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New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon made a “formal and unreserved” apology in Parliament on Tuesday for the widespread abuse, torture and neglect of hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable adults in care.
“It was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,” Luxon said, as he spoke to lawmakers and a public gallery packed with survivors of the abuse.
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An estimated 200,000 people in state, foster and faith-based care suffered “unimaginable” abuse over a period of seven decades, a blistering report released in July said at the end of the largest inquiry ever undertaken in New Zealand. They were disproportionately Māori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people.
“For many of you it changed the course of your life, and for that, the government must take responsibility,” Luxon said. He said he was apologizing for previous governments too.
In foster and church care — as well as in state-run institutions, including hospitals and residential schools — vulnerable people “should have been safe and treated with respect, dignity and compassion,” he added. “But instead, you were subjected to horrific abuse and neglect and in some cases torture.”
The findings of the six-year investigation believed to be the widest-ranging of comparable probes worldwide were a “national disgrace,” the inquiry’s report said. New Zealand’s investigation followed two decades of such inquiries around the globe as nations struggle to reckon with authorities’ transgressions against children removed from their families and placed in care.
In other news, Donald Trump has begun the process of choosing a cabinet and selecting other high-ranking administration officials following his presidential election victory.
Here are the early picks and top contenders for some of the key posts overseeing defence, diplomacy, immigration and the environment.
Trump on Tuesday said he had picked for national security adviser Republican US Representative Mike Waltz, a retired Army Green Beret who has been a leading critic of China.
Waltz, a 50-year-old Trump loyalist who also served in the National Guard as a colonel, has criticised Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and has voiced the need for the US to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.
