Tag: China

Central Asia
ET-Gulag-Archipelago

ICC prosecutor rejects Uighur genocide complaint

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors rejected a complaint filed by exiled Uighurs calling for an investigation of China on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The complaint was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds; the People’s Republic of China, like the United States, does not recognize the ICC. But on the question of forcible removal from countries where the ICC does have jurisdiction, the text of the rejection parsed definitions very closely. While acknowledging forced deportations of Uighurs from Tajikistan and Cambodia back to China to face potential internment and persecution, the ICC stated: “Not all conduct which involves the forcible removal of persons from a location necessarily constitutes the crime of forcible transfer or deportation.” (Photo: ETNAM)

East Asia
Teng Biao

Trump co-opts Chinese dissidents —stirring dissent

Chinese-diaspora opponents of the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship who have swallowed the Trumpian enemy-of-my-enemy kool-aid bait a principled dissident who opposes Trump and the CCP alike as an agent of the latter because he will not toe their reactionary line. The dissident in question is legal scholar and exiled democracy activist Teng Biao, who has faced protests at his New Jersey home. The protesters are followers of exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui who now runs conservative GTV Media in a partnership with far-right operative Steve Bannon. Further evidence that there is no more honorable place in this world than to be a dissident among dissidents. (Photo: Princeton Planet)

Central Asia
East Turkistan

ETIM dropped from US ‘terrorist’ list: how real?

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he is revoking the “terrorist organization” designation of the supposed “East Turkestan Islamic Movement”—an entity that may not actually exist in any organized sense but has been used to justify China’s mass detention of the Uighurs in Xinjiang region. Reaction has been perfectly predictable. The Washington-based Uighur Human Rights Project called Pompeo’s decision “long overdue” and a “definitive rejection of China’s claims.” It was likewise applauded by the DC-based self-declared East Turkistan Government in Exile. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry accused the US of “backpedaling on international counter-terrorism cooperation,” and expressed China’s “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the US decision.” (Map: East Turkistan National Awakening Movement)

East Asia
LegCo

Opposition lawmakers arrested in Hong Kong

Hong Kong authorities arrested eight opposition politicians in relation to a violent incident during a Legislative Council meeting earlier this year.  Back in May, a clash broke out in the chamber over control of a House Committee meeting. During this incident, a pro-Beijing politician dragged opposition lawmaker Ray Chan to the ground; he suffered a slipped disk as a result. Thus far, no pro-establishment lawmakers have been arrested over the incident—yet Chan is among those now detained. The new arrests have been widely condemned as political. (Image of protest occupation of the LegCo chamber in July 2019 via Wikipedia)

Planet Watch
freeway

Humanity’s affluent 1% drive climate change

The richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity during a critical 25-year period of unprecedented emissions growth, according to a new study by the aid group Oxfam. The report, “Confronting Carbon Inequality,” is based on research conducted with the Stockholm Environment Institute and has been released as world leaders prepare to meet at the UN General Assembly to discuss global challenges including the climate crisis. The report assesses the “consumption emissions” of different income groups between 1990 and 2015—the 25 years when humanity doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Tim Gore, head of climate policy at Oxfam and author of the report, said: “The over-consumption of a wealthy minority is fuelling the climate crisis, yet it is poor communities and young people who are paying the price. Such extreme carbon inequality is a direct consequence of our governments’ decades-long pursuit of grossly unequal and carbon-intensive economic growth.” (Photo: malingering via The Source Metro)

Watching the Shadows
Xinjiang

China elected to UN rights council: Orwellian irony

In another one to file under #OrwellWouldShit, the UN General Assembly elected China to the Human Rights Council—despite the country holding some one million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps. The General Assembly also elected Russia, Cuba, Uzbekistan and Pakistan—all similarly accused of human rights violations, if not quite such ambitious ones. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized the election of countries with “abhorrent human rights records.” A week before the General Assembly vote, China’s UN ambassador Zhang Jun read a statement before the body, denouncing the US for “systematic racial discrimination and violence,” which was endorsed by 25 other nations—including Russia, Iran and North Korea. Of course the perverse irony of this is that Pompeo and Zhang are both correct. And therefore neither has any moral credibility to criticize the other. (Photo: Xinjiang Judicial Administration via The Diplomat)

Central Asia
Chamdo

Report: forced labor and relocation in Tibet

A new report by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and the Jamestown Foundation, a DC-based policy think-tank, has found evidence of a system of forced displacement and labor in Tibet, mirroring that put in place over the past two years in Xiinjiang. The report, entitled “Xinjiang’s Militarized Vocational Training System Comes to Tibet,” finds that over half a million people received instruction at “military-style” training centers as part of the program in the first seven months of 2020—around 15% of the region’s population. Of this total, almost 50,000 have been transferred to jobs away from their homes within Tibet, and several thousand have been sent to other parts of China. Many end up in low-paid labor, including textile manufacturing, construction and agriculture. Those targeted for the program are designated “rural surplus laborers,” which according to the report usually refers to traditional pastoralists and nomads. (Photo: military-style training of “rural surplus laborers” in the Chamdo region of Tibet, June 2016, via Phayul)

Central Asia
New York Tibetans

Cop spied on NYC Tibetans for China: feds

An NYPD officer and Army reservist was arrested by federal authorities on charges that he has been acting as an agent of China’s government and surveilling Tibetans living in the New York City area. Baimadajie Angwang of Nassau County worked as a community liaison officer at the 111th Precinct in Queens and held a “secret” security clearance as a member of the Army Reserves at Fort Dix, according to court documents. Prosectuors say Angwang, a native Tibetan and naturalized US citizen who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, sent information to officials at the Chinese consulate in Manhattan about the activities of local ethnic Tibetans. Angwang was allegedly working with officials at the consulate since 2014, including one who was part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, responsible for “neutralizing sources of potential opposition” to the government of China, court documents state. (Photo: Central Tibetan Administration)

Central Asia
Xinjiang

Rights groups warn: Uighurs face ‘genocide’

Several human rights organizations signed an open letter declaring that China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province “strongly suggests that crimes against humanity and genocide are taking place.” The letter cited a recent UN report that raised concerns over “increasing practices of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, absence of judicial oversight and procedural safeguards.” The letter additionally cited evidence of widespread forced labor, forced sterilizations and abortions, separation of children from their families, and destruction of religious and cultural sites. The authors of the letter urged states to call on the UN Human Rights Council to appoint a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the situation in Xinjiang. (Photo: Xinjiang Judicial Administration via The Diplomat)

East Asia
Yau Tsim Mong

Hong Kong protesters defy ban and repression

On the day Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections were originally scheduled before being postponed under pandemic emergency measures, hundreds of protesters defied a ban on street demonstrations to march in opposition to the postponement and the new National Security Law. Some 300 were arrested, and police fired tear-gas and pepperballs to disperse the crowd in Yau Tsim Mong district of Kowloon. Days earlier, the UN special rapporteur for Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Protection, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, and six other UN experts jointly sent a letter to the Chinese government stating that the National Security Law “infringes certain fundamental rights,” and expressing concern that the law may be used to prosecute political dissidents in Hong Kong. (Photo: Studio Incendo)

Central Asia
mongolian

China: resistance to curbs on Mongolian language

Thousands of ethnic Mongolians in the remote north of the People’s Republic of China have gathered outside schools to protest a new policy that would restrict the use of their language in the public education system—a rare display of mass discontent. The policy change in Inner Mongolia means all schools in the region will now be required to teach core subjects in Mandarin, mirroring similar moves in Tibet and Xinjiang to assimilate local indigenous peoples. Students have walked out of classes and assembled outside school buildings shouting, “Mongolian is our mother language!” The protests have seen hundreds of students and parents face off against police. (Photo: Student holds banner reading “Foreign language is a tool, own language is soul,” via SMHIRC)

East Asia
Tony Chung

Hong Kong elections postponed amid repression

Hong Kong authorities announced they will postpone Legislative Council elections originally scheduled for September by one year, citing a resurgence in COVID-19 cases. The postponement comes after several opposition candidates had been barred from running, and several democracy activists were detained under the new National Security Law. Tony Chung, 19, of the pro-independence group StudentLocalism, became the first political figure to be arrested under the controversial law. (Photo of Tony Chung: HKFP)