Police in Almaty, Kazakhstan, detained Aqylbek Muratbai, an activist who has been working to raise international awareness about the bloody crackdown on a mass protest in his native Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of western Uzbekistan, last July. It is feared that Kazakh authorities intend to deport him to Uzbekistan, where he could face a severe prison sentence. (Map: Wikipedia)
The Tuaregs of Niger and Buryat of Siberia, like the Navajo of the US Southwest, have had their territories usurped and destroyed by uranium mining for the nuclear-industrial complex, and it makes little difference from their perspective whether the extractivist bosses were French, Russian or American. While the Great Powers wage a neo-colonial game for control of this strategic resource, the indigenous peoples on the ground pay with their lands and lives—and are fighting back for autonomy or outright independence, and ecological and cultural survival. Bill Weinberg breaks it down in Episode 192 of the CounterVortex podcast. (Photo: Russian uranium mine in Buryatia, via Moscow Times)
The US Department of State has announced visa restrictions on Chinese officials linked to the systematic “forced assimilation” of over a million Tibetan children in state-operated boarding schools. In 2021, a policy pivot in Beijing’s approach to educating children from minority peoples became evident with the release of the National Program for Child Development (2021-2030). The earlier policy document on the question emphasized the need to “respect and protect the rights of children of ethnic minorities to be educated in their own language.” However, this phrase was omitted in the updated version, with the emphasis instead on “promoting the common national language.” This alteration suggests a shift toward a more centralized program of Mandarin-language instruction for ethnic minority students. (Photo: GerdEichmann/Wikimedia Commons)
Canada’s Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise has launched an inquiry into accusations over use of Uyghur forced labor in the People’s Republic of China by Western corporations Nike and Dynasty Gold. While the initial evaluation stipulates that Nike has not engaged in the direct use of such labor, the company’s association with Chinese third-party entities does not absolve it of accountability. Vancouver-based Dynasty Gold faces allegations of directly employing coerced labor of Uyghurs at a mining site in China. The initial evaluation finds that the company’s denial of operational control over the mine at Hatu, Xinjiang region, “should not be taken at its face value,” as Dynasty still possess a controlling interest in the operation. (Photo via Bitter Winter)
Russia restricted imports from Kyrgyzstan—apparently in retaliation after the Kyrgyz National Commission on State Language announced a transition from Cyrillic to a Latin-based alphabet. The move to switch the script also appears not to have the support of Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, who is said to have met with language commision chair Kanybek Osmonaliev to “harshly criticize” him for the announcement. While Japarov is perceived as tilting to Moscow, there are evidently divisions within his government. The other Central Asian states are already in the process of dropping Cyrillic for Latin, much to the dismay of Moscow. (Photo of Kyrgyz State University of Arabaev: Wikipedia)
The government of Kazakhstan has brought a legal action for violation of environmental protection laws against the North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC), the consortium leading development of the country’s massive Kashagan oil field, seeking $5.14 billion in fines. In the complaint, the Ministry of Ecology & Natural Resources cites storage of sulfur on site in excess of permitted limits, burning of crude gas on flares without a permit, improper discharge of wastewater, and other violations. Kashagan is one of the largest oil-fields discovered on Earth over the past 40 years, with recoverable reserves estimated at up to 13 billion barrels. The consortium includes the Italian Eni, French Total, US-based ExxonMobil, Anglo-Dutch Shell, Chinese CNPC, Japan’s Inpex, and KazMunayGas, the Kazakh national operator. (Map: US Energy Information Administration via Jurist)
Afghanistan’s Taliban regime has agreed to sign a contract with a Chinese company to exploit oil in the Amu Darya basin in the country’s north. The contract with the Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum & Gas Co. (CAPEIC) is to be the first major resource extraction deal the regime has signed with a foreign company since taking power in 2021. “The Amu Darya oil contract is an important project between China and Afghanistan,” China’s ambassador, Wang Yu, told a joint press conference with Taliban officials in Kabul. Beijing has not formally recognized the Taliban government but has significant interests in Afghanistan, a country deemed critical for its Belt & Road Initiative. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)
Following angry street protests in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian government has agreed to open an investigation into the so-called “coal mafia,” a group of state officials and executives accused pilfering the country’s subsurface wealth for personal profit to the tune of some $12 billion. Demonstrators attempted to storm the Government Palace, and blocked the capital’s main boulevard, Peace Avenue. At issue are the vast Tavan Tolgoi coalfields in the Gobi Desert, under exploitation by the Mongolian Mining Corporation, a pillar of the national economy. (Photo via EuroWeekly News)
In Episode 149 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes that the UN Human Rights Office determination that China may be guilty of “crimes against humanity” in its mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province is dismissed by the tankie-left ANSWER Coalition as “propagandistic.” Meanwhile, it falls to Radio Free Asia, media arm of the US State Department, to aggressively cover the very real conditions of forced labor faced by the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples of Xinjiang—and how Western corporations benefit from it. While the Western pseudo-left betrays the Uyghurs, US imperialism exploits their suffering for propaganda against a rising China in the Great Game for the Asia-Pacific region. Figures such as Australia’s Kevin Rudd incorrectly portray a “Return of Red China,” blaming the PRC’s increasingly totalitarian direction on a supposed neo-Marxism. Fortunately, the new anthology Xinjiang Year Zero offers a corrective perspective, placing the industrial-detention complex and techno-security state in the context of global capitalism and settler colonialism. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Xinjiang Judicial Administration via The Diplomat)
The Uyghur Tribunal, a “people’s tribunal” established in the UK, appended a December 2021 judgment, incorporating nearly 300 additional pages of historical background, legal definitions and evidence. The initial judgment found that hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims have been detained in China’s western Xinjiang region, and many been subject to torture. The appended judgment accuses Chinese authorities of genocide. It acknowledges that, in contrast to treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, the detained Uyghurs are allowed to eventually return to society in most cases. However, it notes that, coinciding with mass detention, mosques have been destroyed and religious activity suppressed. Those who use the Uyghur language in public are punished, and child separation from families is common. The appended judgment concludes that taken together, these practices constitute genocide. (Photo: Leonhard Lenz/Wikimedia Commons)
United Nations Special Rapporteur on slavery Tomoya Obokata released a report on contemporary forms of slavery, which found that it is “reasonable to conclude” that forced labor “among Uygur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing” is taking place in China’s Xinjiang region. The report added: “Similar arrangements have also been identified in the Tibet Autonomous Region, where an extensive labour transfer programme has shifted mainly farmers, herders and other rural workers into low-skilled and low-paid employment.” (Photo via Bitter Winter)
Following a day of angry protests that left 18 dead and hundreds wounded, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced that he will not proceed with a planned constitutional change to revoke the right of the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, in the country’s remote northeast, to secede via referendum. The announcement came as Mirziyoyev made an emergency visit to Nukus, the riot-stricken regional capital of Karakalpakstan. He also imposed a month-long state of emergency in the region, which has been ecologically devastated by the shrinking of the Aral Sea. (Map: Wikipedia)
