World

JAKARTA — Pope Francis arrived in Muslim-majority Indonesia on Tuesday to kick off a four-nation tour of the Asia-Pacific that will be the longest and farthest of the 87 year old's papacy.

The head of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics touched down in capital Jakarta for a three-day visit devoted to inter-religious ties, and will then travel to Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. 

The 12 day tour will test the Pontiff's increasingly fragile health, but he is often energised by being among his flock and he emerged from the 13 hour flight smiling and waving. 

"I thank you for coming on this journey. I think it is the longest one flight I have done," he told reporters aboard his chartered plane after landing, according to an AFP journalist.

He disembarked in Jakarta in a wheelchair to an honour guard, greetings by Indonesian officials, including the religious affairs minister, and a traditional bouquet from two children.

The Pontiff was then picked up from the red carpet by a civilian Toyota car, choosing a modest vehicle over one of luxury typically used by world leaders. 

He had no official engagements scheduled on Tuesday following the long flight from Rome, but the Vatican said he hosted a meeting with a group of orphans, migrants and homeless people at its Jakarta mission shortly after he arrived.

Historic visit

The pope is scheduled to meet President Joko Widodo on Wednesday in the first major set piece of his visit to the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.

"This is a very historic visit," Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, told reporters on Tuesday.

"Indonesia and the Vatican have a similar commitment to peace and brotherhood."

Catholics represent fewer than three percent of the population of Indonesia , about eight million people, compared with the 87 per cent, or 242 million, who are Muslim.

But they are one of six officially recognised religions or denominations in the nominally secular nation, including Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism.

On Thursday, Francis will meet representatives of all six at Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia and a symbol of religious co-existence.

It is linked via a "tunnel of friendship" to the cathedral across the road, where Christians in recent days have been taking selfies with a life-sized pope cutout.

He will then host a mass and deliver a sermon at Indonesia's 80,000-seat national football stadium.

Joint declaration 

Despite Indonesia's official recognition of different faiths, there are concerns about growing discrimination, including against Christians, with local Catholics hoping the pope will speak out.

But Michel Chambon, a theologian at the National University of Singapore, said the Pope would press a wider message he had already delivered in other Muslim-majority countries, from Iraq to Bahrain, Turkey and Morocco. 

The visit "is not really aimed at Catholics in Indonesia" but is intended to highlight the global importance of Islamic-Christian dialogue, he told AFP.

That message was already being felt by some in Jakarta.

"We enjoy it because when it's our religious events, they also show tolerance to us," said Ranggi Prathita, a 34 year old Muslim who has been selling customised Pope t-shirts.

‘We all respect 

each other’

At the Istiqlal Mosque, Pope Francis will sign a joint declaration with its grand imam focusing on "dehumanisation" through the spread of conflict, as well as environmental degradation, said the Indonesian bishops' conference. 

Francis has repeatedly urged the world to do more to combat climate change and mitigate its effects, including rising sea levels, which threaten Jakarta. 

Indonesia has experienced terrorist attacks over recent decades, including radical Islamist bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 that left 202 people dead.

Security has been stepped up for the pope's visit, with roads around key sites where he is scheduled to visit being re-routed or closed.

Fragile health 

His trip to Indonesia is the third ever by a pope and the first since John Paul II in 1989.

Originally planned for 2020 but postponed due to the Covid pandemic, the visit takes place just three months before his 88th birthday.

The Argentine now routinely uses a wheelchair to move around, underwent hernia surgery last year and has been plagued by respiratory issues.

He had not travelled abroad since visiting Marseille in France in September last year.

He will be travelling to Indonesia with his personal doctor and two nurses, but Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said this is normal, saying no extra precautions were in place. 

Lidoríki, Greece  — Record-breaking temperatures and prolonged drought in Greece have exposed a sunken village in Athens' main reservoir for the first time in 30 years.

The village of Kallio was submerged in the late 1970s when the Mornos dam was built 200 kilometres west of the capital, the artificial lake fed by the Mornos and Evinos rivers.

With lake levels down by 30 per cent in recent months according to state water operator EYDAP, the ruins of a school and houses have reappeared.

"The level of Lake Mornos has dropped by 40 metres said Yorgos Iosifidis, a 60 year old pensioner who had to leave his home as a young man along with the other villagers when the area was flooded.

"You see the first floor that remains of my father-in-law's two-storey house ,  and next to it you can see what's left of my cousins' house," Iosifidis, who now lives higher up the hill, told AFP.

Drought worsened this year in the Mediterranean country that is well accustomed to summer heat waves. 

After the mildest winter on record, Greece had its hottest July on record, according to preliminary weather data from the national observatory. This came after similarly record-breaking temperatures in June. 

Nearly 80 houses in Kallio, in addition to the church and school, were "sacrificed" to supply Athens with water, Kallio village chairman Apostolis Gerodimos told state agency ANA.

This is the second time Kallio has reappeared, after another period of drought in the early 1990s, said Iosifidis. 

"If it doesn't rain soon, the level will drop further and the problem will be more acute than it was then," he said.

Anastasis Papageorgiou, 26, a doctor who lives in Amygdalia, a village near Mornos, said the area has seen very little rain or snow in the last two years.

"The situation is difficult at the moment, so we have to be careful with water," he said.

The Greek authorities called on the 3.7 million inhabitants of Attica, the region surrounding Athens and home to a third of the Greek population, not to waste water. 

EYDAP has also tapped into additional reservoirs near the capital.

On a visit to neighbouring Thessaly on Monday to discuss reconstruction works after last year's destructive floods, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece had to improve its water management.

"We don't have the luxury to waste water... at a time when we know with certainty that we will have less water, we must protect water resources more methodically than we have done so far," Mitsotakis said.

Greece uses 85 per cent of its water for irrigation and needs to build more dams, the prime minister said.

BAKU — Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev's party has won snap parliamentary elections, the electoral commission said Monday, as the opposition denounced widespread violations including multiple voting.

Aliyev called Sunday's vote ahead of schedule to avoid having it coincide with the COP29 climate conference that Baku is to host from November 11 to 22.

None of the elections held in the oil and gas-rich country under Aliyev's two-decade rule have been recognised as free and fair by international observers.

The electoral commission said Aliyev's Yeni Azerbaijan party won 68 seats in the 125-member legislature.

Another 45 seats were won by independent candidates widely believed to be pro-government, and 11 were obtained by nine political parties also deemed to support Aliyev's administration.

Only one opposition candidate, from the Republican Alternative Party, made it to parliament.

The opposition Musavat party said there were "mass violations" of the rules, including multiple voting.

International observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the elections "did not offer voters genuine political alternatives and took place within a legal framework overly restrictive of fundamental freedoms and the media".

The observers said Monday they were concerned about "intimidation of voters and their ability to cast their vote without fearing retribution".

The "increase in arrests and detentions of journalists and civil society activists, combined with the restrictive media legal framework, resulted in widespread self-censorship and severely limited the scope for independent journalism," their statement added.

Baku has faced strong Western criticism for persecuting political opponents and suffocating independent media.

Aliyev, 62, has ruled the former Soviet republic with an iron fist since 2003 after the death of his father, Azerbaijan's Soviet-era Communist leader and former KGB general Heydar Aliyev.

He enjoys widespread popularity due to Azerbaijan's military victory over Armenian separatist forces that had controlled the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh region for three decades.

Last year, Baku's troops recaptured the mountainous enclave in a lightning offensive, after which its entire ethnic Armenian population, more than 100,000 people, fled to Armenia.

With power concentrated in the presidency, Azerbaijan's parliament has a limited role in shaping affairs in the Caspian Sea nation.