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Germany Votes; Taliban Display Bodies of Alleged Kidnappers; U.S. Deporting Thousands Back to Haiti; Over 85,000 Reported Missing or Disappeared in Mexico 2006-2021; Global Rallies Call for Urgent Action on Fossil Fuels. Aired 2-2:30a ET
Aired September 26, 2021 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM, everyone, I am Michael Holmes, appreciate your company.
And coming up here on CNN NEWSROOM. Polls just opened in Germany.
The big question, who will replace Angela Merkel?
We will break down one of the most unpredictable elections in years.
Mexico's other pandemic, tens of thousands of people who have disappeared without a trace.
Plus:
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GRETA THUNBERG, CLIMATE ACTIVIST: Of course the climate crisis hasn't disappeared and we have not disappeared.
HOLMES (voice-over): "Youth Unstoppable," an in-depth look at how young people are leading the fight against climate change.
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HOLMES: Voting is now underway in a race that will determine who succeeds Angela Merkel as Germany's chancellor after nearly 16 years in that job. Ms. Merkel has been a symbol of political stability in Europe since taking over the role in November 2005. This election has major implications, not just for the future of
Germany but for Europe more broadly. The chancellor's Christian Democratic Union is hoping to stay in power but polling shows the race is too close to call. On Saturday, she made her final pitch to rally voters behind the conservatives.
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ANGELA MERKEL, CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY (through translator): And this future government, I think we all agree, should ensure prosperity, security, peace and that is what we are standing here for because we, from the Christian Democratic Union, are making an offer for this.
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HOLMES: All right, with the very latest, let's bring in Salma Abdelaziz, live outside a polling station in Berlin.
Give us a sense of who is favored and what is at stake.
SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michael, it's just after 8:00 am local time, polls open then. So we already have voters who just went inside. There was a line just behind me there, putting in their ballots for this historic election.
As you said, this is Germany, deciding what it looks like after 16 years of Chancellor Angela Merkel. She has been a symbol of stability and strength and has guided this country and Europe at large through crisis after crisis.
But she says it's time to step down and make room for a successor. Her chosen successor is a top candidate, Armin Laschet. He's the continuity candidate, Michael, essentially saying, I will take the reins from Merkel and continue her policies.
But he is struggling in the polls and it's a neck-and-neck race with the other largest party, the Social Democrats and their candidate, Olaf Scholz, a 63-year-old career politician, vice chancellor. His message is I am the true successor of Angela Merkel, I will take her agenda but I will make it meet new challenges. He wants to move away from her strict budgetary policy, invest in digitization, social housing and infrastructure, he wants to see the minimum wage raised across the country.
One of his campaign slogans is #ausrespect, "out of respect." So he has a great deal of momentum and support in the last few weeks.
But perhaps the third candidate is the surprise one and this is Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party candidate. They have seen a huge surge in ratings. And that's because one of the top issues for German voters is the environmental crisis.
A lot of this has grown in the last few months, when serious floods hit parts of West Germany. Nearly 200 people lost their lives. And there is concerns about whether Germany is meeting its climate commitments. And that's the agenda that the Green Party and Annalena Baerbock are
putting forward. Unlikely that they will win, Michael, but the results will be anti climactic. When that vote goes in, that's when the coalition building begins so even a smaller party like the Green Party could become kingmakers -- Michael.
HOLMES: Indeed, that could take months. Salma Abdelaziz in Berlin, appreciate it, thanks so much.
And do tune in for CNN's special live coverage of the German federal election. Salma will be there, along with Hala Gorani and Fred Pleitgen, as they break it all down for us. That's later today.
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HOLMES: It begins 11:55 am in New York, 5:55 pm in the afternoon in Berlin. And you can catch it right here on CNN.
Turning our attention now to Afghanistan, where shocking images show the disturbing links the Taliban seem willing to go to deter crime. We must warn you that the video you're about to see is graphic, it's also difficult to watch.
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HOLMES (voice-over): Crowds gathering in Herat after the Taliban killed four alleged kidnappers and then hung their bodies on display in different locations around the city. A journalist telling CNN that the men were accused of kidnapping a merchant and his son, who were later freed by the Taliban.
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HOLMES: Let's bring in Arwa Damon, joining me live from Istanbul.
It's clearly a barbaric message. But obviously it's something that harkens back to the dark days of brutal punishment in Afghanistan.
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Not just brutal punishment, Michael, but very public displays of punishment. Twenty years ago, the Taliban would carry out public executions, not to mention the implementation of beheadings as well as chopping off hands of people who stole, the stoning, public stoning of women in some cases.
Now what happened in this particular case was that these four kidnappers, were, according to the deputy governor of Herat, killed in the shootout that took place, as the Taliban says. It was attempting to free this business man and his son. Then the four bodies were hung in different locations throughout the city.
Also, about a month ago, in another city, the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, they are alleged kidnappers, four of them as well, who had been accused of kidnapping children. They also had their bodies dumped in a public square after they were killed, also by the Taliban in another shootout as well. So it really seems as if right now the Taliban is not shirking back
from what the public or international perception might be of their actions. It seems very determined to send a message to anyone, who might be carrying out any sort of a crime, that this would be their fate and that then their bodies would also be put on display -- Michael.
HOLMES: Arwa Damon there, thanks so much, appreciate your reporting there. Incredible.
And we are following a developing story out of the U.S. state of Montana. Emergency crews are on the scene of a deadly passenger train derailment and this is near Joplin in Montana. And the train was traveling westward to Seattle. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board are en route to the scene.
Images from the scene show multiple train cars on their sides, rescue personnel at work as well; what appears to be passengers also standing nearby by the tracks. Authorities say three people were killed and a number of others were injured.
There were some 141 passengers and 16 crew on board at the time. Amtrak reports eight cars of the 10-car train derailed and they're working with authorities to transport the injured and evacuate the others. We will have more details as they become available.
Still to come here on the program, Haitian officials say they are shocked by what has been happening on the U.S. border. Part of my interview with Haiti's foreign minister coming up. How he says Haitians should be treated.
And tens of thousands of Mexico's young people have gone missing in recent years. Next, parents of the victims demand justice. We will be right back.
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HOLMES: Welcome back.
As his country reels from the assassination of its president and a deadly earthquake, Haiti's prime minister says migration won't end until inequality does.
Ariel Henry spoke in a video to the United Nations on Saturday after thousands of migrants, most of them from Haiti, were cleared out from a camp on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Images of border guards on horses confronting the migrants have been slammed in the U.S. and indeed around the world. Mr. Henry said that countries have the right to control their borders but he is also calling for cooperation to make sure that the rights of refugees are respected.
The U.S. has deported thousands of people back to Haiti. CNN's Melissa Bell is in Port-au-Prince. I asked her what Haitians are saying about these matters and their futures.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They've had difficulties coordinating their arrival very suddenly at the airports here in Haiti. As the head of the IOM here put it, this could be a struggle for Italy to organize, let alone Haiti.
Some NGOs have come together to manage the conditions of the reception within the airports themselves. For the time being, they have been received, given $100 and a hygiene kit and dumped at a bus station from where they need to go and rebuild their life.
Some have been lucky enough to have friends or family who can take them in. Others will need to find places in those in displacement camps. They are already quite full. There are several here in the Haitian capital and others outside of it as well.
So great has the daily violence become that people have been chased out of their neighborhoods and into these camps. What the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies have told us is it is trying to find places at the last minute at these camps that are pretty full. That is proving a real challenge.
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HOLMES: Melissa Bell reporting there.
Haiti's prime minister expressed shock at what happened at the U.S. border. I spoke earlier to the foreign minister, Claude Joseph, and asked him how he believes the U.S. is handling the situation when it comes to Haitians.
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CLAUDE JOSEPH, HAITIAN PRIME MINISTER: We were really shocked and, as many Americans, as many voices, they have spoken out about the shocking images of horse mounted officials, whipping those migrants. Those are disturbing images.
We only ask that the Haitians are treated humanly.
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HOLMES: Haiti's foreign minister speaking with me earlier.
Haitians trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico can find themselves stranded in a country facing its own problems with violent crime. CNN's Rafael Romo reports on the thousands of Mexican families demanding answers on their missing loved ones.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RAFAEL ROMO, CNN SR. LATIN AFFAIRS EDITOR (voice-over): On sidewalks, plazas, streets and highways around Mexico, the posters are everywhere. These are the faces of the missing people, tens of thousands of mainly young people from the lower and middle classes who have gone missing in the last decade.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking Spanish).
ROMO (voice-over): "Where are our children?"
The question has been asked thousands of times. But the answer remains elusive.
According to a government report published earlier this year, more than 85,000 people were reported missing or disappeared in Mexico between 2006 and April 2021. A journalist association, focused on the disappearances, puts the figure at 92,000.
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ANDRES MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO: (Speaking Spanish).
ROMO (voice-over): President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador calls this challenge a painful heritage for Mexico.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking Spanish).
Others like, this children's rights advocate, says Mexico is facing an epidemic of disappearances.
Few other cases have made more headlines than the 43 students at a rural teachers' college who disappeared in 2014.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking Spanish).
ROMO (voice-over): After years of uncertainty, President Lopez Obrador met with parents of the missing after he was elected in 2018 and two days after taking office promised there would be no impunity.
ROMO: In spite of repeated pleas over the years, protests and marches and meetings with government officials and several investigations by 2 different administrations, as well as international forensic experts, the parents of the 43 missing students feel they are no closer to knowing what happened to their children today than they were nearly 7 years ago.
ROMO (voice-over): Among the students went missing, this man said that his son called him the night he disappeared to let him know that the students were being shot at by police.
By the time we met again a year later, the government's version, that the students were killed and their bodies burned at a landfill, had been discredited by an independent group of forensic experts. Seven years later, the parents still say they are not giving up.
"Believe me, I will bring him back," he said, a hope that is shared by the parents of all 43 -- Rafael Romo, CNN, Mexico City.
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HOLMES: Two Canadians held for nearly three years in China are back home and reuniting with their families. Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor first arrived in Calgary early on Saturday, Kovrig flying on to Toronto. At about the same time, senior Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was touching down in China. She received a red carpet reception.
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MENG WANZHOU, CFO, HUAWEI (through translator): As an ordinary Chinese citizen who had suffered the plight of being stranded overseas for nearly three years, there was never a moment when I did not feel the clear and warmth of the party, the motherland and the people.
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HOLMES: The homecomings marked the end of a 3-year standoff between Washington and Beijing, with Ottawa caught in the middle.
Meng Wanzhou had been under house arrest in Vancouver since late 2018, charged by the U.S. with fraud. On Friday, the U.S. said it was suspending the case as part of an agreement and that she could leave.
Soon afterwards, the two Canadian men, Kovrig and Spavor, were taken from their Chinese prison cells and put back on a plane to Canada.
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HOLMES: Some staggering numbers to report to you on coronavirus. Since the pandemic began, more than 231 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed around the world. More than 4.7 million of those people have died.
In the Netherlands, hundreds of demonstrators protested on Saturday after proof of vaccination became compulsory to get into bars, theaters and other venues.
And Vietnam is set to ease coronavirus restrictions in order to prop up its economy, which has suffered greatly under lengthy lockdowns. They plan to allow businesses to restart production next week.
The perils of a changing climate and the young voices sounding the alarm; just ahead, we will speak with a filmmaker, whose documentary about the movement will be shown to world leaders at the upcoming climate summit in Scotland.
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(MUSIC PLAYING) HOLMES: With the COP26 climate summit in Scotland just weeks away,
thousands of activists have been holding rallies in cities and towns all over the world to call for urgent action on fossil fuels. Greta Thunberg, a principal organizer, spoke at a rally in Berlin ahead of the German elections.
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THUNBERG: In some parts of the world, we have experienced what it is like to truly treat an emergency like an emergency and to change social norms.
But while all this has happened, of course, the climate crisis hasn't disappeared. And we have not disappeared. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere hasn't been this high for at least 3 million years.
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HOLMES: Now a new documentary chronicles the evolution of the climate movement over the past decade. Entitled, "Youth Unstoppable," it will be shown at COP26, at that conference in Glasgow in November. Here's a short clip.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): When the Earth is dying, there shall arise a tribe of all colors and all creeds. This tribe shall be called the Warriors of the Rainbow and it will put its faith into actions, not words.
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HOLMES: And Slater Jewell-Kemker is the director of "Youth Unstoppable" and a climate activist. She is Canadian but she joins me from Virginia.
Thanks so much and thank you for the film. It's a film you have been making since you were 15 years old. And as you say, you didn't know it at the time but you were documenting the rise of the youth climate movement.
What has surprised you most about your journey?
SLATER JEWELL-KEMKER, FILMMAKER: Yes, I don't think a lot of people go into a film project thinking it is going to be 15 years. But it definitely was an interesting journey.
What surprised me the most was that, over the years, how much there had been within the climate change space with young people, watching them grow up into real live adults and people and the space was how this shared feeling never really went away. Regardless of where we were in time, that we all realized that we
needed to have a say in our own life. We needed to make sure that the people who are suffering now have a say in their life.
HOLMES: And it is interesting -- and it's wonderful to see the enthusiasm as well as the challenges as the documentary progresses.
But wasn't it difficult to keep going, as you see things get worse?
You see the indifference of so many people, the behaviors of politicians and lobbyists and so on.
Did or do you ever get discouraged?
JEWELL-KEMKER: Of course. I think one of the things that I'm always reminding myself of, as well as kids in the audience at screenings is that we are not emotional robots. And this issue in and of itself is already overwhelming and devastating, to a degree that I think sometimes is extremely hard to live with.
And sometimes I find myself wondering why I am still doing this, why I am still in this space. But I think we all realize that, regardless of what happens, we need to be able to live with ourselves.
HOLMES: You raise an important point. The young are the ones who will have to live with these impacts, as they continue to worsen.
What is the stress damage done to young people as they watch adults, who control the purse strings and wield the power and who don't do anything or don't do enough?
How stressful is it for young people to see climate science deniers still get oxygen?
JEWELL-KEMKER: It's incredibly stressful and frustrating. And there is a wide degree of anxiety and of climate grief and depression that young people are facing because literally we are looking at an existential crisis that is forcing us to ask the question, what kind of people we want to be at the end of the world?
And you are looking at governments and they are still pushing for these national interests that are seemingly on a completely different planet.
HOLMES: Yes. I was struck by a line in the film, where someone said young people are not waiting until it's their generation's turn to fix things, that they are going to lead now.
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HOLMES: What is one thing a young person watching this right now can do to help, to make a difference?
JEWELL-KEMKER: To do what you can with what you have where you are. When I first started, I didn't know how to be activist. I knew that I loved filmmaking. I loved storytelling. It's how we connect as people. And so I think on the one hand ,identifying your passion and applying it to the climate crisis but also be aware that you're connected with so many things around you. Try to vote in politicians and people who actually represent you and who will divest from fossil fuels.
HOLMES: Clearly, the, let's say, older generation has done the damage and then not done enough to undo the damage.
What have you learned about the power of the youth movement, what they have created?
JEWELL-KEMKER: It's been clear from the beginning, when the first young person to address the U.N., that young people have a creativity and passion and a drive that is apparent and obvious.
I think also that there is a feeling that young people have to grow up faster. So there is this inherent understanding of all of the interconnectedness of our lives. And this doesn't just have to be an overwhelming and doom and gloom scenario. It can be the greatest opportunity we have ever faced.
And I think in a really strange way, there is this optimism. And that is something that is very unique in this community.
HOLMES: It's been a pleasure talking to you. The film is fantastic, I urge people to look at. Slater Jewell-Kemker, thanks so much.
JEWELL-KEMKER: Thank you.
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HOLMES: And the documentary, "Youth Unstoppable," is currently being shown for free on WaterBear. That's a streaming platform focused on climate change, biodiversity and nature.
It will also be screened at the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow in November. WaterBear. Check it out.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me, I'm Michael Holmes. "MARKETPLACE AFRICA" coming up next. You are watching CNN.
