence from Britain in 1968

Clinging onto the last African colony

Sands believes that Britain's reluctance to bow to international pressure lies in the fact that it is still coming to terms with its new place in world politics. "[The UK] is a diminished power. It has lost its judge at the International Court of Justice, it has lost a series of resolutions at the UN General Assembly. I think its just taking time to come to the realization, that ist legal situation and is very different, but ultimately I think the UK will comply with the court," Sands said.

The UK, Sands explained, is paying a high price for its political losses. "They're in the process of leaving the European Union, and they have to negotiate new trade agreements and political agreements with several countries. The government is in real trouble and I think that is why it is clinging on to its last colony in Africa," Sands said.  For him, keeping the islands under British control amounts to a crime against the people of Chagos.

Chagossians celebrate the news of the UN resolution calling on the
UK give up control of the islands (February 2019)

Hopes set on upcoming UK elections

According to Sands, the UN is already preparing new maps which show the Chagos islands as part of Mauritius. Additionally Mauritius is the only country that can have legal rights to fishing and overflying rights of the area.

Sands and Bancoult have the hope that the upcoming UK elections set for December 12 could make a difference. "The Labour party has promised to respect the ruling of the International Court of Justice," Sands said. "If the next government is under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn that would be very good,” Bancoult said. "He already supports us."

According to Bancoult, 596 Chagossians who were forced to leave the islands are still alive today. All in all, he said, they have 9.800 descendants who identify as Chagossians. Bancoult himself finds the thought of growing old away from his homeland difficult. "Most old people want to die where they were born," he said.

Leaked report calls indigenous women's deaths a 'Canadian genocide'

Yahoo – AFP, May 31, 2019

Indigenous leaders participate in a protest against the expansion of Texas-based
Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline project in Burnaby, British Columbia
on March 10, 2018 (AFP Photo/Jason Redmond)

Ottawa (AFP) - A public inquiry report leaked to Canada's public broadcaster Friday called the disappearances and slayings of possibly thousands of indigenous women over recent decades a "Canadian genocide."

The report concluded that through "state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies" indigenous women and girls faced a disproportionately high level of violence.

"We do know that thousands of Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual) have been lost to the Canadian genocide to date," said the report, titled "Reclaiming Power and Place."

"The fact that First Nations, Inuit and Metis Peoples are still here and that the population is growing should not discount the charge of genocide."

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls's 1,200-page final report is set for public release Monday at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- who has made reconciliation with Canada's 1.6 million indigenous peoples a government priority -- and families of the victims.

CBC said it contains more than 230 recommendations.

The inquiry was the culmination of years of lobbying by native leaders, activists and victims' families seeking to know why possibly thousands of indigenous women were murdered or have gone missing over the past three decades.

Indigenous women represent four percent of Canada's population but accounted for up to 16-24 percent of homicide victims during the period, said the report's authors.

According to official estimates, almost 1,200 women and girls went missing or were killed between 1980 and 2012.

But inquiry commissioners have said that figure is probably too low.

The commissioners held 24 hearings across Canada over the past 2.5 years and heard from more than 2,000 witnesses, including family members of missing or murdered women, survivors of violence, experts and officials.

After two and a half years of hearings, a Canadian inquiry Monday released its final report on the disappearance and death of hundreds, if not thousands of indigenous women, victims of endemic violence it controversially said amounted to "genocide" https://t.co/6Vt7ZqDu14

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 3 juni 2019

Slavery reparations debate resurfaces in White House race

Yahoo – AFP, Chris Lefkow, March 24, 2019

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination,
has supported reparations for the descendants of slaves (AFP Photo/Drew Angerer)

Washington (AFP) - In January 1865, as the US Civil War was drawing to a close, some freed slaves were promised "40 acres and a mule" to begin new lives.

The audacious experiment was fleeting -- repudiated within months by president Andrew Johnson, successor to the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, and the land returned to its former owners.

More than 150 years later, the question of whether the United States should provide compensation to African-Americans for past wrongs is still on the table.

Reparations for centuries of slavery and racial discrimination has emerged as a spirited topic of debate among the slew of candidates seeking to become the 2020 Democratic nominee for president.

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, during his failed 1988 White House bid, raised the controversial subject but it has never figured so prominently before in a presidential race.

Barack Obama, America's first black president, and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did not support compensation for the descendants of slaves.

Former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro is seeking to become the first US 

president of Hispanic origin (AFP Photo/SUZANNE CORDEIRO)

Among the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, have come out strongly in favor of reparations.

"America was founded on principles of liberty and freedom and on the backs of slave labor," Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, said recently at a CNN event in Jackson, Mississippi.

"This is a stain on America," Warren said. "I believe it's time to start the national, full-blown conversation about reparations in this country."

Castro, seeking to become the first US president of Hispanic origin, said he backed reparations while acknowledging there is a "tremendous amount of disagreement" on what they should be.

"If, under the Constitution, we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn't you compensate people who actually were property?" he said.

Senator Kamala Harris, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 

has signalled support for reparations (AFP Photo/Ethan Miller)

'Injustice, cruelty, brutality'

Warren has thrown her support behind a bill in the US House of Representatives that would appoint a commission to examine the subject.

The bill, HR 40, calls for a panel "to address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865."

The commission would "consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery."

HR 40 -- so named for the unkept "40 acres and a mule" pledge -- was first introduced in the House three decades ago and has been resubmitted every year since, but has never reached the floor for a vote.

Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, the two black candidates in the race, have also signaled support for reparations while former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke has said there should be a "conversation" about the subject.

Senator Bernie Sanders has said he does not support the idea of "writing a  check" 

as reparations for the African-American descendants of slaves (AFP Photo/

Sean Rayford)

"We need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and institutional racism and determine what can be done, in terms of intervention, to correct course," Harris said on National Public Radio.

Marianne Williamson, a self-help author considered a long shot for the nomination, is the only Democratic candidate for the moment advocating direct payments to African-Americans.

Williamson has proposed creating a $200- $500 billion fund to do it -- a number that scholars of the subject have ridiculed as far too little. A more reasonable figure, they argue, would run into the trillions of dollars.

Two other Democratic hopefuls -- Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar -- have supported addressing racial inequality as part of their wider plans to reduce income disparity.

"I think right now our job is to address the crises facing the American people in our communities," Sanders said on ABC's "The View." "And I think there are better ways to do that than just writing out a check."

'Frightening'

Klobuchar said there was a need to "invest in those communities that have been so hurt by racism."

"That means looking at, for our whole economy, community college, one-year degrees, minimum wage, child care," she said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It doesn't have to be a direct pay for each person."

Senator Amy Klobuchar said she does not support direct payments as reparations to

the descendants of slaves (AFP Photo/MARK WILSON)

Blacks are a key voting bloc for Democrats and their support is seen as essential to the candidate running against Republican President Donald Trump next year.

Fifty-two percent of the African-Americans surveyed in a 2015 CNN-Kaiser poll supported cash payments to the descendants of slaves.

But 89 percent of the white Americans polled opposed the idea.

Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a seminal 2014 article in The Atlantic called "The Case For Reparations," said the idea is "frightening" to many Americans "not simply because we might lack the ability to pay."

"The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper -— America's heritage, history, and standing in the world," Coates said.

"But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as -- if not more than -- the specific answers that might be produced," he said. "An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane."

The United States has handed out reparations in the past including to Japanese-Americans put in internment camps during World War II.

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UN asks US, Britain to open files on ex-secretary general's death

Yahoo – AFP, 18 Nov 2015

An 1960 photo captures a meeting between then-UN secretary-general Dag 

Hammarskjold and Moise Kapenda Tshombe, leader of the Katanga provincein

what is nowthe Democratic Republic of the Congo (AFP Photo)

United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations on Wednesday pressed demands that the United States and Britain release secret files on the mysterious death more than 50 years ago of former secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold.

Hammarskjold, the UN’s second secretary-general, died when his plane crashed on 17 or 18 September 1961 near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia -- now known as Zambia.

A UN panel said in July that it had uncovered new information pointing to the possibility that his plane may have been attacked and suggested that answers may be found in classified documents.

Requests sent by the panel to the United States and Britain for the secret files were turned down, but UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked for the information to be released in July.

Ban's request, however, was ignored and the UN chief renewed his appeal on Wednesday.

"There is a possibility that unreleased material relating to the crash of flight SE-BDY on the night between 17 and 18 September 1961 may still be available," Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"Therefore, the secretary-general again urges all member states to disclose, declassify or otherwise make available all information they may have in their possession related to the circumstances and conditions of the crash," he said.

While no country was singled out, UN officials confirmed that Britain and the United States were rejecting requests for information on the Hammarskjold case.

The mysterious circumstances of the crash has for years fueled conspiracy theories, and the panel did ask Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, South Africa and the United States for specific information.

The 56-year-old Swedish diplomat died in the plane crash while on his way to negotiate a ceasefire for mining-rich Katanga province in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, a former Belgian colony.

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in December last year demanding that Hammarskjold's fate be cleared up once and for all.

Dujarric said Ban is "personally invested in fulfilling our duty to the distinguished former secretary-general and those who accompanied him, to endeavor to establish the facts after so many years."

The General Assembly is due to present a new draft resolution on Thursday demanding more action to shed light on the former UN chief's fate.

Australia ditches 'out of date' knights and dames

Yahoo – AFP, 2 Nov 2015

Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer attends a ceremony where

 Queen Elizabeth II presents Prince Philip with the Insignia of a Knight of the

Order of Australia at Windsor Castle on April 22, 2015 (AFP Photo/John Stillwell)

Sydney (AFP) - Australia has removed knights and dames from the national honours system, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Monday, dismissing the ancient titles as "not appropriate" in the modern age.

Knights and dames were unexpectedly revived last year by then prime minister and ardent monarchist Tony Abbott -- prompting accusations he was in a "time warp" and out of touch with voters.

Turnbull, an outspoken republican, had been widely expected to dump the titles ever since he replaced Abbott in a conservative Liberal Party room coup in September.

"The cabinet recently considered the Order of Australia... and agreed that knights and dames are not appropriate in our modern honours system," Turnbull said in a statement.

The prime minister said Britain's Queen Elizabeth had agreed to the government's recommendation to remove knights and dames from the Order of Australia, which recognises achievement and service.

"This change will not affect existing knights and dames," he added.

Speaking later to reporters in Sydney, Turnbull said the matter was "a long way from being the most important issue in Australia today".

But he added: "This reflects modern Australia; knights and dames are titles that are really anachronistic, they're out of date, they're not appropriate in 2015 in Australia."

Abbott's reintroduction of knights and dames in 2014 was questioned, but it was his subsequent decision to knight Queen Elizabeth II's husband Prince Philip which was met with ridicule and disbelief.

Republicans, who favour cutting Australia's ties to the British monarchy, had already accused Abbott of turning the clock back to a colonial mindset, while the Labor opposition said the titles should never have been brought back.

"It was a farce, a joke, a national disgrace," Labor MP Chris Bowen told reporters in Sydney.

"It is not appropriate in modern day Australia ... that we are clinging onto imperial Britain through our honours system, and we shouldn't be celebrating the fact that knights and dames are gone, we should be lamenting the fact that they came back under this government."

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said November 2, 2015 that Britain's

 Queen Elizabeth had agreed to the government's recommendation to remove 

knights and dames from the Order of Australia (AFP Photo/Fiona Goodall)

Republic by stealth

Australia has long wrestled with the idea of cutting ties to the British monarchy, but a 1999 referendum on the issue kept the traditional model under which Britain's Elizabeth II is head of state.

Support for a republic has ebbed in the years since, with a Fairfax-Nielsen poll in 2014 finding that 51 percent of the 1,400 people surveyed favoured the status quo while only 42 percent supported a republic.

The Australian Monarchist League said it was disappointed and concerned by Monday's development, accusing Turnbull of "republicanism by stealth".

"Mr. Turnbull is trying to bring on a republic and this is a way of starting it all off," the league's national chair Philip Benwell told AFP.

"We don't forget that Mr. Turnbull led republicans into the last referendum."

But Australian Republican Movement chair Peter FitzSimons welcomed the demise of knights and dames, saying their reintroduction reflected "Australia of the past, not the diverse and multicultural nation that exists today".

The mis-step over Prince Philip's knighthood was seen as one of the catalysts for a leadership challenge against Abbott in February, adding to flagging opinion polls and an unpopular budget.

He survived the first challenge after awarding the honour to the non-resident duke, dubbed a "knightmare" by the media, but was removed by Turnbull's challenge seven months later.

He has since admitted the decision was a mistake, describing it as "an injudicious appointment, obviously".

Knights and dames were introduced into Australia's system of honours in 1976 by then-prime minister Malcolm Fraser, but abolished a decade later by Bob Hawke.

Previously, Australians had been honoured through British imperial awards.

Australia ditches 'out of date' knights and dames https://t.co/CNrevJxsKM pic.twitter.com/gL8mNBtTXb

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) November 2, 2015

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Pope Francis seeks Bolivians' forgiveness for colonial-era crimes

Yahoo – AFP, Kelly Velasquez, Moises Avila, 10 July 2015

Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia) (AFP) - Pope Francis, in a historic gesture of reconciliation, sought forgiveness Thursday from Bolivia's predominantly indigenous inhabitants for crimes committed centuries earlier in the name of the Catholic Church.

The Argentine-born pope, who has never been afraid to weigh into delicate issues both religious and political, made the comments on the second stop of a three-nation Latin America homecoming tour.

Pope Francis arrives at the square of Christ 

the Redeemer in Santa Cruz, Bolivia to 

officiate a holy mass on July 9, 2015 

(AFP Photo/Aizar Raldes Nunez)

"I want to tell you, and I want to be very clear: I humbly ask your forgiveness, not only for the offenses committed by our own church, but for the crimes committed by original inhabitants during the so-called conquest of America," Francis told a gathering of social activists, to sustained and enthusiastic applause.

"There have been many, very serious crimes committed again the native peoples of America in the name of God," the pontiff said, in what was, to date, one of the most powerful and moving moments of his weeklong South America visit.

His apology for colonial era crimes against the indigenous people of America was offered at a so-called World Meeting of the Popular Movements in the city of Santa Cruz.

All three of the countries Francis is visiting during this tour -- Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay -- are predominantly Catholic and have been marked by a long history of poverty and inequality mostly afflicting indigenous populations.

Beginning in the 1500s, Spanish conquerors, with the blessing of the Church, subjugated and enslaved indigenous peoples in the Americas, annihilating native cultures and forcing their conversion to Christianity.

Millions of people were killed by disease and millions more from a brutal system of forced labor that led to the destruction of their indigenous lands and their way of life.

One million faithful

Earlier on Thursday, Francis called on a million faithful to reject today's consumer society, at an open-air mass in the vast Christ the Redeemer Plaza in Santa Cruz, where many people had camped out overnight to see him.

Hundreds of indigenous representatives gathered to  greet Pope Francis 

and Bolivia's President Evo Morales finalizing the Second World Meeting

of the Popular Movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, on  July 9, 2015 (AFP 

Photo/Lesly Moyano)

He also urged Bolivians against discarding the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, including the poor, voiceless and the disenfranchised.

He denounced what he called a "mentality in which everything has a price, everything can be bought, everything is negotiable. This way of thinking has room only for a select few," the 78-year-old told the crowd, estimated by authorities in Bolivia -- South America's poorest nation -- at one million strong.

The two-hour service featured religious hymns and chants. Hundreds of musicians also played Baroque works, introduced by Spanish Jesuit missionaries in the 18th century and still very popular in this country.

Thousands in the crowd were from Bolivia's indigenous majority and President Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous leader, was in the front row.

Around the plaza, dominated by the giant bronze Christ the Redeemer statue, big-screen TVs were erected for people to watch the religious service.

'As close as possible'

Since his election in 2013, Francis -- who hails from Argentina and is also the first Jesuit pope -- has cut a down-to-earth figure, which is going down well in Santa Cruz.

"We want to be as close as possible to receive the blessings that he is going to bestow," said one of the campers who waited overnight to see the pope, Nancy Camacho, her head wrapped in a thick scarf.

Francis arrived in Bolivia on Wednesday evening in the high-altitude Andean city of La Paz -- more than 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) above sea level.

Pope Francis waves goodbye as he prepares to depart Viru Viru airport in 

Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Friday, July 10, 2015. The pope is departing for Paraguay, 

as part of his three-nation tour of South America. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Concerned authorities had extra oxygen tanks on hand for the pope, who lost a lung during his youth, but he was not seen using it.

Francis has impressed people with his stamina as he walked amid crowds, kissed people and took selfies. Some of the journalists traveling with him had to stop and take a shot of oxygen.

Bolivia is destitute -- the minimum monthly wage is equivalent to about $240 a month -- but has made economic progress in recent years.

Alcohol sales and musical performances have been banned throughout the country during the pope's visit, and 17,000 police and soldiers have been deployed.

On Friday, Francis visits Bolivia's most notorious and dangerous prison, continuing his focus on the plight of the poor, the forgotten and the marginalized.

He will then head to Paraguay, the last stop on his tour of South America, which began in Ecuador.

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"Not Your Father's New Age" - Feb 14/15, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“…  Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service. Twenty-five years ago, I discussed with you what is happening now. Back then, it was only a potential, but now it's your reality. This was not prophecy when I told you back then that there would be no Armageddon or World War Three. It was not prophecy, but a powerful potential. The entire reason for my being and the awakening of my partner was because of what you did. The victory it contains falls in the lap of the old soul, who has controlled the consciousness of the timing of it all.

Everything that has transpired during these years has been realized potential. That is to say that we see the potentials of what you might do, and report on that and only that. Much of what we see now is realized quickly. When we told you in 2012 there would be a new pope, 13 months later it happened. This was not prophecy, but rather a potential. We saw it coming because we have the overview and we knew of the anxiety of the existing pope, the health of the man, and we also knew of the potentials of a South American pope to come forward. All of these things should be a "connect the dots" for you. I come yet again, not with prophecy, but with information given with a congratulatory attitude of potential. …”