Understanding the Uighur Movement-1

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 15 Jul 2009 14:31

Uighurs' protests were peaceful: president of World Uighur Congress Rabia Kadir (INTERVIEW)

Rabia Kadir: The whole Turkic world fully supports us and expresses readiness to help us. The Turkic world is always unified and I am very glad to this. Since the first days, we have felt the support of Turks in Iraq, the Central Asian countries and others, and we are very grateful for that. This is a difficult day for our people and the Uighurs need both moral and material support. Thank everyone who helps us. I think that not only people, but governments of the Turkish countries, particularly the countries of Central Asia or Azerbaijan must coordinate and help us to raise this issue on the international political level, and demand from China to cease these actions. These countries are our friends, and we are waiting for their support.

Q: Do you have any information about Azerbaijanis living in Urumqi?

A: Many Azerbaijanis live in Urumqi. They are basically engaged in the trade and business. The situation in the region is quite complicated and there is no accurate information about anything. We are very concerned and hope that everything will be resolved soon.

Q: Some argue that official Turkey has shown more zeal in the attacks to the Gaza Strip than in the Uighur issue. Do you think will Turkey show more activity on this issue?

A: We have gained the support of the Turkish people and government of this country. They were among the first expressed their concern. We believe that Turkey will continue to provide us full support, and we do not consider it insignificant. There is no need to compare our situation to the events in Gaza. I thank Prime Minister Erdogan for allowing issuing me a visa to Turkey. Previously I had problems with that, but now as soon as I am free, I will visit the country. I have important business in Washington at the moment, but when I solve them, I want to meet with our supporters, as well as with the Uighurs living in Turkey. Turkey is our great friend and brother.

Q: The Chinese government accuses the Uighurs of having links with Islamic extremists. I would like to hear your opinion on this matter.

A: The whole world is witnessing the developments in China and everybody understands that the Uighurs have no links with Islamic or any other extremists. Our people's protests were peaceful. And in response to it, the Chinese shed our blood after which it has become known who are real extremists. All of these rumors are just a provocation of Chinese.

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 15 Jul 2009 14:35

There are likely over 200 outbreaks of violence in China each day
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But at the root the riots in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi are part of the pattern of the hundreds of violent outbursts of unrest that happen in China every day.

Until 2006, the Chinese authorities used to publish each year an account of these "mass incidents" -- that is, violent riots involving more than 1,000 people.

In 2005, there were 87,000, that is, 234 a day on average. The lack of new annual reports suggests this number continues to climb because one could expect Beijing to boast about it if the number was declining.

harbans · Post by **harbans** » 15 Jul 2009 14:36

Get India to be declared Dar-ul-Islam.

Not that easy. Dhimmi status will have to be accepted and some sort of Sharia Law will have to reign supreme above the constitution for that.
EVer fatwa has to be issued on some real basis. Some mullahs have stated India is not 'Dar Ul Harb'..b ut Dar Ul Islam? No way..

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 15 Jul 2009 14:58

Going OT here a bit, but ...

harbans wrote:Get India to be declared Dar-ul-Islam.

Not that easy. Dhimmi status will have to be accepted and some sort of Sharia Law will have to reign supreme above the constitution for that.
EVer fatwa has to be issued on some real basis. Some mullahs have stated India is not 'Dar Ul Harb'..b ut Dar Ul Islam? No way..

Harbans ji,
I am not an expert on matters Islamic matters, but there are a lot of Muslim countries, which do not have Sharia as the highest Law of the Land. In fact only a minority of Muslim countries do. I guess, it would be more a question of who wields the power in the land, whether it is the Muslims or some other community. Now if that question can be reformulated or reinterpreted, as to whether Muslims in India are free to follow their religion, or in other words, are rulers over their private lives, then possibly a fatwa from all Muslim institutions in India can be arranged.

After all, it is in their interest also. Otherwise, in terrorist attacks, Indian Muslims can be hit as well, or Hindu backlash can also be harmful to their interests.

As mentioned, I am no expert on this, and can't really judge any better.

Disclaimer: This question is relevant on this thread only as far as it makes a possible differentiation which country, India or PRC can be Dar-ul-Islam and 'theoretically' immunized against Islamic ire.

arunsrinivasan · Post by **arunsrinivasan** » 15 Jul 2009 17:04

Did China's Nuclear Tests Kill Thousands and Doom Future Generations?
Extracts

Enver Tohti remembers the week that it rained dust. That summer of 1973 he was in elementary school in Xinjiang Province, China’s westernmost region, which is inhabited mostly by Uygurs, one of the country’s minority ethnic groups. “There were three days that earth fell from the sky, without wind or any sort of storm. The sky was deadly silent—no sun, no moon,” he recalls. When the kids asked what was happening, the teacher told them that there was a storm on Saturn (its Chinese name translates into “soil planet”). Tohti believed her. It was only years later that he realized it was radioactive dust raised by the test detonation of a nuclear bomb within the province.

Three decades on, Tohti, now a medical doctor, is launching an investigation into the toll still being taken—and one that the Chinese government steadfastly refuses to acknowledge. A few hundred thousand people may have died as a result of radiation from at least 40 nuclear explosions carried out between 1964 and 1996 at the Lop Nur site in Xinjiang, which lies on the Silk Road. Almost 20 million people reside in Xinjiang, and Tohti believes that they offer unique insight into the long-term impact of radiation, including the relatively little studied genetic effects that may be handed down over generations. He is establishing the Lop Nur project at Sapporo Medical University in Japan with physicist Jun Takada to evaluate these consequences.

Takada has calculated that the peak radiation dose in Xinjiang exceeded that measured on the roof of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor after it melted down in 1986. Most damage to Xinjiang locals came from detonations during the 1960s and 1970s, which rained down a mixture of radioactive material and sand from the surrounding desert. Some were three-megaton explosions, 200 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, says Takada, who published his findings in a book, Chinese Nuclear Tests (Iryokagakusha, 2009).

In the early 1990s Takada, who studied radiation effects from tests conducted by the U.S., the former Soviet Union and France, was invited by scientists in Kazakhstan, which borders Xinjiang, to evaluate the hazard from Chinese tests. He devised a computer model to estimate fallout patterns using Soviet records of detonation size and wind velocity as well as radiation levels measured in Kazakhstan from 1995 to 2002. Takada was not allowed into China, so he extrapolated his model and used information about the population density in Xinjiang to estimate that 194,000 people would have died as a result of acute radiation exposure. Around 1.2 million received doses high enough to induce leukemia, solid cancers and fetal damage. “My estimate is a conservative minimum,” Takada says.

The figures came as little surprise to Tohti. Ironically, as a teenager, he was proud that his province was chosen for tests marking China’s technological and military progress. His view changed when he became a physician and saw a disproportionate number of malignant lymphomas, lung cancers, leukemia cases, degenerative disorders and babies born with deformities. “Many doctors suspected this was connected to the tests, but we couldn’t say anything,” Tohti recalls. “We were warned away from researching by our superiors.”

Tohti was only able to speak out in 1998, when he moved to Turkey, ostensibly as part of his medical training. There he joined forces with a team of British documentary filmmakers whom he smuggled back into Xinjiang as tourists. Together they uncovered medical records showing that cancer rates were 30 to 35 percent higher in the province than the national average.

For Tohti, the priority is helping the sick. In March the French government announced that it would compensate civilian victims of its nuclear tests, which were conducted in Polynesia. In 2008 the Chinese state news service Xinhua reported that its government is paying undisclosed subsidies to military personnel involved in the tests. Tohti wants aid extended to affected civilians, adding that 80 percent do not have health care. “Right now, they can’t afford treatment,” he says. “So all they can do is wait to die.”

Some of the comments are very interesting.

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 15 Jul 2009 18:06

China's Nuclear Weapons and Testing Program
Greenpeace April 1996

China has used its 43 nuclear tests since 1964 to develop the world's fourth largest nuclear weapons arsenal (only the UK's is smaller). It includes approximately 450 nuclear weapons of at least five different types, made up of around 300 strategic weapons that could be fired from land, air and from submarines and around 150 tactical weapons made up of artillery shells and atomic demolition munitions. Together they have a cumulative yield of over 251 megatons or some 17,000 Hiroshima bombs.

China conducted two nuclear tests in 1995, one on 15 May and the other on 17 August. Although many observers expected a further two tests last autumn, China declined to carry out any further tests while the world-wide condemnation of France's nuclear testing program was at its height.

The testing is done at Lop Nor, Xinjiang.

A 1991 book, "Radioactive Heaven and Earth," released by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has given the following amounts of radioactivity as having been released from Lop Nor.

The total amount of plutonium-239 released to the atmosphere as a result of the 23 atmospheric nuclear tests is estimated at 3,300 curies, approximately 48 kilograms in weight. One millionth of a gram of plutonium-239, if inhaled can cause cancer. The amount of plutonium-239 still contained within the Lop Nor site as a result of underground nuclear testing is estimated by IPPNW as 1,800 curies (25 kilograms).

A further two million curies of caesium-137 and 1.3 million curies of strontium-90 have also been released into the atmosphere. The radioactive half-life of these materials are 30 and 29 years respectively. Caesium-137 concentrates in muscle tissue, but normally passes out of the body in two years. Strontium-90, however, attaches to the bones and thus stays in the body giving radiation doses over a longer period of time. The above figures are exclusive of the shorter lived fission products, such as iodine-131, which has a radioactive half-life of eight days, which would have also been released.
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nuk ... ead11.html

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 15 Jul 2009 18:13

'Boundary Agreement' between China, Pak illegal: India
Updated on Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 17:58 IST
..
"Government's position is that this so-called 'Boundary Agreement' (between China and Pakistan) is illegal and invalid. This has been reiterated to the Chinese side in the on-going discussions on the Boundary Question," Minister of State for External Affairs Praneet Kaur said while replying to a question.

She said under "the so-called China-Pakistan 'Boundary Agreement' of 1963, Pakistan illegally ceded 5,180 kms of Indian territory in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir to China."

The Minister added that Pakistan was in "illegal and forcible occupation of approx. 78,000 sq.kms of Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir since 1948 while 38,000 sq.kms was under the occupation of China".

Any day now....

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 15 Jul 2009 18:16

narayanan wrote: Any day now....

Is China Prepared ?...

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 15 Jul 2009 18:33

Statue of Musharraf, Nolth of Gobi Deselt Le-Education Camp, China

Splittist Propaganda from the Capitalist Imperialists and their Running Dogs

July 13, 2009
Fuse of Fear, Lit in China, Has Victims on 2 Sides
By EDWARD WONG

URUMQI, China — The lynch mob first set upon the lame Uighur shoeshine boy in the narrow alley, sticks and knives in hand. Then it turned to the two men working at the reception desk in the Light of Dawn hotel.

The men dashed into the rear bedroom and locked the wooden door. It quickly gave way to the dozens of ethnic Han men hacking and kicking and punching at it. One knife blow fell on Abulimit Asim’s head, then another.

“They wanted to kill us, but there was nowhere for us to go,” Abulimit, who goes by his given name, said Wednesday, a day after the attack, his head bandaged and dried blood still splattered across his white shirt. “We were helpless.”

Abulimit survived the deadliest outbreak of ethnic violence in China in decades, when Uighurs and Han slaughtered each other for days across this regional capital of 2.3 million. But the assault on him is also the latest chapter in what the Uighurs say is a long history of victimization by the Han, ...

Like many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking race of Sunni Muslims, his tale begins in the string of oasis towns in southern Xinjiang, settled by Uighurs in the 10th century after their migration from the Mongolian steppe. Five years ago, Abulimit and his family abandoned their poor farmland to seek their fortunes among the gleaming towers of Urumqi.

He found himself among people whose language he does not speak, but who hold all the power across Xinjiang — political, economic and cultural. Although Uighurs are still the largest ethnic group among the 20 million people of Xinjiang, Han settlers, many just poor farmers, have been flocking to the region for decades, in part because of government encouragement. Urumqi is now more than 70 percent Han.

“They don’t listen to us,” he said as he walked Wednesday from a police station where he had been turned away while trying to report the assault.

The bottled frustration of the Uighurs exploded on July 5, when a clash between at least 1,000 Uighur protesters and riot police officers turned into a night of bloodletting in which young Uighur men rampaged through the streets killing Han civilians. For at least three days after, Han mobs armed with sticks and knives roamed the city exacting vengeance.

The Chinese government says that at least 184 people were killed in all, three-quarters of them Han, and that those responsible are “terrorists.” But many Uighurs assert that hundreds of Uighurs were shot dead by Chinese security forces and massacred by Han mobs.

What has emerged is two distinct versions of the violence, two narratives of victimhood.

For the Uighurs, the role of victim is all too familiar, they say.

“Our traditions, our clothing, our language, they want us to get rid of it all,” said a Uighur merchant in the same alleyway where Abulimit lives and works. “They want us to become Han.”

Chinese officials say the Uighurs are treated with respect and are even given advantages over the Han when it comes to family planning policy and university admissions, among other things.

But many Uighurs, especially those like Abulimit from the south, say they feel alienated in a quickly changing Xinjiang. Raised in remote oasis towns like Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan, they are less educated and rarely speak Mandarin. They are also more devout.

“We’re just farmers from Khotan,” said Abulimit’s wife, a woman in black robes and a white floral head scarf.

Once the seat of a Buddhist kingdom on the Silk Road, Khotan sits on the southern edge of the scorching Tarim Basin. It is known for its nephrite jade and silk carpets, but there is, too, an air of desperation. Every day, residents scour a dry riverbed for tiny pieces of jade, hoping to find the one stone that will transform their lives.

Abulimit, his wife and two children left five years ago, following relatives to Urumqi. They made the 24-hour bus trip north across the Taklamakan Desert.

The old Uighur quarter is redolent of Islamic bazaars across Asia. Open-air food markets thick with the smell of grilling kebabs spill across sidewalks. Narrow passageways wind behind mosques.

Here and in nearby suburbs, the streets are crowded with migrants from southern Xinjiang selling fruit from wooden carts or cheap household goods from blankets. It is usually the only job they can get. With little knowledge of Mandarin, they cannot compete with Han migrants, even for something as menial as construction work.

“The Han discriminate against us,” said the merchant who works in the same alleyway as Abulimit. “Some companies want only Han workers. Even a lot of Uighur college graduates cannot get jobs.”

Several middle-class Uighurs said in interviews that poorer migrants from the south were to blame for the killings of Han civilians on July 5, frustrated as they were by their downtrodden state.

Abulimit was luckier than most. An older brother owned flophouses along a dead-end alley that ran south off Tianchi Road, west of the heart of the Uighur quarter. Abulimit got a desk job at the Tang Nuri hotel, or Light of Dawn, and he and his family moved into a cramped room on the fifth floor of another hotel around the corner.

The alley, in part a ghetto for jade sellers from Khotan, was a natural target for the reprisal attacks by Han vigilantes that mostly took place across Urumqi on July 7. That day, at about 2 p.m., dozens of men armed with sticks and knives turned from a wide avenue to the mouth of the alley. They beat a convenience store owner, Abulajan, 32, who walks with a limp now and can barely turn his head.
........
Abulajan and many others in the area said there were about 30 armed paramilitary soldiers standing near the mouth of the alley that day, presumably to stop any violence. “But the soldiers did nothing,” Abulajan said.

Next, the mob descended on the lame shoeshine boy outside the Light of Dawn hotel. He was hit in the head and stabbed in the back, said a grand-uncle, Muhammad Jan.

Inside the hotel, Abulimit and a security guard, Abdul Rahman, barricaded themselves in a bedroom next to the reception desk. The vigilantes knocked a wide hole in the door.

“We couldn’t stop them,” Abulimit said. “I fainted when they started beating and cutting me.”

.....................
Abulimit sat in a clinic next door while a doctor changed the dressing on his head. How quickly the wounds would heal, no one knew.

Huang Yuanxi contributed research. {And is now on the Rist of Sprittist Tellolists}

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 15 Jul 2009 19:12

RajeshA wrote:Disclaimer: This question is relevant on this thread only as far as it makes a possible differentiation which country, India or PRC can be Dar-ul-Islam and 'theoretically' immunized against Islamic ire.

Why only Islamic nations are allowed to use this religious affinity clause to butt into other nations' internal affairs? Is this a good precedence?

IMO, it will have international ramifications. What if China raises the Buddhist cause in some of these OIC nations?

arunsrinivasan · Post by **arunsrinivasan** » 15 Jul 2009 19:17

RamaY wrote: What if China raises the Buddhist cause in some of these OIC nations?

Correct point, wrong country.

Imagine China, raising the Buddhist cause

kittoo · Post by **kittoo** » 15 Jul 2009 19:21

narayanan wrote: Any day now....

I know its supposed to be something sarcastic and/or funny, but I dont get it. Please enlighten me.

Dilbu · Post by **Dilbu** » 15 Jul 2009 20:23

China issues alert in Algeria

China has urged its citizens in Algeria to take extra care, after reports that a militant group might take revenge for the recent deaths of Muslim Uighurs.

On Tuesday a UK-based security firm reported that an al-Qaeda-linked group had threatened to target Chinese workers in north Africa.

The Chinese foreign minister recently appealed for understanding within the Muslim world in the wake of the unrest.

AoA onlee.

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 15 Jul 2009 20:38

Did China's Nuclear Tests Kill Thousands and Doom Future Generations?

Aha!

I just remembered seeing that article. It was in "July 2009" issue of ScAm, and I put it down to the standard NonProllotullah propaganda, now that Barbara Boxer is unofficial POTUS. So it came out - mid-June/late June. Same lines as "1,700,000,000 Indians died due to Pokhran tests, and by the way, the Indian nuclear explosions never worked".

So this is the other support for the Turkish Govt's "Genocide" claim. "100,000,000,000,000 Uighurs wiped out by Communist New Clear Detergent testing".

HELLLLOOOOO Acharya, what's going on? Should we start rumors of a serious systemic breakdown at Acharya Conspiracies LLC? This is so blatant. The Urumqi riots have clearly been in the planning stages for at least 6 months, then.

Until very recently (i.e., today) I had not realized that Lop Nor (Lop Nur) was not in Tibet or the Gobi desert, it's in the Tarim Basin of the Taklamakhan desert in Xinjiang. It is south-southeast of Urumqi. Though it is much closer to other Chinese provinces than it is to either Tibet or the FSU borders, so it is a logical choice of site.
Per Encyclopedia Brittanica (pending update to match the ScAm/ Turkey/CIA scam), that whole area has been UNINHABITED since 1920, when there was a plague outbreak among the Uighur "bands" who tried to survive there before then.

The area is covered in undulating sand/salt typical of a long-dead lakebed (like Nevada salt flats test range). It is not surprising that above-ground thermonuke explosions would rain radio-active soil over a wide area. I don't doubt the stories, but I tend to doubt the scale of the claimed "genocide".

Anyone who has studied the "western" and western-funded Indian media reaction to the post-Godhra events, and investigated the question: "Who seemed to be preparing briskly for the Godhra atrocity in the months and weeks before it?" will recognize the ScAm article, the various articles in the various "newspapers", the visit of the Turkish Minister, the phone activities from the "tiny office located RIGHT ACROSS from the White House" (a very blatant decision to convey a message), as all being part of a well-planned pattern.

Which is why I keep saying: don't follow the herd into an enraged condemnation of the Chinese. Someone is pulling the puppet chains to MAKE you do exactly that, for their own purposes.

Kittoo:

I know its supposed to be something sarcastic and/or funny, but I dont get it. Please enlighten me.

A Conspiracy Theorist par excellence, wasting talent on trying to see sarcasm or humor in my humble efforts to convey information, and my diehard optimism. I don't even have the brains to see the deep strategic smartness of keeping Indian territory and citizens and their defenders in a Stone Age condition just in case the Chinese attack...

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 15 Jul 2009 20:51

Kittoo:

Here is the latest advice from the Great Satan on how India should run its Foreign Policy: Enjoy! Not totally OT to this thread because the "debate" here is on the brilliant notion of conducting "covert" terrorism 400 miles north the Himalayas, deep inside PRC, and thus gaining control of the vast natural resources of East Turkestan by feigning friendship with the fezzes of Istanbul.

In a landmark {that means: Like a crater} paper titled, Developing India’s Foreign Policy "Software," {that's because the racist stereotype du jour is that Indians "only" know how to type outsourced "software" as opposed to Tall, Fair, tight-musharrafed, muscular, esp. between the ears, Real paki workers who develop HARDware} Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, {who probably can't write a program to print out "Hello World", or do d(exp(x))/dx } "outlines significant shortcomings in India’s foreign policy institutions that undermine the country’s capacity for ambitious and effective international action, and proposes steps that both New Delhi and Washington should take, assuming they aim to promote India’s rise as a great power."

The paper goes on to say:

India’s own foreign policy establishment hinders the country from achieving great-power status for four main reasons:
{0} They diss poor narayanan's posts on PeeAref}
(1) The Indian Foreign Service is small, hobbled by its selection process and inadequate midcareer training, and tends not to make use of outside expertise; {Aha! Like, "Council on Foreign Relations" Senior Fellows, Eric Margolis, Stphen Cohen etc}

(2) India’s think-tanks lack sufficient access to the information or resources required to conduct high-quality, policy-relevant scholarship; {because they don't read BRM/SRR, same problem as 99.9999% of present-day postors at BRF}

(3) India’s public universities are poorly funded, highly regulated, and fail to provide world-class education in the social sciences and other fields related to foreign policy {such as Anthropology, Aryan Invasion Theory and International Terrorism}; and

(4) India’s media and private firms—leaders in debating the country’s foreign policy agenda—are not built to undertake sustained foreign policy research or training. {But they are great at licking the hands of dictators, e.g. Shekhar Stinking-Dupatta Gupta at the infamous Agra Dog Breakfast and subsequent Lifafa Tour of Pakistan}

For India to achieve great-power status, a number of improvements to its foreign policy software will be required:

• expand, reform, pay, and train the Indian Foreign Service to attract and retain high-caliber officers

• encourage the growth of world-class social science research and teaching schools in India through partnerships with private Indian and U.S. investors, universities, and foundations

• invest in Indian think-tanks and U.S.-India exchange programs that build capacity for foreign policy research

• bring non-career officers into the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and other parts of the foreign policy establishment as term-limited fellows to improve outside understanding of the policy process

• support the efforts of Indian researchers to maximize public access to material related to the history of India’s foreign policy by way of the 2005 Right to Information Act.
{• Appoint Arundhati Roy Foreign Minister, and Pankaj Mishra as Information Minister}

To read an executive summary as well as the full 24 page report, please log on to http://usindiafriendship.net/ and turn to the top left hand corner of the page.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 15 Jul 2009 20:59

RamaY wrote:
RajeshA wrote:Disclaimer: This question is relevant on this thread only as far as it makes a possible differentiation which country, India or PRC can be Dar-ul-Islam and 'theoretically' immunized against Islamic ire.
Why only Islamic nations are allowed to use this religious affinity clause to butt into other nations' internal affairs? Is this a good precedence?

IMO, it will have international ramifications. What if China raises the Buddhist cause in some of these OIC nations?

RamaY ji,
I wished there was a United Nations and all nations were equal and all dealt with each other on the basis of rules of engagement. Alas, that is not going to happen any time soon.

There are several systems of engagement out there - UNSC P5, EU, Ummah, Anglo-American Nexus, NSG, NATO, WTO, OPEC, Big Business, Military-Industrial Complex, etc. etc. Each system has an internal dynamic and an external behavior.

Islam has become a basis of power politics in the world, which uses Oil and Jihad for its ammunition or for that matter its currency. OIC is one window into the Ummah. That is reality. There is little an outsider such as India can do about it, so we need to accept reality.

China is not a proponent of Buddhism. If any country can become the Mecca of Buddhism, it is India. However Buddhism has a different internal dynamic. The Buddhist monks in Myanmar are at the mercy of the Junta and get a regular flogging. The Dalai Lama sits in Dharamshala as a refugee. In Indo-China the wars and communist regimes have ravaged Buddhism. In Mongolia and China, communism too have taken a toll on the Buddhist traditions. In South Korea, the evangelicals have given Buddhism a run for its money. In Japan Buddhism takes a back seat. Only in Sri Lanka, do the Buddhists hold any sway in the politics of the land. Buddhism was from the beginning hardly an aggressive force. Now it is almost a spent force. The leadership of these erstwhile Buddhist countries take decisions and drive their foreign policy according to other considerations. At the moment there is no Buddist Ummah.

China is not a member of OIC, so would hardly be in a position to raise any issue, leave alone something related to Buddhism. In any case, China is itself in the process of exterminating the Tibetan Buddhism Heritage, so why should it care about Buddhism anywhere.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 15 Jul 2009 21:05

The foreign policy instructions are similar to the inter-faith dialog arranged by the Vatican* instructing Indians to be pluralistic and respectful of all religions.

* Tamil movie watchers might recognize the joke "Annamalai kae paal aa?" or "Tirunelvelli kae Halwa va?"

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 15 Jul 2009 21:07

Rebiya Kadeer row engulfs Melbourne film festival

The Chinese government demanded a documentary about exiled Uigher leader Rebiya Kadeer be dropped from Australia's largest film festival in a personal phone call to its director, it has emerged.

Melbourne international film festival's Richard Moore fielded a phone call from an angry cultural attaché at the Chinese consulate in the city, over the inclusion of the film about businesswoman Kadeer. Beijing accuses her of instigating the ethnic violence responsible for the deaths of a reported 184 people in Xinjiang province earlier this month. She is the focus of the documentary The 10 Conditions of Love, which will premiere at the festival on 8 August.

Moore said he was surprised to receive the call from attaché Chunmei Chen, apparently a new arrival in Melbourne, reeling off a list of Kadeer's alleged crimes.

"We had a strident conversation," Moore said. "Ms Chen urged me to withdraw the film from the festival and told me I had to justify my actions in programming it. I told her that under no circumstances would I withdraw the film, that I had no reason to do so. I don't need to justify my actions, unless it's in relation to our own sense of morals.

"It showed an extraordinary arrogance on her part and it was an ill advised call to make given the situation."

Moore was referring to China's current row with Australia over alleged commercial spying. Chinese security officials arrested four staff working for Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto last week.

The 10 Conditions of Love centres on Kadeer's relationship with her activist husband Sidik Rouzi, and reveals the impact of her campaign for more autonomy for China's 10 million mainly-Muslim Uighurs on her 11 children, three of whom have received jail sentences.

China's government says the political leader's World Uighur Congress is a front for terrorists pushing for a separate East Turkistan homeland. Kadeer has been in exile since being released from prison in 2005 following a five-year sentence for "providing secret information to foreigners".

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 15 Jul 2009 21:22

Interesting tidbits (or excerpts from Wikipedia) on Rebiya Kadeer : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebiya_Kadeer

On 14 March 2005, Kadeer was released early, nominally on medical grounds, into United States' custody in advance of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region. The U.S., which had pressured for her release, agreed to drop a resolution against China in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. {Bald Eagle and Panda making deals onlee}
She has denied the existence of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, as well as the governments of Kazakhstan, Pakistan and the United States. Rebiya stated her belief that all Uyghur organizations fight peacefully. {Please to note what Avram says about Kazakhs. What is Pakistan doing in that group?}
In an interview with Phoenix TV, she stated that she would remain a citizen of the People's Republic of China, and as a person born in the new China, she would sacrifice her own life for the integrity of China. {be very diplomatic and patriotic}
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kadeer engaged in cross-border trade, accumulating assets which at their peak were worth more than 200 million yuan.[2] She became one of the top five richest people in China, and her success earned her the nickname "the millionairess". The trading company she established had businesses operating in China, Russia and Kazakhstan.[citation needed]
In May 2006, Kadeer's trading company was accused by Xinjiang's autonomous government of "large-scale tax evasion" worth more than 8 million yuan, in addition to more than 20 million yuan in unpaid fines, and 28 million yuan in "arrears to the national bank" and other personal debts.{While one should not believe Panda, but it looks like a tussle between Panda and her company}

Summary: A rich & powerful person, potentially with high ethnic identity, driven out of her land by a powerful & ruthless government.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 15 Jul 2009 21:29

The author of the Sci Am article is

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Zeeya Merali is a freelance science writer based in London.

So most likely an intel ass et.

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 15 Jul 2009 22:44

Uighurs protest outside Chinese embassy in London

LONDON (AFP) — Around 100 pro-Uighur demonstrators protested outside the Chinese embassy in London on Wednesday over the bloodshed in the Xinjiang region, before marching on to Downing Street.

Chanting "stop the killing" and waving East Turkestan flags, Uighurs vented their anger at the unrest earlier this month which left more than 190 people dead.
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Others waved placards reading: "SOS -- help us", "Stop China's terror against Uighurs", "China stole my land, my voice, my freedom" and "60 years too long -- time to free Uighurs."

"Chinese state media are misleading Chinese citizens," Enver Tohti, the chairman of the Uighur United Kingdom Association, told AFP.

"We want to demonstrate for the truth because otherwise there is going to be genocide.

"The Uighurs are outnumbered and one day they might be extinct. It's a very dangerous situation.

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 15 Jul 2009 22:46

US commission seeks China Xinjiang sanctions

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US government commission on religious freedom called Wednesday for targeted sanctions against China over the ethnic unrest in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom said it was "gravely concerned" about China's "repression" of the cultural and religious traditions of the Uighurs, the ethnic group native to the vast, arid Xinjiang region.
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The commission, which includes appointees of both main US political parties, monitors religious freedom abroad and makes recommendations to policymakers but cannot impose sanctions on its own.

The commission also called for an independent investigation into the violence in Xinjiang.

China, which says it has worked to bring development to Xinjiang, reports that most of the victims of the violence were ethnic Hans killed and injured in "rioting" by Uighurs.

But Rebiya Kadeer, the Washington-based leader of exiled Uighurs, told a meeting of the religious freedom commission that Chinese forces used indiscriminate force on peaceful protests.

"You can compare it to the Tiananmen Square massacre," Kadeer told the commission, referring to China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in the nerve center of Beijing 20 years ago.

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 15 Jul 2009 22:48

SwamyG, please search NPR for the same person's name. Recently there was a report on her (I think Acharya posted the links earlier in this thread). She was not just a rich businesswoman whom the PLA ripped off. She was the poster-girl of the Revolution, the self-made Uighur billionairess and mother of 11 whom the Party fast-tracked right into the highest councils in Beijing.

The NPR line is that she fell out of favor because she opened her mouth and put both feet in, in front of the High Command of the PRC, speaking out against the oppression of Her People (ooh! the tears fill my eyes!

). The claim is that right then the Party Bosses told her she had made an excellent speech, but then, when she got off the plane in Urumqui, there was a Welcoming Guard of Honor that took her straight to a People's Court, where she was given 8 years' vacation in the Gobi SunTan and Muscle-Building Resort for "Passing information to visiting foreigners", namely, US CongressPeople. NPR claims it was only newspaper cuttings that she passed, you make your judgements.

Now we see some other points:
1. She "plans to remain a Chinese citizen and "die for the integrity of China". That sounds so good, except that this makes her a Permanent Resident, not a Refugee seeking US citjenship.

Permanent Residents in the US don't get to sit in "tiny offices across from the White House" (source: same NPR report) and earn global notoriety for being on the Wanted List in their countries of citizenship, and at minimum causing severe diplomatic rows with the US, without pretty clear shelter and sponsorship from some people very high up in the US Govt. You try that, you get the kind people from SeeEyeEss at your door with the Dog-Catcher Van within hours, and a one-way ticket back to wherever you came from, pronto.

2. The US obviously did some high-level trade to get her released - AND ABLE TO TRAVEL OUTSIDE CHINA to the US despite her having been so close to the center of power in China. What does this tell you? What happens when someone so close to the Top in China essentially DEFECTS to the US? And why did the PRC ALLOW her to defect so easily?

At minimum, this hangs a HUGE flashing orange light on her. Do your own thinking and draw your conclusions, I would not advise posting them anywhere where "they" can hunt you down for it.

3. About the timing of that Documentary Premiere in Australia. How long does it take from the initial idea, to getting a Documentary ready for Premiere at a film festival across the world? So work backwards, and see when this was planned.

Now work forward and say: "WHY NOW?" Is it because of the mining row between Kangaroostan and Pandastan, or is it much more tied to the timing of the Urumqui riots? When the documentary was first planned, relations between 'Roostan and Pandastan were all lovey-kissey, and 'Roos were going to sell Panda all the Uranium they could eat, remember? So did they expect Roostan AT THAT TIME, to allow this screening? No way!

This is why I say, we need Acharya to do his Deep Background analysis on this.

One last thing. Hard experience of having to deal with the general attacks on all desis of One Community circa 2002 onwards, tells me:

Ppl hu live in glass hovels should not throw stones

As they say, All is Maya. What appears in the news is not news, it is stuff planted months or years ago. "Spontaneous demonstrations", ain't.

Those who organize these ScAms do that, full-time, precisely to ScAm you. You just read what they want you to read, when they are good and ready. So you really don't have a chance unless you start thinking for yourself.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 15 Jul 2009 22:53

narayanan wrote:S

This is why I say, we need Acharya to do his Deep Background analysis on this.

This is below my radar now. It is at the bottom list of priority

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 15 Jul 2009 22:54

Gee! A critical decision for Indian Strategy Makers on how much oil India is going to get per year from the Tarim Basis, and he says it's way down on his Priority List!

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 15 Jul 2009 23:13

narayanan wrote:And why did the PRC ALLOW her to defect so easily?

U.S. Raises Pressure on China Over Human Rights
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

WASHINGTON - The U.S. State Department sharply criticized China's human rights record in a new report Monday, less than two weeks after scrapping plans to censure China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

China has amended its constitution to protect human rights and has adopted legal reforms for monitoring the government. But the report said "it is unclear how or to what extent the constitutional amendment and other legal reforms will be enforced."

The U.S. administration shelved a resolution criticizing China that had been prepared for an international human rights conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

Officials said they had worked out a deal a few days earlier with China on a half-dozen reforms.

These included China's release of Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer, decision to extend an invitation to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, clarification of parents' rights to provide religious education to their children, open an International Red Cross office in Beijing, and revise rules for parole of "state security prisoners," added Michael Kozak, acting assistant secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 15 Jul 2009 23:14

narayanan wrote:What appears in the news is not news, it is stuff planted months or years ago. "Spontaneous demonstrations", ain't.

Now I am loving it even more!

narayanan wrote:Ppl hu live in glass hovels should not throw stones

Such wisdom, and still the lizard didn't heed this advice. What are all these round commie stones doing in Chattisgarh??!!

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 15 Jul 2009 23:27

arunsrinivasan wrote:
RamaY wrote: What if China raises the Buddhist cause in some of these OIC nations?
Correct point, wrong country. Imagine China, raising the Buddhist cause

anything goes in the name of geo-strategy.

Don't you see Indians worried about Muslim uighers?

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 15 Jul 2009 23:31

http://books.google.com/books?id=oZjpcH ... t&resnum=4

May help to understand that everything does NOT go in the name of geostrategy!

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 15 Jul 2009 23:38

I believe Xinjiang is next to Ladakh!

That should interest India, other issues notwithstanding!

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 15 Jul 2009 23:39

Thanks RayC.

There is an old Chinese proverb per my drawing book quoted on the chapter on nomenclature.

"Calling things by the right name, is the begining of wisdom!"

So now we can be wiser after reading the book or atleast skimming thru it.

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And precisely my point about proximity of Xinjiang to Ladakh.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 15 Jul 2009 23:57

Narayanan saar: For the records, I was the first person to voice the "foreign hand" theory

An implicit "why now" is hidden in that. Cheeni and Russi have been making lots of noise about "dollar". Unkil is not going to sit on eazy-chair smoke Cuban cigars while this happens. This morning Bloomberg TV had something about Australian Uranium. Before that it spent some time on China and Iron ore. Japan's shipping industry might reap some of the trade benefits between Brazil and China on the iron ore.

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 16 Jul 2009 00:19

Rajesh:
Chattisgarh is exactly one of those things where we should be very careful. Isn't that where the govt (and its supporters..) "relocated" entire villages to "secure areas" in order to deny safe haven to the Naxal terrorists? How would the same "Council of Hyooman Rites" types describe that? (they already have, but I am not going to give them bandwidth).

I claim that the PRC (no sympathy, just understanding of their predicament) is caught in a similar situation. How much of the Uighur violence is externally fomented, is wide open to question, but there may be more than the usual zero element of truth in the PRC's claims on this question. But as you see from the small pieces of evidence floating in the wind, there is reason to believe that the Xinjiang blow-up had some external planning if not active assistance. This immediately removes my sympathy for the movement, as the net effect is to destroy the lives, property and aspirations that many innocent people built up over a lifetime. Meanwhile these external "Champions of Liberty" care not a bit for these people, only about the spot market price of oil or uranium, etc.

Was the stock market dip of the past 2 weeks also tied to these events? Someone made a few hundred billions if they knew to anticipate it down to an uncertainty of 1 or 2 days.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 16 Jul 2009 00:24

I shall do my homework.

I would rather have India keep quite for the moment in this Yellow revolution and extract my price at the right moment.

None of the players in the current game are relliable. So why waste energy so early in the game?

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 16 Jul 2009 00:28

Exactly. But then the thread is about UNDERSTANDING the "Uighur Movement" and that is a worthwhile effort. We need to really understand much more than that they have oil under their deserts or that they are on a straight line north from Kashmir, or that they ride camels. The seeds for the liberation of Communist-oppressed Asia, and the breakup of the Han dragon may very well be in the Tarim Basin, but they are far from being ready to pour water and fertilizer on. Let's not jump up and down to noise orchestrated by people whose interests may be inimical to ours.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 16 Jul 2009 00:48

Considering the TSP had handed over Uighers accused of terrorism to PRC and has known terrorist training camps for them how involved were they in this 'uprising'? Or was this an off the books operation by the color revolution experts?

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 16 Jul 2009 01:06

In a landmark {that means: Like a crater} paper titled, Developing India’s Foreign Policy "Software," {that's because the racist stereotype du jour is that Indians "only" know how to type outsourced "software" as opposed to Tall, Fair, tight-musharrafed, muscular, esp. between the ears, Real paki workers who develop HARDware} Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, {who probably can't write a program to print out "Hello World", or do d(exp(x))/dx }

you are too much !

btw, n^3 ji did you notice that the people's daily article comments page you had linked carried the IP addresses of the commentators beside the comment ?

man, do I love the subtle ways of the PRC !

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 16 Jul 2009 01:31

Just some links sourced from the University of Internet.

Unkil has still 13 Uighurs in the 'detention' center in Cuba. A related story about Palau* considering to accept the above Uighurs. But looks like Bermuda might be accepting them.

The unrest is less about Islam and more about economics.
An excerpt from the above. Note is from an American Scholar and not a Chinese.

“I think a lot of Han Chinese are being genuine when they say they don’t understand why Uighurs don’t appreciate what the government is doing for them,” said one American scholar who preferred to remain anonymous to preserve research access to Xinjiang.

“It’s matter of different ideas about what development means,” the scholar added. “The way Americans are about democracy, it’s the same way Han Chinese feel about their economic model.”

While he believes the only true solution to the Han-Uighur conflict is the establishment of a new East Turkestan, Tuman is realistic enough to acknowledge China has far too much invested in Xinjiang to let that happen in the foreseeable future. He suggests that as an interim solution Beijing set up an independent unit of the provincial government to represent the concerns of Uighurs with real power to change policy.

BTW, CFR seems to have many Staff Writers with Indic sounding names. Did desis infiltrate it or, is it just outsourcing of journalism?

* I did not know such a country even existed.

shravan · Post by **shravan** » 16 Jul 2009 02:14

China’s Xinjiang Problem
Prof. P. Stobdan is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi
July 09 2009
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India has limited contact with the Uighurs even though India borders Xinjiang. Ever since India was forced to close its Consulate in Kashgar in the 1950s, there have been virtually no interactions between India and Xinjiang. The visit to India in 2005 by the governor of Xinjiang, Ismail Tiliwaldi was an isolated case only meant to deepen Sino-Indian relations. New Delhi treated Tiliwaldi’s visit as a low key affair with no political significance. Some of the economic issues raised during his visit were not followed up later pointing to China’s sensitivities about India’s economic engagement with Xinjiang which was historically described by the Indians as Ratna-Bhumi.

It is evident that the regional balance of interests on the Central Asia-China frontier is undergoing rapid transformation. Major Powers are in pursuit of their interests in the region which was historically of geopolitical interest to India. It is time New Delhi makes a clear distinction between Uighur nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, and builds close ties with the people of Xinjiang in order to gain leverage for future contingencies.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 16 Jul 2009 02:38

Thats him I was thinking of to lead a Central Asia studies Foundation.