Turkmenistan accused the Russian state energy company Gazprom of causing a pipeline explosion, days after the Ashgabat government broached joining a new pipeline project bypassing Russia.
International protests have greeted the sentencing of two Tibetans to the death penalty for their role in last year’s protests in Lhasa. Thirty-five Tiebtan protesters were arrested in Kathmandu.
In the first major Tibetan protests since last year’s uprising, hundreds of residents in Ragya, Qinghai province, attacked a police station, leading to the arrest of nearly 100 monks.
Opposition parties this week called for protests across Kyrgyzstan on March 27, amid worsening economic conditions and mounting accusations of government repression.
Tibetan protests in China continue to be met with harsh repression, now ignored by the media. But Beijing’s lobbyists were mobilized as US Congress passed a resolution honoring the Dalai Lama.
China claimed declaration of March 28 as “Serfs Emancipation Day” as a “tit-for-tat” against the “Dalai clique,” while in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama called for “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet.
A young Tibetan monk was shot by Chinese police after he set himself on fire on the third day of the Tibetan New Year, at a market in Sichuan province’s Ngaba prefecture. It is not known if he is alive or dead.
China is widening its crackdown on Tibetan activists, carrying out sweeps across the ethnic Tibetan western regions, as a campaign mounts to boycott Tibetan New Year Feb. 25 in protest of the repression.
China is denying claims aired by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that up to a million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in "re-education camps" in Xinjiang region. But Beijing appears to be imposing harsh surveillance and restrictions on freedom of worship on Muslims throughout China, even requiring those making the pilgrimage to Mecca to be fitted with GPS tracking devices. Yet such methods almost always prove counter-productive, leading to resentment that only fuels the unrest that Chinese authorities are responding to. This week saw mass protests in Weizhou, Ningxia province, after authorities attempted to demolish a newly built mosque which they said had not received construction permits. After days of protest, authorities backed down and agreed to postpone the demolition. (Photo of protest at Weizhou Grand Mosque from Weibo via BBC News)
Chinese state media report that 81 Tibetans have been detained for suspected criminal activity amid a security sweep. Two are being held for having “reactionary music” on their mobile phones.
Putin’s capitulation in the “gas war” with Ukraine may be motivated by fears that his intransigence was reviving impetus for the Nabucco pipeline, an EU-backed project that would bypass Russia.
Finnish officials are deliberating on whether to offer asylum to former terror suspects detained at the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay. The US has proposed that Finland take in Uighur prisoners, members of the Turkic minority in western China…. Read moreFinland, Sweden consider asylum for Gitmo Uighurs
