バイデン氏任期満了「信念持ち続けて」 キング牧師記念日に

【ワシントンＡＦＰ＝時事】ジョー・バイデン米大統領は任期最後の日となった１９日、国民に「より良い未来が来るという信念を持ち続けてほしい」と呼び掛けた。（写真はサウスカロライナ州ノースチャールストンのロイヤル・ミッショナリー・バプティスト教会での礼拝でスピーチをするジョー・バイデン米大統領）
　この日は米公民権運動を主導したマーティン・ルーサー・キング牧師をたたえる祝日に当たる。バイデン氏はサウスカロライナ州ノースチャールストンにある歴史的な黒人教会、ロイヤル・ミッショナリー・バプティスト教会での礼拝に参列。
　礼拝参加者に対し「米国は取り組み続けなければならない。より良い未来が来るという信念を持ち続けなければならない」と訴えた。キング牧師が夢見た人種差別のない国を「現実のものとする」ために闘い続ける重要性についても言及した。
　ホワイトハウスはこの日、バイデン氏が最後の公務の一つとして、２０世紀前半のアフリカ回帰運動の提唱者で、ジャマイカ人の作家マーカス・ガーベイを恩赦したと発表した。郵便詐欺罪で投獄されたガーベイは１９２７年に減刑され釈放されたが、今回の恩赦により有罪判決が記録から抹消される。
　この日にはまた、イスラエルとイスラム組織ハマスが１５か月以上にわたり交戦したパレスチナ自治区ガザでの停戦合意が発効した。バイデン氏はこれについても短く触れ、「合意に至る道のりは決して容易ではなかった」と述べた。
　記者団に対し、ガザの停戦は希望をもたらすものだが、その成功が続くかは「次期政権（トランプ政権）にかかっている」と語った。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2025/01/20-17:33）

Joe Biden traveled to South Carolina on Sunday, his last full day as US president, where he urged Americans to keep the faith in a better day to come as he marked the national holiday honoring civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
A scant day before turning the White House over to Donald Trump, Biden attended services at Royal Missionary Baptist Church, a historically Black church in North Charleston.
Promising that he is not going anywhere, Biden told the congregants that America must stay engaged, we must always keep the faith in a better day to come.
He also spoke about the continued fight to make King's dream of a color-blind nation a reality.
Racial progress has never moved in a smooth arc in the United States, and some have described the election of Trump -- who in 2015 insisted that Barack Obama was not an American -- as a step backward.
But Biden told the congregants that every time I spend time in a Black church I think of one thing: the word 'hope.'
Monday is a US national holiday honoring King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who advocated for non-violent resistance in the fight for equal rights for Black Americans. He was assassinated in 1968.
- 'What this country needed' -
South Carolina was pivotal in Biden's path to securing the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2020 -- which paved the way for his defeat that year of then-incumbent Donald Trump -- and Biden on Sunday thanked South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn for his key endorsement that year.
I would not be standing -- that's not hyperbole -- here at this pulpit were it not for Jim Clyburn, the president said.
Clyburn, who is Black, later choked up when returning the favor.
Joe Biden has been what this country needed, he said. People don't always appreciate it.
Biden won a mostly favorable but slightly mixed reception during his South Carolina visit on Sunday.
While crowds waved at his passing motorcade and people held signs saying Thank You Joe, one small group chanted Biden is a war criminal, blaming him for the high death toll in the fighting in Gaza.
He also spoke briefly about the landmark ceasefire agreement for Gaza that took force earlier Sunday, saying, The road to this deal has not been easy at all.
In brief remarks Sunday about the Mideast, Biden told reporters that the incipient Gaza ceasefire offered hope, but that its continuing success will depend on the next administration.
He added that Israel's crushing attacks on militants in southern Lebanon meant that that country now faced an opportunity for a future free from the grip of Hezbollah.
Charleston is home to the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where a white shooter killed nine Black worshippers in 2015.
While Biden, just before Christmas, commuted the death penalties of 37 people in federal prisons, he made two exceptions: those of Djokhar Tsarnaev, involved in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, and Dylann Roof, the man behind the Emanuel AME shooting.
Early Sunday, the White House announced that, in one of his final official acts, Biden had pardoned Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born writer and orator seen by some as a prophet who advocated for a return to Africa.
Garvey had been convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to prison, but the sentence was commuted in 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge. Biden's pardon expunges Garvey's conviction from the record.