samedi 28 février 2015
vendredi 27 février 2015
春节期间兵团道路运输运送旅客59.66万人次
天山网讯（兵团日报记者罗全报道）2月26日，记者从兵团交通局获悉，春节期间，兵团道路旅客运输日均投入客车3343辆，累计运送旅客59.66万人次，较去年同期增长8%，期间未发生旅客运输行车责任安全事故和旅客滞留事件。
为确保春节期间广大旅客安全、便捷、有序出行，兵团、师两级交通局分别成立了春运工作领导小组，加强春运期间的安全工作，坚持24小时领导带班值班制度，坚持把安全工作放在春运工作的首位，为春运和春节期间兵团道路运输工作顺利进行提供了组织保障。
Draft Chinese Law Paves Way for Counter-terror Operations Abroad
PLA soldiers pour snow from a tire onto their head during a training session in Heihe, Heilongjiang province, December 24, 2014.
Reuters – China is close to approving a law that will create a legal framework for sending troops abroad on counter-terrorism missions, as Beijing seeks to address the vulnerability of the country’s growing global commercial and diplomatic interests.
Experts said Article 76 of the draft anti-terrorism law would allay concerns among the military elite about the lack of a formal mechanism for carrying out such operations, as well as mark a shift in foreign policy thinking and military doctrine.
The article is a small part of a draft law chiefly aimed at combating terrorism at home that was made public in November. It has undergone a second review by a parliamentary committee, and is likely to be adopted in the coming weeks or months.
China has rarely been the target of terrorist acts overseas but it has vast energy interests, construction projects and mines in unstable parts of the world, including the Middle East and Africa.
The risk to those projects was highlighted in 2011 when the government evacuated thousands of Chinese workers from Libya during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. Some Chinese operations have also generated local hostility over issues such as the use of imported Chinese labor and the exploitation of natural resources.
Article 76 would authorize the military, as well as state and public security personnel, to conduct counterterrorism operations abroad with the approval of the “relevant country.”
While the draft gives few details, experts said the law could initially allow military or state security counter-terrorism experts to work abroad either as part of actual investigations or in a training capacity.
“It shows a legitimate evolution in Chinese thinking on counterterrorism efforts,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow who researches counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “Whether the law allows for cross-border counterterrorism missions is sure to have an impact on military preparations and, ultimately, doctrine.”
Security operations by China abroad are not unprecedented. China sent gunboats down the Mekong River in cooperation with Thailand, Myanmar and Laos in 2011 to combat drug running in the Golden Triangle, and its navy has conducted numerous anti-piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa.
Shen Dingli, a security expert at Shanghai’s Fudan University, said the law was also intended to quell any concerns that China would take unilateral military action as its global security footprint expands.
“Having a law shows we want to address other’s concerns. There is fear that if [cross-border security operations] become more frequent, other countries will worry,” Shen said.
‘Special Role of the Military’
China says it is facing a complex struggle against terrorism. Hundreds of people have been killed over the past two years in the far western region of Xinjiang in unrest the government has blamed on Islamists who want to establish a separate state called East Turkestan.
One of the law’s key statutes paves the way for China to create a domestic body that would have the power to designate organizations and their members as terrorists without due process, a measure condemned by human rights groups.
Beijing has also expressed concern that Chinese militants are traveling to battlefields in Syria and in Iraq, where China has significant oil interests.
The government has been vague, however, about how it might seek to cooperate with countries such as the United States to counter extremists groups, including Islamic State.
In a brief statement in response to questions from Reuters, the Defense Ministry said the Chinese military “shoulders counterterrorism duties, and consistently and proactively participates in international counterterrorism cooperation.”
An editorial in the military-run China National Defense Daily this month said “giving the military the legal power” to conduct operations abroad was a prerequisite to deal with terrorism.
“In confronting the threat of terrorism, which is becoming more rampant by the day, the world’s principle countries all gradually recognize that there is no substitute for the special role of the military,” the paper said.
Indeed, China’s military has already ramped up exercises with other countries in recent years, with counterterrorism activities central to such drills.
“I would argue [the law] is part of a growing normalization of China’s general approach to counterterrorism practices and foreign policy,” said Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
The new law heralds a larger long-term Chinese security influence on countries potentially far from China’s borders, added Christopher Yung, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington.
“Even if you don’t see increased Chinese military activity over the next decade or so, the Chinese at least want to give themselves the authority and the flexibility to do it,” Yung said.
China’s new definition of terrorism removes ‘thoughts’
Uighur man looks on as a truck carrying paramilitary police conduct anti-terrorism oath-taking rally in Urumqi, 2014.
AFP – Thoughts will not be subject to prosecution under China’s new definition of terrorism, state-run media said Thursday.
A panel of China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), removed the word from a draft of the country’s first-ever anti-terrorism law, the Beijing News reported.
The parliament opens its annual meeting in Beijing next week, with terrorism among the top agenda items following a series of deadly attacks that Communist authorities have blamed on separatists from the far-western Xinjiang region, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.
Next week marks the one-year anniversary of the killing of 31 people in a knife rampage at a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming, dubbed “China’s 9/11″ by state media.
According to the Beijing News, an initial draft of the anti-terror law defined terrorism as “any thoughts, speech or activity that – through violence, sabotage or intimidation – aims to cause social panic, impact national decision-making, sow ethnic hatred, overthrow the state or split the country”.
A revised version by the NPC’s Law Committee omits the word “thoughts”, it said.
Under the new definition, terrorism will be defined as “any advocacy or activity that – through violence, sabotage or intimidation – causes social panic, threatens public security or seeks to coerce state organs or international organisations.”
At least 200 people are thought to have died in China over the past year in a series of clashes and increasingly sophisticated strikes, both in Xinjiang and outside it.
Information in the area is tightly controlled and difficult to independently verify.
Beijing has responded by launching a harsh crackdown in the region, with hundreds of people jailed or detained on terror-related offences following a deadly May attack on a market that killed 39 people.
Last month, Human Rights Watch denounced the draft anti-terror law and called for its overhaul, arguing that the measure could grant the Chinese government licence to commit a raft of human rights abuses.
“While terrorism poses grave threats to society, overbroad and abusive counterterrorism measures can also inflict grave harm and exacerbate conflict,” the US-based group’s China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement.
The group gave the example of Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, who in September was sentenced to life in prison for “separatism” in a case rights groups say is part of a plan to silence government critics in the region.
The new law, the group said, would grant the Communist Party even greater powers to “define terrorism and terrorist activities so broadly as to easily include peaceful dissent or criticism” of government policies.
China’s Crackdown on Uighurs Gaining Notice as Violence Continues
Armed Chinese paramilitary policemen march past the site of an explosion outside the Urumqi South Railway Station in Urumqi, May 1, 2014.
By RFA Uyghur Service – An ongoing, sometimes bloody, conflict between minority communities in northwestern China and Beijing is starting to receive international attention, despite the silence of China’s own media.
China in recent years launched a series of “strike hard” campaigns in the Xinjiang region in the name of fighting separatism, religious extremism and terrorism. The targets of these campaigns, the minority Turkic-speaking, Muslim Uighurs, complain of pervasive ethnic discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression by China’s communist government.
In its annual report this week, Amnesty International cited the crackdown among its list of human rights abuses in China.
“The authorities stepped up already onerous restrictions on Islam with the stated aim of fighting ‘violent terrorism and religious extremism,'” Amnesty International said.
“Uighurs faced widespread discrimination in employment, education, housing and curtailed religious freedom, as well as political marginalization,” the report said.
It added that county governments had posted notices requiring schoolteachers to feed ethnic minority Uighur pupils with food and sweets to ensure they couldn’t observe the fasting month of Ramadan.
17 killed in recent violence
A clash last week in Xinjiang’s in Aksu prefecture killed 17 people, including four policemen who were slashed with knives, nine attackers who were shot to death and four people killed by police gunfire, Radio Free Asia reported.
The incident came during house-to-house searches by police, who were attacked by a group of more than 10 people gathered in a house 150 meters from the police station in the town of Yaqaeriq.
“When they entered the house, there were 10 or so people in the house. The chief ordered them to disperse, at this point they rushed all together and snatched the rifle and handgun from Qasim Imir’s hand, then slashed him with the knifes and axes,” Yaqaeriq Deputy Mayor Turdahun Tohti told Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Uighur service. Qasim Imir was the police chief of the town.
“Because the rest of the police were auxiliary police they did not have guns, so they ran for their lives, and the suspects chased them. When they closed up on them as they approached the police station, the armed police stationed there came out and started shooting,” Tohti added.
The showdown ended with Imir and three auxiliary police dead from knife and axe wounds, nine suspects shot to death by police and four passersby who were hit by police gunfire, he said.
Among the slain passersby were a man named Qul, head of the local hospital, and his daughter who, Tohti said, “ran so they were confused with the suspects and police shot them.”
Two local farmers were also mistakenly shot dead by police, he said.
Uighurs feel scrutiny, actions excessive
Uighurs say they chafe under strict police scrutiny and controls on their movements and violent clashes with police are not uncommon.
“The strike hard policy exceeds the prescribed limits,” said a worker in Bay county, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“For example a farmer who helped tend his jailed friend’s cornfield was sentenced to three years as a ‘terrorist.’ He does not even know why he was sentenced,” the worker told RFA.
“Right now everybody is living in fear. There is no guarantee that they will not be arrested on bogus charges as well.”
Banning the Islamic Veil in Xinjiang and Terrorism in China
By Nicki Siamaki – Last week, an article by Foreign Policy stated that the Chinese Communist Party played a crucial role in banning the Islamic veil in Urumqi, the capital of China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, because they have “drawn a direct link between veiling and radical Islam and even terrorists”.[1] However, evidence indicates that the Chinese Communist Party’s ban on the veil may be just another excuse to continue marginalizing the Uyghur Muslim minority in China.
Most of the Uyghur Muslims have their roots from East Turkistan which was annexed as a part of China after the Manchu Empire invaded in 1884.[2] Former East Turkistan became known as the Xinjiang province. Between 1949 and 1976, the percentage of ethnic Chinese people rose from 6 percent to 41.5 percent after Beijing initiated an assimilation and migration policy in 1949.[3] Today, 45 percent of the 22 million population is Uyghur, while 40 percent is Han, making Xinjiang a Muslim-majority province. [4]
Such migration over the years has led to vast employment and economic inequality in Xinjiang. Although economic growth is beneficial, many of the Uyghur believe that the Han will be the ones benefitting from the economic expansion.[5] Fifty-nine percent of Xinjiang’s population living beneath the poverty line are from an ethnic minority and most of these minorities work in the public sector whilst the Han population dominates in the private sector.[6] For example, only 38 percent of the Han population works in the agricultural sector while 61 percent of Uyghurs work in agriculture. Despite the fact that the Chinese government provides significant subsidies to its ethnic minorities, such as subsidies for newlywed inter-ethnic people in Xinjiang, many Han are sceptical about their benefit from the economic expansion.[7] In addition, economic growth rates in Xianjing suggest that minorities do not benefit from the growth as much as the majority. For example in 2003, Karamay (an oil-rich city in Xinjiang) enjoyed a per capita income of approximately $8,000, whilst for ethnic minority populated cities such as Kashgar the per capita was only around $500. Moreover, economic expansion has also demolished many of the traditional houses of ethnic minorities in Kashgar and has pushed many Uyghur to the outskirts of the city. In 2009, the Chinese government asked thousands of Uyghur to leave their homes because the walls were not “secure” in case of an earthquake threat. Many Uyghur felt forced to leave their homes into new compounds where they were separated from their families and work places.[8]
Uyghur tension with the Han and the Chinese central government has been increasing over the years largely due to religious repression. Starting in 1998, the Communist Party laid out a set of guidelines to control religion in Xinjiang.[9] They held that they must tighten regulations around religious personnel and fight against non-governmental activity. Authorities were prescribed to “control the imam’s ideological state at all times”, and they must undergo annual revisions to keep their jobs.
September 11th incited a further crackdown on religious activity starting in 2001. The 2001 Amendments held for a “narrowing of “normal” religious activities”, for religious leaders to demonstrate loyalty to China, prohibited pilgrimages not arranged by the government, narrowed the right of religious organizations to sponsor seminars, and control on what religious organizations publish.[10] Uyghur mosques also underwent regular supervision, with 23,909 mosques inspected in 2001 and numerous mosques being demolished. Seven imams were arrested that year. Teaching religion at school and university also became illegal. Religious repression continued over the years, with this past July seeing a ban on Ramadan fasting in Xinjiang. Now, with the ban on the Islamic veil, many Muslims find it increasingly difficult to cope with living in Xinjiang. Further, the Uyghur also encounter various forms of ethno-cultural repression, such as Mandarin having to be the primary language of instruction in education systems, as opposed to the Turkic language that most Uyghurs speak.
Before the ISIL threat, a report on Human Rights Watch highlights how “while there are genuine security concerns in Xinjiang”, the Chinese government raises the issue of “Islamic terrorism” to foster international support for its crackdown on Uyghurs.[11] For example, a document titled “East Turkestan Terrorist Forces Cannot Get Away with Impunity” by the Informational Office of the PRC State Council holds that 162 deaths and 440 people were injured as a result of Islamic terrorism between 1992 and 2002. However, many were skeptical about these claims as much of the evidence needed to support them had been left out. A study by James Millward, Professor at Georgetown University, showed that only fifty-seven of these deaths are detailed while the other 105 deaths are unclear.[12] In addition, most of these incidents were small scale attacks that killed only one to two people. What is ambiguous is whether these attacks were “religious” attacks or “separatist” motivated attacks resulting from the ethnic tensions. The Chinese government has also had crackdowns on separatists. For example, in 2002 an Uyghur poet, Tursunjan Emet, was arrested for writing a poem labelled as an “ethnic separatist crime in the area of the ideological front”, and in 2005, an Uyghur author, Nurmemet Yasin, was sentenced to ten years in prison for “inciting separatism”.[13]
This is not to say that violence in Xinjiang has not been increasing recently, but that the links between the violence and Islamic terrorism are equivocal. In his analysis on ethnic minority tensions in China, Reza Hasmath, Professor at Oxford University, notes several violent attacks recently.[14] In June 2013, thirty-five people were killed in Xinjiang due to ethnic violence attacks between the Uyghurs and Hans after a car explosion in Beijing. But how many of these attacks were a result of Islamic terrorism, and is there a strong relation between Uyghurs and ISIL? An Iraqi report in September held that a Chinese man was fighting for ISIL, and it was automatically assumed that the man must be Uyghur. This led to large concern by Chinese analysts claiming that ISIL may have “cells” in Xinjiang, despite the lack of evidence to prove this. Also, the Chinese government accused the Uyghurs being behind the “terrorist attack” which occurred on July 28thkilling thirty-seven people.[15] This justified their immediate shooting of fifty-nine “terrorists” and arresting of another 215. Without the facts providing reason for the violence, Chinese authorities label many attacks as “terrorism” to justify their crackdowns on separatists or any other group that entices violence.
Claiming that the ban on the Islamic veil is a part of an effort to crackdown on terrorists and to fight the “ISIL threat” is counterproductive and reinforces the repression that the Uyghurs have been facing for the past decades. To claim that the Islamic veil is linked to terrorism or ISIL in itself is irrational. Many people in Egypt and Pakistan wear the hijab, but Egypt only has approximately four people fighting for ISIL for every million inhabitants, and Pakistan only one per million.[16] This is in contrast to Sweden, which has an estimated thirty-two fighters per million and Australia with thirteen per million. The banning of the veil and of other forms of religious activity likely increases the chance of terrorist activity, rather than decreasing it, as people feel progressively marginalized in their homeland. If the Chinese government is hoping to push out the Uyghurs by repressing them in order to lessen “Islamic terrorism”, they are failing indeed.
[1] http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/05/chinas-ban-on-islamic-veils-is-destined-to-fail/
[2] http://uyghuramerican.org/about-uyghurs
[3] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/china0405/4.htm#_Toc100128611
[4] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16860974
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyxgQTPrveA
[6] zhu
[7] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/02/chinese-authorties-cash-inter-ethnic-marriages-uighur-minority
[9] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/china0405/6.htm#_Toc100128617
[10] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/china0405/6.htm#_Toc100128617
[11] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/china0405/4.htm#_Toc100128611
[13] http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/china0405/4.htm#_Toc100128611
[14]http://www.academia.edu/2502813/What_Explains_the_Rise_of_Ethnic_Minority_Tensions_in_China
[15] http://thediplomat.com/2014/09/china-and-the-isis-threat/
[16] http://www.rferl.org/contentinfographics/infographics/26584940.html
China Targets Muslims, Curbs Freedom of Speech For All: Report
Security forces participate in a military drill in Hetian, northwest China’s Xinjiang region, June 6, 2014. (AFP).
RFA Uyghur Service – During 2014, the ruling Chinese Communist Party intensified its targeting of ethnic minority groups with an “anti-terror” campaign in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, and ratcheted up controls on freedom of expression, Amnesty International said in its annual global human rights report.
Ethnic minorities including Tibetans, mostly Muslim Uyghurs, and Mongolians faced discrimination and targeting by security forces, the London-based group said in a report published on its website on Wednesday.
The administration of President Xi Jinping last year launched a “strike hard” terror campaign in Xinjiang that targeted legitimate religious activities among the region’s Muslims, according to the report.
“The authorities stepped up already onerous restrictions on Islam with the stated aim of fighting ‘violent terrorism and religious extremism,'” Amnesty International said.
“Uyghurs faced widespread discrimination in employment, education, housing and curtailed religious freedom, as well as political marginalization,” the report said.
It added that county governments had posted notices requiring schoolteachers to feed ethnic minority Uyghur pupils with food and sweets to ensure they couldn’t observe the fasting month of Ramadan.
Meanwhile, prohibitions on government employees and Communist Party cadres adhering to any religion were reinforced.
“Several Uyghur officials were punished for downloading religious materials from the Internet or ‘worshipping openly,'” the report said, adding that outward signs of adherence to Islam such as beards or veils were often banned.
‘Strike hard’ campaign
The “strike hard” anti-terror campaign launched by the government last May had raised concerns that more than 200 people accused of membership in “terrorist and extremist groups” would not receive fair trials, Amnesty said.
“Top officials prioritized speed in making arrests and convening trials, while calling for greater “co-operation” between prosecuting authorities and courts,” the report said.
The authorities held several mass “sentencing rallies” including on attended by 7,000 people in a stadium on May 29, at which 55 people, believed to be Uyghurs, were sentenced for crimes including terrorism, it said.
It said official accounts of a July 28 shooting in Yarkand (in Chinese, Shache) county had been challenged by Uyghurs, who said security personnel had opened fire on hundreds of unarmed Uyghur protesters.
Restrictions in Tibet
Tibetans, meanwhile, continued to face discrimination and restrictions on their rights to freedoms of religious belief, expression, association, and assembly, amid continuing self-immolations, the report said.
It said local authorities had targeted some relatives and friends of those who self-immolated for allegedly helping them to do so.
Anyone with links to Tibetans overseas or found with materials linked to exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has been barred from senior office or from running in village elections, the report said.
Across China, the government also took further measures to “severely restrict the right to freedom of expression,” the report said.
“Activists and human rights defenders risked harassment and arbitrary detention,” the report said. “Torture and other ill-treatment remained widespread and access to justice was elusive for many.”
The authorities continued to harass, arbitrarily detain, imprison, torture, and otherwise mistreat activists for legitimate human rights work, the report said.
“[We saw people held in] black jails, illegal house arrest, a lot of activists held for ‘picking quarrels and stirring up trouble’, ‘disrupting public order,’ and crimes like that,” Amnesty International China researcher Patrick Poon told RFA.
Reports of torture
Last year’s crackdown saw increased reports of torture and mistreatment of prisoners of conscience while in custody, Poon said, citing the case of four rights lawyers “arbitrarily detained and tortured” after they tried to visit a client held at an unofficial detention center in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.
Lawyer Tang Jitian reported being “strapped to an iron chair, slapped in the face, kicked, and hit so hard over the head with a plastic bottle filled with water that he passed out,” the report said.
“He said he was later hooded and handcuffed behind his back and suspended by his wrists, while police continued to beat him.”
It said one victim of torture had died in custody after police in Heilongjiang’s Harbin city used electric shocks to elicit information. Four people were later found guilty of torture under police supervision.
China is also increasingly exporting torture and law enforcement equipment overseas, Amnesty International said.
“China consolidated its position as a major manufacturer and exporter of a growing range of law enforcement equipment, including items with no legitimate policing function such as electric shock stun batons and weighted leg cuffs,” the report said.
It said China has also freely exported equipment that could be used legitimately in law enforcement but is easily abused, such as tear gas or riot control vehicles, without adequate controls to prevent serious human rights violations.
Arbitrary detention
The report said police had switched tactics following the abolition of the “re-education through labor” camp system, arbitrarily holding people in other locations instead.
Legal education centers, various forms of administrative detention, ‘black jails,’ and illegal house arrest were all used to silence perceived troublemakers, while many activists were held under criminal detention on vague public order charges.
The authorities continued to issue rules and regulations targeting freedom of expression, with a new task force set up in charge of “coordinating Internet security,” especially ideological efforts to repel “hostile foreign forces” online, the report said.
Lawyers were barred from discussing cases or writing open letters while working on cases, or from criticizing the government or legal system, while journalists were banned from reporting on stories outside their current specialty, and from posting articles without their employers’ approval.
‘Excessive force’
In Hong Kong, Amnesty International spokeswoman Mabel Au said, the 79-day Occupy Central mass pro-democracy campaign had led to police mistreatment of protesters, in spite of being nonviolent.
“We don’t think the police used force in accordance with international standards,” Au told RFA.
“We saw a number of acts of excessive force and violence against citizens, including their use of tear-gas that breached some international standards,” she said.
“It was unnecessary for the police to fire 87 rounds of tear-gas,” citing U.N. standards for the use of tear gas.
China must uphold religious freedom in new year
Uyghur man sits in the shade near the mosque. Soldiers sit on the edge of the square in the distance.
By Katrina Lantos Swett – In the name of fighting terrorism, officials increased their persecution of the Uighur Muslim community in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. In the name of fighting cults, they continued their assault on Falun Gong, unregistered Christian organizations, Buddhist groups and others.
These examples of flagrant violations of religious freedom and fundamental human rights stand in sharp contrast to China’s preferred narrative of a modern, forward-looking superpower. Instead it reveals a one-party dictatorship fearful of diversity and hostile to freedom and faith.
Late last year, a Chinese court sentenced Ilham Tohti, a respected Uighur Muslim scholar, to life in prison for separatism. Known for peacefully advocating Uighur rights, Tohti was an economics professor in Beijing until his arrest in January of last year. Prior to this draconian sentence, China restricted Uighur rights to fast and carry out other religious observances during the month of Ramadan. This assault on religious freedom follows years of Chinese authorities’ raiding schools, seizing literature, shuttering religious sites, clamping down on the study of the Quran, monitoring imams’ sermons, restricting Muslim dress and religious expression and banning children from mosques.
China has also trained its sights on so-called cults, an arbitrary term that potentially includes any group operating outside the government’s orbit of strict regulation and control. Government officials stepped up the anti-cult campaign after a woman was beaten to death last May by six members of a group called Almighty God. Days later, the government published a list of 20 cults, and Chinese media warned repeatedly about their evil dangers.
Heading the list was Falun Gong, which has been in Beijing’s crosshairs for more than 15 years. Near the end of last year, Wang Zhiwen, a Falun Gong practitioner, finished a 15-year prison sentence, during which he was tortured, and then he was detained in a brainwashing center. He has been stripped of all political rights for four years and has not been getting needed medical care. Falun Gong practitioners Li Chang, Yu Changxin and Ji Liewu remain imprisoned. Over the years, human rights groups have reported deaths in custody, the use of psychiatric experiments and the harvesting of organs of Falun Gong members.
Targeting peaceful religious communities deeply undermines the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of all its citizens.
China’s anti-cult campaign also threatens unregistered, or underground, Christian churches. An article last year in a government newspaper warned that “underground churches and evil cults are spreading like mushrooms.” Even before this, China’s government issued a directive to “eradicate” unregistered Protestant churches over the next decade. Catholic and Protestant groups refusing to register have long faced arrests, fines and church closures. Pastor Yang Rongli has been serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence since 2009 for leading the 50,000-member Linfen Church in Shaanxi Province.
Such government hostility has gone beyond alleged cults. Starting in early 2014, Chinese Christians were faced with a new threat: assaults on registered churches. In Zhejiang province, the government targeted hundreds of churches, tearing down or removing crosses and even bulldozing a number of them, including Sanjiang Church, which had thousands of members. In Henan province, Pastor Zhang Shaojie of the Nanle County Christian Church was convicted on July 4 on groundless charges of fraud and gathering a crowd to disturb public order and was handed a 12-year prison sentence.
Besides Falun Gong and Christianity, Chinese anti-cult efforts also harass movements within Buddhism. Late last year, China arrested Wu Zeheng — also known as Zen master Shi Xingwu, a renowned leader with millions of followers worldwide — along with more than a dozen of his followers in China. They were charged under China’s anti-cult law barring people from forming or using “superstitious sects or … societies … to undermine the implementation of the laws and … rules and regulations of the state.” If convicted, each could serve from seven years to life in prison.
These actions are on top of China’s continued suppression of Tibetan Buddhism, which has been led to an alarming number of self-immolations. In recent years, more than 130 Buddhists, including monks and nuns, have set themselves ablaze.
Through its conduct, China is denying its people the internationally guaranteed right to believe or not believe according to conscience. Why? Perhaps its leaders fear that allegiance to organizations beyond the Chinese state threaten their control. For example, Ye Xiaowen, a former head of China’s Religious Affairs Bureau, voiced what many Chinese officials fear: that Christians’ role in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s could be repeated in China.
But ironically, repression can exacerbate the extremism it aims to eradicate. Furthermore, targeting peaceful religious communities deeply undermines the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of all its citizens.
Above all else, the Chinese government seeks stability. It will find this an elusive goal as long as it continues to violate the basic rights of millions of its citizens.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America’s editorial policy.
mardi 24 février 2015
2015年内地新疆中职班3月10日起可报名
新疆网讯（记者周坤）2015年内地新疆中职班（简称内职班）将在3月10日至4月10日报名。核心提示： 2015年内地新疆中职班（简称内职班）将在3月10日至4月10日报名。
2月24日，记者从自治区内地新疆学生工作办公室获悉，凡符合报名条件的考生在所在学校或户口所在地教育局进行报名和资格审查。
报名考生需统一参加2015年自治区初中学业水平考试。招生录取工作坚持“阳光招生”，按照“公开、公平、公正”的原则，实行分地区招生与全区统招相结合的录取办法。
报名条件为思想品德合格，拥护四项基本原则，热爱祖国，自觉维护民族团结，遵纪守法；应届初中毕业生；有初中阶段完整学籍；身体健康，符合体检标准；考生直系亲属符合政审要求；学生本人及父母或监护人在疆内有当地常住户口。
2015年内地新疆中职班（简称内职班）招生计划3300人（含兵团300人）。招生专业涉及农林牧渔、资源环境、土木水利、加工制造、轻纺食品、交通运输、信息技术、医药卫生、财经商贸、旅游服务、文化艺术、教育类等12个专业类别的37个专业，部分专业将实行“订单式”培养。
内职班学制为3年，实行汉语授课，针对部分汉语基础薄弱的学生安排半年预科。学校根据学生情况开展分层、插班、混班教学和混合住宿。注重养成教育，重点培养学生的专业技能和职业素养，安排不少于1年的顶岗实习和社会实践。组织学生参加各类职业技能大赛，考取各类职业技能等级和执业资格证书。
内职班毕业生可选择在内地或新疆升学，在新疆可参加普通高考或 “三校高职”考试，“三校高职”实行单列计划、单独划线、单独录取办法。
与此同时，获得省级以上职业院校技能大赛三等奖及以上的学生可保送高职院校相应专业学习。2014年，有340名首届毕业生升入内地和新疆高校继续深造，2015年有1500余名学生报名在内地或新疆高考。
另外，2014年9月底，首届毕业生的就业率就达到88%。
目前，内地已累计招收新疆各族学生1.32万人，为新疆培养了一批职业技能型人才。
Curtain Coming Down on Erdogan’s Excellent Uyghur Adventure
To demonstrate that it’s possible, for me anyway, to acquire a lot of useful information in a short period of time via Twitter, I offer for your consideration this series of exchanges (with multipart tweets stitched together for continuity and clarity):
The whole northern countryside of #Aleppo is crawling with mercenaries/terrorists from Caucasus, Central Asia, and Chinese Ugyur. #Turkeychinahand (me)hmm. wonder if this tweeter knows stuff or just says stuff. Interesting to explore if any of Uyghurs given haven by Turkey have gone on to Syria with any kind of Turkish govt encouragement or knowledge.Chechens living in Turkey have been forced to go to Syriahttp://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/11/turkey-chechen-murder-syria-link.html# … same probably true of Uyghurs living in Turkeychinahand only a few hundred Uyghurs in Turkey as I understand. If TK subsidized & monitored them in place, PRC might think it’s acceptable. But if TK sending them to Syria to get trained/radicalized/networked, PRC will be seriously PO’d IMOChina tries to prevent Turkey from hosting more Uyghurshttp://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/28/us-china-turkey-thailand-idUSKCN0JC0X920141128 … makes sense given that NED-funded World Uyghur Congress, etc. “take care” of Uyghurs living in Turkeyhttp://christophgermann.blogspot.de/2015/01/the-new-great-game-round-up-83.html …IMO that’s why Global Times broke story of arrest of Turks/Uyghurs in Shanghai, which happened last Novhttps://porkinspolicyreview.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/porkins-great-game-episode-5-east-turkestan-exposed/ …chinahandtks. v/ interesting podcast. I think one area of interest for PRC was that TK consulate replaced “lost” passports. I tend to think Turkish government militancy policy one of “idiotic entrepreneurship” rather than carefully managed policy i.e. set up a bunch of militant-enabling orgs w/ arms-length deniability, let them run wild, then try to rein them in when they become too much of a liability. Chinese media naming Turkey (& PRC MOFI spox Hong Lei endorsing) definitely a shot across the bow. Will be interesting to see if Turkey makes some publicly Uyghur-unfriendly gesture to please PRC. Hong Lei’s statement that report “extremely accurate” http://tinyurl.com/pob3ccv a major tell. At same time, report was run in GT, not official govt outlet Xinhua, to soften the blow a bit.Yes, Turkey immediately sent its police chief to Beijing to calm the waves http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-01/26/c_133948355.htm … &http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/905261.shtml …chinahand & 155 Uyghurs on Turkish passports in Malaysia! That raised some flags. Tks v/much for v/interesting & informative exchangeKunming attack suspects also had Turkish passportshttp://en.people.cn/n/2015/0213/c90882-8850247.html …
The knowledgeable and cordial Christoph Germann, by the way, runs the New Great Game blog over at Sibel Edmonds’ shop and, as can be seen, stays on top of the news from the region. I am bookmarking NGG and look forward to visiting regularly.
To amplify on the exchange, it’s an acknowledged fact that Turkey is hospitable to refugee Uyghurs from Xinjiang and, as a result, unhappy Uyghurs in Xinjiang are eager to go to Turkey.
Turkey indulging its pretensions as protector of the world’s Turkish-speaking peoples by harboring a few hundred impoverished refugees might be acceptable to the PRC; but setting up a pipeline to encourage Uyghur emigration and, possibly, recruiting Uyghurs to join the Syrian uprising against Assad certainly is not.
For one thing, although the PRC has nuanced its support of Assad, it is dead set against the strategy of foreign-supported insurrection against the Syrian government. For another, the PRC is undoubtedly leery of Xinjiang Uyghurs acquiring training, radical ideology, and global jihadist connections while fighting in Syria.
So I was struck by the original poster’s complaint that northern Syria is “crawling with mercenaries/terrorists from Caucasus, Central Asia, and Chinese Ugyur”.
Case not yet proven, I would say. There is no documented instance of a Uyghur fighting in one of Syria’s myriad militias as yet (one Hui Chinese showed up), so perhaps the original tweet was more in the line of general venting about Turkey funneling foreign fighters into Syria. Time, I guess, will tell.
However, it does not strike me as implausible on principle. Veterans of the beleaguered Chechen independence movement have found shelter in Turkey and employment in Syria.
The AI Monitor link provided by Germann describes a rather sinister situation for Turkey’s 2000 Chechen refugees where seemingly private appeals to join jihad are apparently backed up with the decidedly government resource of threatening deportation for the recalcitrant:
Though Turkey tolerates the Chechen refugees, many lack residence permits and live in destitute conditions under a constant risk of deportation, activists say. This life in limbo led many Chechens to acquiesce to blackmail-like pressures to join the Syrian war, according to Abrek Onlu, the slain activist’s nephew and member of the Justice for Medet Committee, an advocacy group created by members of Turkey’s ethnic Caucasian community.“Not all Chechens volunteered to go to Syria. Some went there unwillingly. They were presented with two options: to go to Syria or face deportation … Individuals who were personally the subject [of such pressure] recount confidentially how certain people would come to convey them this message,” Abrek Onlu told Al-Monitor, reluctant to give further details.Another committee member claimed Islamic civic groups in Turkey were active in the recruitment of fighters. “Some Islamic nongovernmental groups became closely involved in dispatching fighters to Syria. … Those groups are known to have exerted influence on Chechens living both in and outside [refugee] camps to join the war,” Kuban Kural told an online journal.
One can imagine that one of the shadowy Turkish organizations equally concerned with refugee welfare and with providing cannon fodder for Turkey’s Syrian adventure might turn its intention to impoverished and desperate Uyghurs as a human resource similar to the exiled Chechens.
Whether the Turkish government is actively and knowingly recruiting Uyghurs to fight in Syria is a murky business cloaked by secrecy and deniability. Smoothing the way for Uyghurs to come to Turkey is more of a matter of public policy and record.
In early February 2015, Al Jazeera sympathetically profiled Uyghur refugees residing in Turkey. In one case history, AJ’s reporter noted the assistance provided by the Turkish embassy to Uyghur refugees:
After three months of travel, they arrived in Malaysia, where they stayed for nine months.He said he was discovered traveling with a fake passport at the airport on his way out of Malaysia, as other Uighurs in transit have been, was arrested and thrown into prison for three months along with his family. His wife, who had been pregnant throughout the trek, gave birth to their seventh child in prison.He sought assistance from the Turkish Embassy in Malaysia, and after four months in Istanbul, he and his family have settled in Kayseri.
An article in Hurriyet Daily News reported that the Turkish government is not only officially hospitable to Uyghur refugees in transit and on arrival, it is also facilitating their departure from Xinjiang:
A month ago [January 2015], 500 Uighur Turks fled the western Chinese region of Xinjiang and settled in state housing previously used as official residences for police officers in the city of Kayseri.…Some also said they flew to Turkey with the help of Turkish government; however, they do not want to give the details of the journey because their relatives are trying to flee using the same methods.
Turkish travel documents are a key element in expediting Uyghur travel to Turkey. For instance, the Malaysian authorities detained 155 Uyghurs with Turkish passports characterized as “forged”.
A Turkish paper described the central importance of Turkish travel documents to Uyghur refugees:
For Cengiz, it took ten days to reach Malaysia. “The shortest trip takes six days,” Ezizi says. Illegal immigrants received fake Turkish documents in Thailand: “You have to pay an additional $1,000 to get your passport.”Arriving into Malaysia safely does not mean the mission is accomplished. A Uighur has to surrender to Malaysian security guards in order to reach the final destination: Turkey.Firstly, an immigrant has to pay a fine for crossing into Malaysia by an illegal route. The Malaysian authorities then order deportation to the country where the fake passport belongs. “This means Turkey,” Ezizi maintains. Very few tried to get another country’s passport. Mainly, they take forged Turkish passports as “other countries do not accept Uighur migrants.”…Ezizi points out that when a Uighur arrives into Istanbul with a fake passport, the person is released after a short judicial process: “Sometimes, that person can be sent to jail temporarily but would be released quickly.
The LA Times also visited the Uyghur emigre community in Kayseriand touched on the passport issue:
It took about a month in Bangkok to plan the next stage of their journey, the men said. They linked up with an organized crime network from Turkey and paid about $3,500 for forged Turkish passports, which they used to travel overland to Malaysia.
Malaysia, Mohammed said, was “worse than Thailand.” “People would say: ‘Give us your wallet, give us your jewelry or we will report you,'” he recalled.In November after 11 months in Malaysia, they boarded a plane bound for Istanbul. There, Turkish immigration authorities discovered the forged passports.“They said, ‘You are Uighur?'” Mohammed recalled. “They confiscated them and let us come in.”
Shortly after the Hurriyet article—which also revealed that, in addition to the announcement that 500 Uyghurs had recently arrived in Turkey, there were an additional 356 Uyghurs detained in Thailand who also hoped for escape to Turkey—appeared, the PRC openly cracked down or, to be more accurate, cracked the whip on Turkey concerning the passport issue.
The PRC’s Global Times, a semi-official tabloid positioned as China’s answer to Fox News, revealed that back in November 2014 PRC authorities had exposed a scheme involving Turkish citizens inside the PRC selling their passports to Uyghurs who wanted to assume Turkish identities and escape China. When the customers were identified, the passports were apparently mailed back to Turkey for modification, then mailed back to the PRC for delivery. Presumably, the Turkish passport holders then obtained replacement passports from the Turkish consular office.
Police in Shanghai’s Public Security Bureau captured the suspects in November when nine Uyghurs attempted to sneak out of China with altered Turkish passports with the help of two other Chinese suspects.The investigation showed that the suspects, including a Uyghur living in Turkey and a Turkish suspect, charged 60,000 yuan ($9,680) per person for nine stowaways departing from Shanghai Pudong International Airport.They also paid $2,000 each to nine Turkish people to get visas with fake invitation letters at the Chinese Embassy in Turkey. The passports were later sent overseas for forgery and alteration after the nine Turkish citizens entered China with the authentic ones.
This pricy caper may have simply been an entrepreneurial one-off. But it took place inside the PRC, which gave Beijing the opportunity to act as the injured party.
So Global Times was unleashed. Public shaming of this sort is not unknown in PRC foreign relations. When the Musharraf regime was not sufficiently cooperative in tracking down militants hostile to the PRC in Pakistan’s west, PRC state media took the opportunity of Musharraf’s state visit to the PRC to publish its most-wanted list on the front page.
Although the passport scoop was given to Global Times instead of state media—perhaps to soften the blow a bit—PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hong Lei took the highly significant step ofendorsing the GT report as “extremely accurate”.
The most fraught question is of possible Turkish official or semi-official connivance in facilitating the supply of fraudulent Turkish passports to Uyghur refugees.
It does not seem possible that the Turkish passports are “forged” i.e. concocted from the whole cloth by criminal gangs with scanners, printing presses, & what-not. An interesting article on the booming fake-passport business reveals that with today’s security measures, the foundation of a fake passport is invariably a real passport:
More often than not, passports are stolen from tourists and then altered with the insertion of new pictures and additional pages.“Criminals face difficulties producing fake passports due to the sophisticated anti-counterfeiting techniques, so they resort to buying real passports from gangs of thieves, which target foreign tourists in Thailand,” General Warawut Taweechaikarn, commander of the investigation division at the Immigration Bureau, told The Nation Tuesday.
Thailand, through which many Uyghur refugees are funneled by human traffickers is, indeed the world hub for passport forgery. But the forgeries always involve modification of a genuine passport, stolen from a tourist or bought from a down-at-the-heels backpacker. And, as the Global Times article indicates, the modifications to the passports took place in Turkey, not Thailand, for a reason that will become apparent.
That’s because Turkish passports have been biometric since 2010, an EU requirement. Daily Hurriyet reported at the time:
The government subsequently decided to print the new passports in the Darphane, or state mint. The French digital-security company Gemalto will provide the chips for the passports.
Yes, that Gemalto, the “got hacked to pieces by the NSA and GCHQ” Gemalto.
Today’s Zaman tells us what a “biometric passport” involves:
A biometric passport, also known as an e-passport or ePassport, is a combined paper and electronic passport that uses biometrics to authenticate the identity of travelers. It uses contactless smart card technology, including a microprocessor chip (computer chip) and antenna (for both power to the chip and communication) embedded in the front or back cover, or center page, of the passport.The chip inside the passport contains information about the holder’s face – such as the distances between eyes, nose, mouth and ears. These details are taken from the passport photograph that you supply. They can then be used to identify the passport-holder. The chip also holds the information that is printed on the personal details page of your passport.
According to the EU, “a few” non-biometric Turkish passports still exist in the wild but will be completely phased out on November 15, 2015. The next iteration of the biometric passport will, in addition to facial features, include a digital record of the holder’s fingerprints.
So it looks like the Turkish passports are not only being forged using legit Turkish passports as a foundation; I consider it unlikely that forgeries of the more recent biometric passports are knocked out without some official or unofficial help from Turkish intelligence agencies.
In the case of the 155 Uyghurs in Malaysia, it is worth pondering that they were not apprehended because their passports were forged. They were rounded up on a tip, perhaps from an aggrieved neighbor (the 155 people were crammed into two apartment units in Kuala Lumpur) and the best the Malaysian authorities could say when confronted with the spectacle of 155 Uyghurs brandishing Turkish passports was that they “suspected” the passports were fake.
So I wonder when, if ever, the forged nature of these passports is actually detected: at the Malaysian border? At immigration in Turkey, only because they show up on a watch list provided by Turkish intelligence, which maybe prepared the faked passports in the first place?
As to motivation for possible Turkish involvement in the Uyghur refugee/passport escapade, I can only speculate.
Beyond Erdogan’s desire to position Turkey as motherland of the Turkic-speaking race (the Turkic tribes that fled before the warriors of the Mongolian steppes and in their turn ravaged Europe up to the gates of Vienna before settling in Istanbul actually originated near if not in northern Xinjiang), it is possible that Turkey hopes to establish itself as an important and necessary interlocutor with the PRC on the issue of the Uyghurs and thereby reduce the asymmetry in its relations with the economically overbearing Asian superpower, furthermore a superpower which is a fearsome competitor to Turkey in the battle for influence in Central Asia’s stans.
In 2009, Erdogan characterized the PRC presence in Xinjiang as “a kind of genocide” and threatened to issue a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, head of the World Uygur Congress émigré group.
Given Turkey’s rather reckless recent history in using militants to increase its regional leverage, it is not unreasonable to speculate that Erdogan thought that he could gain China’s attention if not its gratitude by fostering a significant Uyghur diaspora inside Turkey and using control over this presence and its inclination to support activism and resistance inside Xinjiang as an asset in his dealings with the PRC.
This tendency may have climaxed in November 2014, when Turkey’s Foreign Minister publicly called for the Uyghurs detained in Thailand to be sent to Turkey.
However, I suspect that the curtain is coming down on Erdogan’s excellent Uyghur adventure.
For the PRC government, which sees a possible replay of Chechnya in Xinjiang (and therefore ignores the human rights & religious freedom whinging from the West concerning the harshness of its rule), denying Uyghurs a foreign refuge is the highest priority. If and when the PRC’s vaunted “noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations” policy goes by the wayside, it will probably involve some kind of Uyghur-related cross-border military operation against some militant haven that Afghanistan or Pakistan are unwilling or unable to deal with.
Job one for the PRC is to pressure its neighbors to crack down both on potential havens and the Uyghurs who might occupy them.
In 2009, Cambodia repatriated 20 Uyghurs and, in an apparent quid pro quo, received a massive aid deal from the PRC.
And Afghanistan, seeking the PRC’s good offices in negotiating the future role of the Taliban and PRC’s support for reconstruction,publicly revealed last week that it had arrested and repatriated 15 Uyghurs to the PRC.
As for Turkey, as noted above the PRC made representations in the strongest public terms in January 2015 that it will not tolerate Turkey serving as a haven for Uyghur refugees, especially if it involves active collusion and jiggery-pokery in the matter of forged Turkish passports.
Turkey publicly knuckled under on the issue, sending its National Police Chief Mehmet Celalettin Lekesiz to Beijing in early February 2015. This occasioned the usual crass vaunting by Global Times, and also the reported call by his host, Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun, that both sides enhance public cooperation on “combating organized human smuggling”.
‘Nuff said.
As to the hundreds of Uyghurs detained in Thailand and offered the possibility of succor by Turkey, they appear to be victims of a) the new Thai junta’s pro-PRC tilt and b) Turkey sidling away from its November 2014 declaration of concern. RFA reported in late January 2015 that one campful of Uyghurs is on hunger strike to protest its miserable sojourn in detentive limbo and Turkish support doesn’t seem to be in the offing:
The detainees in the Hat Yai facility are among the roughly 300 Uyghur refugees who fled to Thailand 10 months ago, some of whom maintain they are Turkish citizens in an apparent effort to win support from the government of Turkey.Thai authorities and international media, however, say they are Uyghur Muslims from Xinjiang where the minority group complains of ethnic discrimination by Chinese authorities.The detainee said a prison officer at Hat Yai told them: “If all of you really are Turkish citizens and the Turkish government sends us an official letter to testify you are Turkish citizens, we will release you and let you all go to Turkey as soon as possible.”
In contrast to its previous expressions of enthusiasm, Turkey now seems uninterested in handling this hot potato.
Turkey also seems to be taking a leaf from the Indian playbook and keeping its public-sector support for the Uyghur refugees to a minimum of residency permits and free housing (as India keeps an arms-length relationship with the Tibetan exile community centered on Dharmasala). Many of the Uyghur refugees interviewed by the international media expressed a general dissatisfaction with the niggardly nature of Turkish government support, and it looks like private parties, the Uyghur diaspora, NGOs, and the occasional jihadist recruiter will have to fill in the gaps.
It will be interesting to see if hundreds of Uyghur refugees continue to turn up in Turkey thanks to forged Turkish passports. I tend to doubt it.
Peter Lee edits China Matters and covers Asia for CounterPunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/24/curtain-coming-down-on-erdogans-excellent-uyghur-adventure/
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