The US is bidding farewell to former President George HW Bush on Wednesday in a state funeral that brings together world dignitaries, US leaders and the 41st president’s friends and family. 

The funeral began with a procession from the US Capitol to the National Cathedral at 15:00 GMT.

All four living former US presidents, current President Donald Trump and several world leaders will attend the funeral in Washington, DC. Former President George W Bush, among others, will eulogise his father. 

Wednesday’s funeral caps off three days of remembrance of the Republican president who oversaw the post-Cold War transition and led the US during the Gulf War, only to lose re-election in a generational shift to Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992. 

“America has lost a patriot and humble servant in George Herbert Walker Bush. While our hearts are heavy today, they are also filled with gratitude,” former President Barack Obama said after Bush’s death on Friday. 

During a Capitol ceremony on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Bush, who died at the age of 94, was a “humble servant who loved his fellow citizens”. 

Trump, whose relationship with the Bush family has been tense, put differences aside, hailing Bush’s “sound judgement, common sense and unflappable leadership”. 

The son of a wealthy Republican US Senator, Bush served in the second world war and was elected to two terms in the US Congress in the 1960s.

President Richard Nixon became Bush’s mentor, appointing him ambassador to the United Nations in 1970.

While Nixon later resigned in disgrace, Bush went on to become head of the CIA in 1976.

He served as Ronald Reagan’s vice president for eight years, before entering the White House in 1989, pledging to make the US a “kinder, gentler” nation.

Bush served as president from 1989 to 1993, with the successful campaign to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait as his most significant accomplishment.

His popularity quickly faded due to his handling of domestic issues, setting up his election loss in 1992.  

Mixed legacy

Many citizens made their way to the US Capitol over the past three days to pay their respects to the late president. 

“He was so qualified, and I think he was just a decent man,” Sharon Terry, who stood in line for the viewing in the US Capitol, told the Associated Press. 

Jane Hernandez, who also stood in line, said: “I’m just here to pay my respects. I wasn’t the biggest fan of his presidency, but all in all he was a good, sincere guy doing a really hard job as best he could.”

Others challenged Bush on his policies during his presidency. Steven Thrasher, a doctoral candidate in American Studies at New York University, noted in the Nation that the irony was not lost on many in the LGBT community who woke up to the news that Bush died on World AIDS Day.  

“As director of the CIA, vice president, and then president, Bush exacerbated the material conditions that allow AIDS to flourish in the first place,” Thrasher wrote. 

Thrasher pointed to the October 1991 march when HIV/AIDS activists and their supporters marched to the White House and threw the ashes of individuals who died from AIDS on the building’s lawn. 

Urvashi Vaid, who headed the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force through much of the Bush presidency, told NPR that the “Bush presidency on HIV/AIDS was mixed at best, and marked by calculated indifference at worst.”

Abroad, Bush is celebrated in Kuwait and elsewhere for the success of the Gulf War, but criticised by others for the toll the war took on civilians. The war would also prompt the beginning of an unprecedented era of US military adventurism in the Middle East.

Trump ordered the federal government closed on Wednesday for a national day of mourning. Flags on public buildings are flying at half-staff for 30 days.

After Wednesday’s funeral,  Bush’s remains will be flown to Houston, Texas to lie in repose before burial on Thursday in his family plot on the presidential library grounds at Texas A&M University in College Station. The late Bush’s final resting place will be alongside Barbara, his wife of 73 years who died in April, and Robin Bush, the daughter they lost to leukaemia in 1953 at the age of three.

bush funeral

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania took their seats alongside the Obamas, Clintons and Carters.

Former President George H.W. Bush’s casket arrived Wednesday morning at Washington National Cathedral, where dignitaries from around the world will bid farewell to the nation’s 41st commander in chief.

Bush, 94, died Friday. Tributes quickly began pouring in over the weekend, and his remains were flown to Washington on “Special Air Mission 41” and carried into the Capitol Rotunda, where he had lain in state since Monday.

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Wednesday’s ceremony is officially the first state funeral since former President Gerald Ford died in 2006. But it bears similarities to former Arizona Sen. John McCain’s funeral in September, albeit with one glaring difference: President Donald Trump is welcome.

Despite his tense relationship with the Bush family — Trump branded former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as “low energy” during the 2016 GOP presidential primary, blamed George W. Bush for 9/11 and mocked George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light” volunteerism program — Trump was invited to attend the service, whose speakers will likely focus on memorializing Bush rather than rebuking the sitting president.

“Looking forward to being with the Bush family,” Trump tweeted ahead of the service. “This is not a funeral, this is a day of celebration for a great man who has led a long and distinguished life. He will be missed!”

Bush’s death has brought some civility to an often-divided Washington. Congressional leaders are finalizing a short-term deal to avoid a government shutdown Friday and delay a bitter fight over billions of dollars in funding for Trump’s border wall out of respect for Bush.

Trump also declared Wednesday a national day of mourning, closing most of the federal government. The House, meanwhile, has canceled votes this week, and the Senate won’t vote until Wednesday afternoon.

Trump’s attendance puts him in the same room as former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter at the ceremony, which also drew congressional leaders, other members of Congress, foreign officials and dignitaries.

Trump arrived with first lady Melania Trump, and took their seats in the same row as the Obamas, the Clintons and the Carters, in what appeared to be a tense moment.

George W. Bush will deliver a eulogy for his father, whose final words came over the phone Friday, when George H.W. Bush reportedly told him, “I love you, too.” Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and presidential biographer Jon Meacham will also deliver eulogies.

Later Wednesday, Bush’s casket will be transported to Houston. There will be arrival ceremonies at Ellington Field and St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, where Bush will lie in repose Wednesday night.

On Thursday, there will be a funeral service at St. Martin’s, and Bush’s body will be transported to College Station, Texas, for interment at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. He will be buried at the Bush family plot alongside his wife, former first lady Barbara Bush, who died in April.

There have been nearly 1,000 human rights violations by French police towards refugees in Calais in the past year, according to a report released on Wednesday. 

Police Violence in Calais: Abusive and Illegal Practices by Law Enforcement officers, published by four humanitarian organisations – L’Auberge des Migrants, Refugee Info Bus, Utopia56 and Legal Shelter – says that 972 incidents were recorded over the space of a year by aid workers who formed a human rights monitoring team. 

One of the most serious allegations relates to January 25, 2018, when a 16-year-old Eritrean boy lost his eye, sense of smell and hearing in one ear after French riot police fired tear gas into a crowd of refugees during an eviction of their sleeping area in Calais.

The report says that the riot police fired “chemical agent grenades indiscriminately into a crowd of displaced people in [an] attempt to disperse them.”

The victim says that a rubber bullet gun was fired at him 10 to 15 metres away.

“The [riot police] fired tear gas from guns and filled the sky with smoke,” says a British volunteer who witnessed the incident. “I saw through the smoke a boy being carried by his friends, covered in blood. He had been hit in the eye and they had no way of getting him to hospital.

“His friends were crying; it was a group of minors and the boy himself was 16.”

On June 4, 2018, the IGPN, the French police watchdog, announced that it would open an investigation into the incident, which is yet to be concluded. 

At least 124 reports of physical violence by police officers against refugees were made to volunteers.

One testimony from a 21-year-old Ethiopian male on October 29, 2018 says that he was beaten by police.

“They tried to break my arms,” he says. “They beat me too much.” He claims he later lost consciousness

A 13-year-old boy from Afghanistan, who had been sleeping on the streets, says that he was a victim of tear-gassing and beatings by French authorities.

One pregnant woman in April 2018 says she was prevented from returning to her tent to retrieve medication after an eviction.

‘They actually put numbers behind our heads’

Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify the refugees’ claims, but videos and testimony given to Al Jazeera separately allege similar violence and intimidation in Dunkirk towards people living in the area.

The Calais and Dunkirk prefectures had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publishing.

Some refugees who were the subject of an eviction on September 6, 2018, in Dunkirk allege that they were cable tied and numbered.

A video, seen by Al Jazeera, supposedly taken inside one of the police stations shows a number of men with their hands bound with cable ties. The man who took the video says he was rounded up along with others by riot police and national police and then taken to a police station, which he believes was in Lille. While there, he says he was bound with plastic cable ties.

Another video given to Al Jazeera taken on the same day as the September 6 eviction shows men on a bus being taken to a police station with cable ties around their wrists.

Mustafa (not his real name) says that on that day, he was taken to a police station where he was numbered.

“The French police came to us, like lots of them. They caught everyone. They took some of the families to the hotels and the rest of the youth and young people, to the police stations far away from Dunkirk. Like one or two hours, it depends on the bus that took them.

“We’ve been detained for seven hours, maybe eight I’m not sure. They weren’t letting us out to go to the toilet. They actually put numbers behind our heads, on the neck so they can recognise us. So that’s how they were recognising us. They were calling one by one, taking information and fingerprints.”

A 27-year-old Kurdish man, who wishes to remain anonymous and who was the subject of a separate eviction on October 23, says that he was taken to a Dunkirk police station and had his name and number written on his arm.

“A number, just like an animal you know, just like [an] animal. All of the countries all over the world, they put this just on the animal’s hand, why they put this?” he says.

It has also been alleged in testimony received by Al Jazeera that during an eviction on October 23 in Grande-Synthe near Dunkirk, a woman, who was eight months pregnant, fainted after witnessing her husband being struck by police.

On the same day, another woman and her children were placed on a bus after being told they were being driven to an accommodation centre. She says she was then dropped off at the SNCF train station and told she could “sleep on the streets” with her children by a police officer.

There are currently 1,500 refugees living across Calais and Dunkirk including 100 unaccompanied minors and 10 family units.

“Police forces are using inhumane methods to harass the displaced communities in northern France. In Calais, the violence that aid workers are seeing is unjustifiable and currently on the rise,” said Charlotte Head, of the Human Rights Observers project, which was set up to monitor police brutality against refugees.

“Similar tactics are being used in Dunkirk with evictions taking place on an even larger scale,” she told Al Jazeera. “These people are seeking safety and their human rights are being violated by the very authorities that ought to be protecting them.”

Image: bob al-greene / mashable