China and Iran are certainly not the only dictatorship in the world but are leading the ranking of countries applicating the death penalty. In China, in 2008 more than 1700 were executed, in Iran 350. But the worst thing is that a good proportion of those convicted hadn't a fair trial and probably many of them had committed no crime other than to oppose the dictatorship. Iran has just sentenced to death 4 opponents who would had participated in recent protests.China and Iran are certainly not the only dictatorship in the world but are leading... more
China will reportedly put more than 200 people on trial this week for alleged involvement in the country's worst ethnic violence in decades, an apparent move to draw a line under the episode but one that experts say is unlikely to address grievances that spawned the unrest.
The hearings will take place in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and the site of the violence last month that killed nearly 200 people and injured another 1,700, the state-run China Daily reported Monday. The rioting pitted indigenous Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs against members of China's dominant Han ethnic group, who have migrated to the far western region in droves.
The speed with which the suspects are going on trial seems to reflect a government desire to appease public anger by bringing swift justice upon those they blame for the violence.China will reportedly put more than 200 people on trial this week for alleged... more
Urumqi is the capital and center of Han Chinese power in the province of Xinjiang (formerly East Turkestan). The indigenous Uighur ethnic group has been subjected to expropriation of land, violation of their traditional Central Asian Islamic culture, and second class citizenship since the People's Liberation Army invaded the country in 1949. Last week, tensions came to a boiling point after the murder of Uighurs in far away Guangdong province, leading to massive demonstrations across the country, er, province.
Like its more well known sister Tibet, this stepchild of the Chinese empire is restive, and when any attempts at assembly and protest happen, the Chinese police and army deliver a smackdown. The Chinese government admits to 156 dead, more than a thousand injured, and thousands more arrested.
As we all know, the world economy has been tanking, and when the economy goes down, the poorest are the hardest hit. Few places are poorer than rural China, and few in rural China have more disadvantages than the Uighur Turks. When you're poor and oppressed, getting beaten to death by the police can start to seem better than telling your wife that either she or the kids get to eat this month. Rule number 6: Economic downturns produce desperate rebellion.
Racism in China is fairly well managed by the central government. They plan the racism carefully (*cough cough forced abortions in Tibet*) to prevent any of the conquered nations in the empire from being able to organize significant resistance (*cough cough murder of thousands of Tibetan priests*). Even in the Beijing Olympics, when China tried to show off how proud it was of its "ethnic minorities," the trotted out 56 Han Chinese kids dressed up in traditional outfits of different ethnic groups. Most Westerners couldn't tell the difference, of course... but the minorities in China got the message. China is an empire that has historically been managed by lots of "foreigners," such as Mongols and Manchus, and the Communist Party is sensitive to the fierce "nationalism" this has produced. Ethnicity in China is a complicated matter.
Back in the good old days after 9/11, China managed to cut a deal with Bush - cooperation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in exchange for considering Uighur Muslims as "terrorists." This deal produced one of the most tragic stories of Guantanamo Bay, as four Uighurs were imprisoned for years because they were associated with people on China's "terrorist" list. Though their innocence of any wrong doing was quickly established, China threatened any country that was willing to harbor these "terrorists." So the biggest countries willing to accept them after the US released them were Bermuda and Palau, islands far away from China with no significant trade links.
Xinjiang (literally, "New Frontier") has had long and strained relationship with the Chinese empire. Alternatingly conquered by China and independent, East Turkestan was allied with the Soviet Union sometimes and the Kuomintang other times during World War 2, and when the Communist Chinese had finally won the Chinese Civil War, the Soviets didn't care to oppose other Communists from invading. East Turkestan wasn't able to seriously resist the massive Communist armies, and armies headed for the hills to resist guerilla style until the mid 1950's.Urumqi is the capital and center of Han Chinese power in the province of Xinjiang... more
China just delivered a stunning, real-world demonstration of the changes rocking -- and transforming -- modern journalism.
When deadly riots broke out in the western province of Xinjiang last week, the Chinese government sprang into message control mode. It choked off the Internet and mobile phone service, blocked Twitter and Fanfou (its Chinese equivalent), deleted updates and videos from social networking sites, and scrubbed search engines of links to coverage of the unrest. At the same time, it invited foreign journalists to take a tour of the area.
That's right, it slammed the door in the face of new media -- and offered traditional reporters a front row seat.
China's leaders realized that it's one thing to try to spin the on-the-ground views of bused-in reporters ("To help foreign media to do more objective, fair and friendly reports," in the words of the government's PR agency), but quite another to try to spin the accounts and uploaded images of tens of thousands of Twittering and cell-phone camera-wielding citizens.
The Chinese have clearly learned the lessons of Iran.
The same can't be said about New York Times columnist Roger Cohen who, writing about covering the Iran uprising, recently claimed:
To bear witness means being there -- and that's not free. No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream.
No news aggregator tells of the ravaged city exhaling in the dusk, nor summons the defiant cries that rise into the night. No miracle of technology renders the lip-drying taste of fear. No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenalin rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt.
How bizarre is it that Cohen chooses to attack the tools of new-media-fueled reporting by citing the very event that highlights the power of those tools -- and the weakness of his argument?
Indeed, search engines, news aggregation, live-blogging, and "miracles of technology" such as Twitter, Facebook, and real-time video delivered via camera phones, played an indispensable part in allowing millions of people around the world to "bear witness" to what was happening in Iran.
The truth is, you don't have to "be there" to bear witness. And you can be there and fail to bear witness.
Obviously, there is tremendous value in being an eyewitness. But we have to always keep in mind that the conclusions drawn by eyewitnesses are greatly influenced by the eyes doing the witnessing.
Malcolm Muggeridge famously called this "the eyewitness fallacy" -- the tendency of people to see, in eyewitness accounts, what they want to see.
[more at link]China just delivered a stunning, real-world demonstration of the changes rocking --... more
What do you think? Turkey's Prime Minister says they are...
From the blog:
"Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Friday: “‘The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise….’” Pretty plain language.
A little background: The Uighurs who have been fighting with the Han Chinese in the Xinjiang province are Muslims. Additionally, the Uighurs are originally of Turkic descent as is their language. So, many in Turkey feel a particular kinship with the embattled Uighurs of China’s West.
But genocide is a big and complicated charge to level (especially at a country of such economic and political weight as China)...."What do you think? Turkey's Prime Minister says they are...
From the blog:... more
Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network has taken up the cause of China’s Muslim Uighur minority with a pledge to attack Chinese workers in northwestern Africa in retaliation for mistreatment by Beijing of its largest Muslim minority.
Al-Qaeda's Algerian-based offshoot, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has issued the call for vengeance, according to the South China Morning Post which quoted an intelligence report from London-based risk analysis firm Stirling Assynt.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network has taken up the cause of China’s Muslim Uighur... more
Chinese media reported that the Urumchi riots were sparked by a clash between migrant workers in a Hong Kong-owned toy factory in southern China. But other evidence indicates the incident was merely a convenient pretext for a premeditated plan to destabilize Xinjiang province, the center of China's oil and gas industry. NAM contributor Yoichi Shimatsu is an environmental consultant for agricultural businesses in western China's arid regions and former editor of the Japan Time Weekly.
DUNHUANG, China -- Along the Silk Road super-highway, olive-green truck convoys of the People's Armed Police, China's internal security force, roll past sand dunes and crumbling fire-signal towers toward riot-hit Urumchi. The absence of army vehicles on the morning after indicated the situation in neighboring Xinjiang province was under control.
On the previous day, just hours before the Urumchi eruption, tension was palpable in this gateway to Xinjiang. The residents of this historic caravanserai, once the last fortress of the Chinese Empire in Central Asia, were not donning their customary white caps, and none offered a smile of welcome. Residents avoided eye contact; the sun-toasted plazas crackled with tension.
That evening, as angry mobs knifed passersby, torched shops and stoned buses, a longtime friend in Urumchi, who is an Uyghur scientist, sent me a curt message: "My heart is crying." The sight of screaming children and blood-gushing wounds was a scene from hell -- a long stretch from Urumchi's image as a prosperous oasis of gleaming towers at the foot of the snowcapped Tianshan mountains. By Friday prayers, Muslims across the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region asserted that the riots had nothing to do with religion or ethnicity, and that the violence and looting were simply criminal acts of a hate-demented mob.
The Chinese media reported that the Urumchi riots were sparked by a clash between migrant workers in a Hong Kong-owned toy factory in faraway southern China. When Han Chinese workers accused several Uighurs of raping two coworkers, a bout of shouting and scuffling ended with the death of an alleged rapist.
Yet other strands of evidence indicate that the toy factory incident was merely a convenient pretext for a premeditated plan to destabilize Xinjiang province, the center of China's oil and gas industry. An uneasy coalition of exiled Uighurs has been riven with personal rivalries between the veteran Munich-based separatists and the newcomers in the United States led by Rebiya Kadeer, an Urumchi businesswoman and former member of China's parliament. The distrust between old-timers and newcomers was heightened by Washington's drive to install Kadeer as the leader of the World Uighur Congress, usurping Germany-based figures like Isa Dolkun and members of the Alptekin family. Kadeer's husband was promoted to head Radio Liberty's Uighur section, making him the boss of the Munich staff. As tensions smoldered among the exiles, action was clearly needed to unite the separatists.
Enter the Grey Wolves, one of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations. Founded in the 1960s, the Wolves are a pan-Turkic paramilitary group with 1 million followers across the Near East, Central Asia and inside Xinjiang. During the decade of political violence in Turkey in the 1980s, the military-backed activists launched a wave of assassinations, massacres of ethnic minorities, and extortions of businesses. By official count, the Turkish government holds the Wolves responsible for more than 600 murders, while leftists estimate the victims numbered in the many thousands.
*************************CONTINUES**************************Chinese media reported that the Urumchi riots were sparked by a clash between migrant... more
Two Muslim Uighurs have been shot dead by police in Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang province, state media said.
The violence comes after Chinese officials said calm had been restored to the city after at least 180 people were killed in rioting last week.
A reporter with Hong Kong's RTHK radio said two police officers were shot and three Uighurs killed in the city.
Other reports said police had fired at a group of Uighur men armed with knives and poles who had attacked the police.
Thousands of extra security personnel have been patrolling the city of about 2.3 million people since the violence erupted.
Ethnic Han Chinese make up the majority of Urumqi's population, but Uighurs form a significant minority and have long-standing complaints of discrimination.
Rioting began on 5 July during a protest by Uighurs over a brawl in southern China in late June in which two Uighurs were killed.Breaking News
Two Muslim Uighurs have been shot dead by police in Urumqi, capital... more
Hey everyone - good morning and happy Friday from us here at Current News. A quick update of what stories we're following with some links for you below.Hey everyone - good morning and happy Friday from us here at Current News. A quick... more
Hundreds of Uighur Muslims crowded into at least one mosque in riot-stricken Urumqi on Friday after authorities relented on a decision to close mosques for the main day of prayer to minimize ethnic tension.
Security forces have imposed control over Urumqi, but the afternoon prayers will be a test of the government's ability to contain Uighur anger after Han Chinese, China's predominant ethnic group, attacked Uighur neighborhoods on Tuesday.
Those attacks were in revenge for the deaths of 156 people in Uighur rioting on Sunday, the region's worst ethnic violence in decades.
The decision to silence collective prayers could rankle, but thousands of troops and anti-riot police appeared ready to quell any fresh Uighur protests. Nearly all Uighurs are Muslim, but few adhere to the strictest interpretations of Islam.
Beijing cannot afford to lose its grip on the vast territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.
About 500 Uighurs surged outside the White Mosque, in a Uighur neighborhood, trying to join about 1,000 packed inside for prayers. Worshippers who emerged said the normal prayers had been shortened.
"I'm glad they are letting us in today," said a middle-aged Uighur named Ahmedadji. "There would have been a lot of unhappiness if they hadn't."
SUSPENSION NOTICES
Other mosques frequented by Hui, a Muslim group akin to Han Chinese, opened their doors on Friday after crowds of a few hundred worshippers began shouting.
Mosques in the overwhelmingly Uighur bazaar district of Urumqi earlier displayed notices that prayers had been suspended.
A cluster of Uighurs outside the big Dong Kuruk Bridge Mosque said they were angry and disappointed it hadn't opened.
"We feel we are being insulted. This is our mosque. But we are not allowed in, while they let in non-believers," said a young man, pointing out that Chinese security forces had been stationed inside and even in the minarets jutting out above an adjacent expressway.
"Under instructions from superiors, normal prayer will be suspended from today," said a notice at the gateway of the nearby Guyuan Mosque. It was dated Wednesday. "Anybody wishing to pray ... please do so at home."Hundreds of Uighur Muslims crowded into at least one mosque in riot-stricken Urumqi on... more
The crush of bus passengers leaving the strife-hit capital of far-west China's Xinjiang has become a heaving, sweating testament to Muslim Uighurs' volatile bond with a land of jobs and opportunity.
The South Long-Distance Bus Station in Urumqi has been crowded with thousands leaving after Uighur rioters killed 156 people and wounded 1,080 on Sunday. Han Chinese, the country's predominant ethnic group, struck back with acts of mob violence on Tuesday, but security forces have now gained control.
Many in the waiting crowd that spilled outside the station into the sunshine said they were fleeing after days hiding in fear. But many said also Han-dominated Urumqi was much richer and better-serviced than their dusty hometowns, and still represented the best hopes for them to escape hardship and joblessness.The crush of bus passengers leaving the strife-hit capital of far-west China's... more
Ethnic protests have spread to a second city in China's western Xinjiang province after riots rocked the region's capital, killing at least 140 and injuring more than 800.Ethnic protests have spread to a second city in China's western Xinjiang province... more
Hey everybody - Just an update of what we're following here at Current News. The big thing we're looking for today is video out of the protests in Iran. If you find something, clip it and let me know.
Some links below...Hey everybody - Just an update of what we're following here at Current News. The big... more
China's president cut short a G8 summit trip to rush home Wednesday after ethnic tensions soared in Xinjiang territory, and the government flooded the area with security forces in a bid to quell emotions in the wake of a massive riot that left 156 dead.
Two helicopters dropped leaflets appealing for calm among the Xinjiang capital's 2.3 million residents a day after running battles in the streets involving Han Chinese and minority Muslim Uighurs waving bricks, steel pipes and cleavers.
A Foreign Ministry statement said "given the current situation in Xinjiang," President Hu Jintao cut short a trip to Italy for a Group of Eight meeting later Wednesday to return home. It was not known if he would travel to Urumqi, about four hours by air west of Beijing.
After an overnight curfew, streets were calmer Wednesday, but residents showed cell phone and video camera footage of the earlier chaos, reporting neighbor-on-neighbor violence and pointing out bloodstains.
Uighurs say the riots that started Sunday — put down by volleys of tear gas and a massive show of force — were triggered by the June 25 deaths of Uighur factory workers killed in a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. State-run media have said two workers died, but many Uighurs believe more were killed and said the incident was an example of how little the government cared about them.
Many of the Turkic-speaking group believe the Han Chinese, who have flooded into the rugged, rapidly developing western region in recent years, are trying to crowd them out. The Han Chinese say the Uighurs are backward and ungrateful for all the economic development and modernization.
They also complain that the Uighurs' religion — a moderate form of Sunni Islam — keeps them from blending into Chinese society, which is officially communist and largely secular.
In one of the biggest Uighur neighborhoods Wednesday, residents crowded around reporters to complain about how mobs of Han Chinese men stormed into their neighborhoods and assaulted them.China's president cut short a G8 summit trip to rush home Wednesday after ethnic... more
The ethnically Muslim Uyghurs live in the oil-rich Xinjiang region, north of Tibet. The Chinese government has imposed restrictions on the Uyghurs’ religious practice in this autonomous region and many Uyghurs resent Chinese rule and complain of discrimination.
More 150 people were reported killed and more than 800 injured in China, where tensions between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese turned deadly. Rioters stoned police and set vehicles on fire.
The government responded swiftly to riots, reportedly locking down parts of the city of Urumqi and disabling communication tools like Twitter, but protests spread to other cities.
From the article, an ethnic Han woman who lives in an apartment near the central bazaar said in a telephone interview that the government should show no sympathy toward the malcontents.
“What they should do is crack down with a lot of force at first, so the situation doesn’t get worse, so it doesn’t drag out like in Tibet,” she said after insisting on anonymity. “Their mind is very simple. If you crack down on one, you’ll scare all of them. The government should come down harder.”
Stability over tolerance of others. . .and human rights
Most of the clips I've seen in news programs are from CCTV and it's pretty obvious who they're antagonizing as most of the clips are of injured, distressed Han people crying, whereas Uighurs are seen rioting. After watching these clips, it just brought back all the pint-up anger from the riots in Tibet and it just brings tears to my eyes at the thought that as much as they try to go against the government, they'll eventually be silenced and be forgotten.The ethnically Muslim Uyghurs live in the oil-rich Xinjiang region, north of Tibet.... more
Nuova rivolta etnica e nuovo bagno di sangue in Cina. Questa volta gli scontri si sono avuti tra gli Uiguri di religione musulmana, presenti in maniera considerevole nella Regione Autonoma Uigura dello Xinjiang (Nord-Ovest della Cina) ma minoranza nel Paese, e il gruppo etnico Han che costituisce circa il 90% della popolazione cinese (nonché il 12% della popolazione mondiale).Nuova rivolta etnica e nuovo bagno di sangue in Cina. Questa volta gli scontri si sono... more
The communist authorities who built the so-called Great Firewall of China raced to stamp out video, images and words posted by internet users about the unrest in Xinjiang, which left at least 140 people dead.
Twitter and YouTube appeared to be blocked in China late on Monday afternoon, while leading Chinese search engines would not give results for 'Urumqi', the city in Xinjiang where the riots occurred.
Traditional press carried only the official version of events, which blamed the unrest on ethnic Muslim Uighurs.
However, similar to the phenomenon seen last month during Iran's political turmoil, pictures, videos and updates from Urumqi poured onto social networking and image sharing websites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
In many cases, items were reposted by other internet users on sites outside China to preserve the content, while Twitter helped link people around the globe to images Chinese authorities did not want seen.
A US academic in Urumqi broke news about the unrest via Twitter, saying hours before the mainstream news organisations on Sunday night that security forces were blocking off streets in the city.
State-run China Central Television (CCTV) showed its first images of the violence just before midday Monday - more than 12 hours after footage began circulating on the internet.
CCTV broadcast images of a woman apparently being kicked as she lay on the ground, protesters throwing stones at police, vehicles on fire, and two young girls with bloodied hands comforting each other.
However, its footage gave a different impression to some of the clips on YouTube that Uighur exile groups said backed their case the protesters were largely peaceful.
Footage posted on YouTube showed what appeared to be, at least initially, a peaceful protest, with men and women marching, chatting on mobile phones, sipping bottled water and raising their arms as they cheered.
Another video on the site apparently taken by low-grade video technology in Urumqi showed police in black helmets leading away handcuffed protesters.
Meanwhile some Chinese internet users were able to express frustration at having their postings on the violence deleted. In one case, Chinese blogger Wen Ni'er reposted an entry on a Google site.
"Chinese mainland websites repeatedly deleted my post, which seriously violated China's law and violated my freedom and rights. I hereby want to express my strong disgust and condemnation," she wrote.
She had help from other anonymous sites based outside of China that were aggregating and saving both official and non-official materials about the incident, such as drop.io/urumuqi.
"I saved them primarily because once the Chinese censors order a take-down, they might not be seen again. Indeed, since I saved them, many of these pictures were 'harmonised' and can no longer be accessed," the site's operator wrote.The communist authorities who built the so-called Great Firewall of China raced to... more
At least 129 people were killed in in rioting by a Muslim ethnic group in China's far west, state media said Monday.
The brief report from Xinhua news agency gave no more details.
Protesters, mostly from the Uighur ethnic group, set dozens of cars on fire and attacked buses in several hours of violence in the Xinjiang province city of Urumqi on Sunday. The violence appeared to subside as the police and military presence intensified into the night, according to participants and witnesses.
Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, China's vast Central Asian buffer province, where militant Uighurs have waged sporadic, violent separatist campaign. The overwhelming majority of Urumqi's 2.3 million people are Han Chinese.
State television aired footage that appeared to show protesters attacking and kicking people on the ground. Other people sat dazed with blood pouring down their faces.
Mobile phone service provided by at least one company was cut Monday to stop people from organizing further action in Xinjiang.
The protest started Sunday with demonstrators demanding an investigation into a fight between Uighurs and Han Chinese workers at a southern China factory last month. Accounts differed over what happened next in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi, but the violence seemed to have started when a crowd of protesters — who started out peaceful — refused to disperse.
State media said at least 37 people — both Uighur and Han Chinese — were hospitalized with injuries.At least 129 people were killed in in rioting by a Muslim ethnic group in China's far... more
Again, we see this administration that thinks it is above the law..even the Supreme Court. Why? They have much to hide..here is the article, and the rest at the link
This week could see a remarkable moment in American legal history, as 17 Guantanamo detainees are on the verge of being let out of prison. On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the men released into the U.S. and told the Bush administration to produce the men in his courtroom Friday morning.
The detainees are 17 Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, who have been held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for nearly seven years. In past decades, the U.S. government has treated the group as Chinese nationalists. But in 2003, in an effort to accommodate the Communist Chinese government, the Bush administration listed one of the Uighur groups as a terrorist organization, using the designation as a rationale for the Uighurs' continued detention at Guantanamo.
However, a largely conservative panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled in June that the group is not hostile to the U.S. and that the administration had produced no reliable information to justify holding the Uighurs. The case was then sent back to a lower court for further action, including the possibility of release.
Federal Judge Ricardo Urbina said Tuesday that, in essence, enough is enough. Whatever authority the government may have had for detaining the Uighurs has ceased, he said.
The government now concedes these men are not enemy combatants, Urbina noted, and has provided no other justification for detention.
Uighurs living in the United States have arranged for 17 families to take the men until more permanent arrangements can be made. Urbina said he would hear from the Department of Homeland Security as to any conditions it would like imposed on the men after release — conditions that could include a ban on travel and requirements that the men report to authorities on a regular basis. The judge reacted angrily, however, when Bush administration lawyers suggested they could imprison the men in the U.S. once the Uighurs are transferred here. It is expected he will forbid that.
As luck would have it, one of the lawyers for the Uighurs was in Guantanamo on Tuesday and told the men of their court victory. The lawyer is not permitted to talk about the men's reaction by phone under classification rules.
The Chinese government on Tuesday again demanded that the men be returned, but the U.S. has refused because it concedes they would be tortured and possibly killed. The Chinese government sees the Uighurs as a threat because many of them want greater autonomy from Beijing.Again, we see this administration that thinks it is above the law..even the Supreme... more
Unlike their Hollywood friendly brethren, the Tibetans, the Uighurs of northwestern China, claim to be an oppressed minority group that no one has ever heard of. That is, unless the Chinese government publicizes an attack by Uighur insurgents, such as the one that killed 16 Chinese police officers on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. In this Vanguard report, Laura Ling travels to the wild-west frontier in China's Gobi Desert, an area the Chinese named Xinjiang, or New Land, but a place many Uighurs believe should be an independent Uighur nation.Unlike their Hollywood friendly brethren, the Tibetans, the Uighurs of northwestern... more
