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CNN International: British Official Apologizes for Lockdown Party Video; Refugees Fleeing Violence Face Difficult Conditions in South Sudan Refugee Camps; Hundreds of Bodies Found in Kenya Forest Linked to Cult; Pope Delivers Sunday Prayers Post-Surgery. Aired 4:30- 5a ET

Aired June 19, 2023 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[04:30:00]

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: A White House official says Mr. Biden will highlight his administration's climate commitments and announce new federal funding for climate resilience projects. He's expected to deliver remarks later today before attending two fundraisers.

BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR: A senior British official is apologizing after video emerged showing aides of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson partying during 2020 COVID lockdowns in London. Housing secretary Michael Gove shared his thoughts on the video during an interview with "Sky News." Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL GOVE, BRITISH SECRETARY OF STATE FOR LEVELING UP, HOUSING AND COMMUNITIES: Well, I think it's completely out of order. I just want to apologize to everyone, really, who looking at that image will think well these are people who are fighting rules that were put in place to protect us all.

I think you should follow the procedures. I think it's absolutely important that when you have a process for appointing someone to any public body, including the House of Lords, that you follow the rules.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: The matter is raising even more concerns as Parliament is set to vote on whether Johnson misled them about those parties. CNN's Scott McLean has more on the "Partygate" scandal.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now Boris Johnson is not in this video nor was it shot at Downing Street. But it is a timely example of lockdown rule-breaking within his own Conservative Party.

This video was published by the British tabloid, "The Mirror." It was shot at Conservative Party headquarters in December 2020 at a time when social distancing restrictions were enforced and two households were not allowed to mix indoors. Now there were exceptions for work but this was clearly not that. The fact that the party took place at all has been reported by CNN before. But this is the first time that we've seen a video of it. Here's part of it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Er, it's for party.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If this ever --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As long as we don't stream that we're like, bending the rules.

MCLEAN: Now London's Metropolitan Police has handed out fines for lockdown parties in the past. The force told CNN that it is aware of this footage and considering it. The Conservative Party previously said that it had disciplined some of the people involved.

Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove was also asked about this video on "Sky News" today and said it was completely out of order and terrible, in his words.

Now the gathering was organized by the campaign staff of London conservative mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey who previously apologized and resigned as the chair of a committee that he led at city hall.

Oddly enough though, Bailey was just given a peerage this week, meaning he has a lifetime appointment to the House of Lords, the U.K.'s version of the Senate. The man who made that appointment is Boris Johnson.

Now the video's release also comes just days after a parliamentary committee report found Johnson deliberately misled Parliament about his own separate lockdown parties. The report found that Johnson gave an unsustainable interpretation of the rules that he helped to write. For example, he insisted and continues to insist, in some cases, that the parties were essential for work purposes.

Now, Parliament was scheduled to vote Monday on whether to accept the findings of the report which could have landed him a 90-day suspension. But since Johnson resigned as an MP in advance of the report's release calling it a witch hunt, they will now debate whether he should even get the customary former members' pass to enter Parliament at all.

Scott McLean, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: I mean, it feels like quite a long time ago, doesn't it, all of that? But it's still very hard to stomach when you watch it. If you look at the reaction of social media, I mean, that was in the thick of the lockdown laws, wasn't it?

NOBILO: It was, and we've heard so many people in Britain come out saying that their parents died in hospital alone during his time. Or people committed suicide because they couldn't get the help that they needed or the comfort and companionship that they needed. And time isn't going to take way of that away for people.

And I think regardless of what you think of COVID restrictions this was the government setting these laws and regulations and the party behind the government. So they obviously should have been following laws that they were asking other people to.

Still to come, the chilling investigation into a mass grave found in Kenya links to a religious cult. Why police are calling what happened at the church disturbing and inhumane, when we come back?

[04:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FOSTER: Days after a brutal massacre at a Ugandan school, the families of victims have begun laying their loved ones to rest. At least 39 of the 41 victims were students, and some of them were as young as 13. Six students are still missing from the attack and are considered abducted.

NOBILO: The president of Uganda sent his condolences in a tweet and said the attackers would be hunted into extinction. On Sunday he ordered more soldiers to western Uganda to pursue the rebels. An Islamic group known as the Allied Democratic Forces is being blamed for the attack. According to the U.S. State Department, they've ties with ISIS since 2018.

In Sudan, a 72-hour cease-fire between the two warring sides appears to be holding for now. Residents say there was a lull in fighting on Sunday after intense clashes the night before killed at least 17 civilians in an air strike in south Khartoum. It comes as the U.N. is set to host a donors' conference today to raise funds for the war-torn country.

FOSTER: Meanwhile, thousands of people displaced by the violence are fleeing to neighboring Chad. Nearly 2 million people have been internally displaced as the fighting between the Sudanese army and paramilitary rapid support forces enters its third month.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese are also fleeing to South Sudan, a country already stretched for resources. And as CNN's Nima Elbagir finds out, conditions in the refugee camps are dire, lacking even basic facilities.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is Africa's largest refugee crisis. And you can see the conditions here for yourself. The people here are being largely ignored by the world. Aid agencies are doing what they can, but it is simply not enough.

South Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world. They barely have enough to feed and shelter their own returnees. And they are also now being asked now to absurd fleeing Sudanese and other foreign nationals with limited support from the outside world. And it is almost impossible. With rainy season starting, what you see here, it's only going to get

worse. So many of those speaking to us say that they feel a sense of humiliation, that the message that they're receiving from the world, from the international community, is that they're not worthy of support. And until aid arrives here in meaningful quantities, it's hard to argue with that.

[04:40:03]

Nima Elbagir, CNN, Renk, South Sudan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Hundreds of bodies have been found in a Kenyan forest as part of an investigation into a religious cult that pushed its members to starve themselves in exchange for salvation. According to court documents, the cult leader encouraged members to, quote, neglect the children to starve and die.

CNN's David McKenzie spoke with families affected by the group's practices. And we warn you this report contains disturbing material that may be hard to watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): He called it the wilderness, luring his flock to a remote corner of Kenya. We've come to try and understand how over many months so many could die. In the Shakahola forest the dead is still being found. Forensic teams carefully remove the remains of members of a Christian death cult from shallow graves. They have already unearthed more than 300 people, many of them children. Many showing signs of starvation.

FRANCIS WANJE, FATHER OF CULT MEMBER: It's painful. It was so painful. This is my daughter.

MCKENZIE (voice-over): Francis Wanje says his daughter and son-in-law both abandoned good jobs and took their children to the forest cult. What happened next is hard to comprehend.

WANJE: Everyone should die and meet Jesus and they have to start with the children.

Of MCKENZIE: The members of the cult, including your own family, they were starving the children.

WANJE: Yes.

MCKENZIE: And then when the children didn't die quickly enough --

WANJE: They suffocate them.

MCKENZIE: They suffocate them

WANJE: They suffocate them, yes.

MCKENZIE: And this is your own blood.

WANJE: And I wonder where my children or my child, my daughter could change to be such an animal, a world animal, to kill her own children.

MCKENZIE (voice-over): Pastor Paul Mackenzie began his cult in Malindi.

MCKENZIE: This is the church where Pastor Mackenzie had a huge following in his sermons.

MCKENZIE (voice-over): He amplified his message online. He preached a doomsday prophecy for at least a decade, calling on the faithful to reject modern society, pull children from school, avoid hospitals, he demanded total devotion.

You must deny yourself, you must reject yourself, you must reach a point of ending your life, he says, for the sake of Jesus.

His anti-government stance got him arrested and detained, but never prosecuted. In 2019, the church was closed down. Later, the pastor started his forest community.

We found a former cult member in Malindi. We agreed to hide her identity for her own safety. She escaped the forest last year.

MCKENZIE: Why did you move your whole home and all your children and move into the forest?

MCKENZIE (voice-over): The pastor used to call me, she says. He was calling me, telling me, my daughter, you are being left behind. And when the ark is closed, it will be too late. So I decided to go.

When the COVID pandemic hit, she says many saw it as evidence that the prophecies were real.

Mackenzie charged her family $80 for a piece of land in Galilee. There were seven other biblically named settlements in Shakahola with more than a thousand followers, she says. Still, cult members made regular trips to a nearby village for food and water. In December, those trips suddenly stopped, says this village elder.

The starvation had begun. He says they alerted authorities, but they did nothing, even after hungry children started escaping to the village.

What's been called the Shakahola Massacre has shocked this nation. Pastor Mackenzie and his closest followers are being held under terror laws.

MCKENZIE: What happened in the forest with your followers?

PAUL NTHENGE MACKENZIE, CULT LEADER: I can tell nothing about that because I've been in custody for two months. So you don't know what is going on outside there. Have you been there?

MCKENZIE (voice-over): Francis Wanje says there needs to be justice. He mounted a rescue mission to get his grandchildren out. When they found his grandson Efrem, he was close to starvation. His two brothers were already dead.

WANJE: He went through hell. He went through hell, I'm telling you. In fact, when he was rescued, he told them that if you could come here maybe a bit late, you would have already found me and already gone to see Jesus because the grave is there.

MCKENZIE (voice-over): The very highest levels of the Kenyan government have apologized for their inaction and the pain it has caused.

[04:45:00]

The scale of what happened in the forest is still being understood. Hundreds are still missing and many more mass graves need to be exhumed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCKENZIE (on camera): And the details of this alleged crime and this cult are certainly horrifying and it could get much worse. They finished the third phase. That's three phases of exhumations. They will be doing more of them because there are many parts of that forest, in that remote corner near the coast of Kenya where they still haven't, in fact, explored and could be and could be finding many more bodies. The scale of what happened in the forest is still being understood -- Max, Bianca.

FOSTER: You obviously spoke to Mackenzie and he's not giving anything away. But is there any suggestion why he was doing this, what motivated him?

MCKENZIE: I've spoken to cult experts and one question I had which is, did he believe his own prophesies. And that is a very difficult question to answer at this point. Certainly, he said that his followers should starve themselves to death, according to the allegations and court documents and witnesses. He denies all of that. But he himself was not starving nor were his senior leaders of that church in the forest. In fact, the way he put it is the children should starve, then the women, then the men and finally him as the man who he said was God's messenger on the issues of these end time prophesies.

One striking detail and the hold that he had on his members, last week, more than 60 members of the cult who had been held in an undisclosed location in an area where they've been getting counseling are still refusing to eat. I spoke to a doctor at the main hospital there, who said many of those who were desperately ill and highly malnourished didn't want to be fed because they didn't want to miss out on their chance to arise to heaven. This should be put in the context of some of the worst mass starvation and cults of its kind in the last few decades. And I think it's unfortunate, the details are only going to get worse -- Max, Bianca.

FOSTER: David McKenzie, thank you very much. We'll be right back. [04:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOBILO: A large crowd gathered at the Vatican City for the Pope's first Sunday prayers since being discharged from hospital on Friday. CNN's Barbie Nadeau has more from Rome.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Pope Francis looked good and sounded strong as he delivered his angelus over a crowd that had gathered in St. Peter's Square on Sunday morning. That's just two days after he was released from the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.

The pontiff, 86 years old, underwent surgery on June 7th, a three-hour procedure and was convalescing in the hospital ever since. He was not strong enough to give his angelus on Sunday from the hospital, but he looked good this Sunday, looked strong.

Now, the Vatican has canceled his Wednesday audience and will keep his schedule light. However, he is scheduled to meet the leaders of Cuba and Brazil in private audiences during the week. Normally the pontiff does not hold Wednesday audiences in July, so he will be keeping a lighter schedule. All of this ahead of two very important trips he has coming up. The first week of August, he's expected to go to Portugal for World Youth Day, and the end of August, he has an apostolic voyage to Mongolia.

Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN, Rome.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: And the third men's golf major of the year is now in the books. And the winner might surprise you, not Ricky Fowler or golfing superstar Rory McIlroy or last year's Masters champion Scottie Scheffler. Instead it's the relatively unknown Wyndham Clark who time and again showed incredible determination and grit, getting himself out of some pretty tough situations at the Sunday's final 18 holes, to emerge victorious. The 29-year-old from Denver, Colorado, is on quite a roll, winning his first ever PGA tour event late last month. And with emotion, he dedicating that victory to his mother who passed away ten years ago after a battle with breast cancer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WYNDHAM CLARK, 2023 U.S. OPEN CHAMPION: I just felt like my mom was watching over me today. And you know, she can't be here, and I miss you mom. I just feel like I've worked so hard and I've dreamed about this moment for so long, there's been so many times I've visualized being here in front of you guys and winning this championship. And I just feel like it was my time. And you know, yeah, thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: For most of us, solving a Rubik's cube at all is no easy feat. But for one speed cuber from California, it's a walk in the park.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAX PARK, SOLVED RUBIK'S CUBE IN FASTED TIME EVER: Yes!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: It's unbelievable, speed cubing it's called. He's a legend in it, Max Park and he made history last weekend by solving a Rubik's cube in just 3.13 seconds as you can see. Now at his right the seconds 21-year-old now holds the Guinness world record for fastest time ever solving a cube. The champion's father spoke about his son's achievements.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHWAN PARK, SON BROKE WORLD RECORD FOR SOLVING RUBIK'S CUBE: I don't think he sort of really is impressed with sort of pageantry and the fame that comes with it. I think he's just so much more focused on the actual times and beating the times and his goals. It's funny because I think maybe part of his autism just prevents him from really understanding the fame or the adulation. I think he intellectually understands it, but I don't think he feels it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: Proud dad there. You know when the Rubik's cube was first released. They prophesized it as having one solution but 3 billion different combinations. But to think if that's true --

FOSTER: He found the right one. That's a lot of testing. I can do one side. Takes me about half an hour.

Dachshund owners in Melbourne, Australian are celebrating after breaking a Guinness world rescue themselves on Sunday. The Devoted to Dachshunds Rescue Group the organized the largest walk by a single breed of dogs.

[04:55:00]

The group's leader says she thought it was time that dachshunds got title of top dog.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADELE GULLICK, EVENT ORGANIZER: The count record is 1,029 beagles in the U.K. so, we're hoping today that we can beat the beagles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: The group beat the record and then some. The official tally was nearly 1,400 dachshunds that beat the previous record set in April 2018.

FOSTER: Sausage dogs or dachshunds?

NOBILO: I'll go with sausage dogs.

FOSTER: Yes.

NOBILO: Rainbow flags filled the skies of Vienna Saturday and thanks to efforts of Austrian police it was a peaceful event. Officials say three Austrians between the ages of 14 and 20 were arrested suspected of planning an attack at the event.

FOSTER: But police say the young man were Islamic state sympathizers but the parade went on as planned. Investigators say they are confident they had foiled the plot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OMAR HAIJAWI-PIRCHNER, AUSTRIAN DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE CHIEF (through translator): Had we made this information public immediately after the arrest, the participants may have experienced anxiety and fear and reacted in panic. That's ultimately the goal of terrorism. To cause anxiety and fear in the public. It's also our job not to let that happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: About 250,000 people attended the parade on Saturday to celebrate members of the LBGTQ+ community.

NOBILO: Thank you for joining us here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianca Nobilo.

FOSTER: I'm Max Foster. "EARLY START" is up next here on CNN.

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