mardi 12 mai 2015
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mardi 5 mai 2015
China orders Muslim shopkeepers to sell alcohol, cigarettes, to “weaken” Islam
By Simon Denyer – Chinese
authorities have ordered Muslim shopkeepers and restaurant owners in a
village in its troubled Xinjiang region to sell alcohol and cigarettes,
and promote them in “eye-catching displays,” in an attempt to undermine
Islam’s hold on local residents, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported. Establishments that failed to comply were threatened with closure and their owners with prosecution.
Facing widespread discontent over its
repressive rule in the mainly Muslim province of Xinjiang, and mounting
violence in the past two years, China has launched a series of “strike
hard” campaigns to weaken the hold of Islam in the western region.
Government employees and children have been barred from attending
mosques or observing the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In many
places, women have been barred from wearing face-covering veils, and men
discouraged from growing long beards.
In the village of Aktash in southern
Xinjiang, Communist Party official Adil Sulayman, told RFA that many
local shopkeepers had stopped selling alcohol and cigarettes from 2012
“because they fear public scorn,” while many locals had decided to
abstain from drinking and smoking.
The Koran calls the use of “intoxicants” sinful, while some Muslim religious leaders have also forbidden smoking.
Sulayman said authorities in Xinjiang
viewed ethnic Uighurs who did not smoke as adhering to “a form of
religious extremism,” and had issued the order to counter growing
religious sentiment that he said was “affecting stability.”
“We have a campaign to weaken religion here, and this is part of that campaign,” he told the Washington-based news service.
The notice, obtained by RFA and also
posted on Twitter, ordered all restaurants and supermarkets in Aktash to
sell five different brands of alcohol and cigarettes and display them
prominently. “Anybody who neglects this notice and fails to act will see
their shops sealed off, their businesses suspended, and legal action
pursued against them,” the notice said.
Radio Free Asia, which provides some of
the only coverage of events in Xinjiang to escape strict Chinese
government controls, said Hotan prefecture, where Aktash is located, had
become “a hotbed of violent stabbing and shooting incidents between
ethnic Uighurs and Chinese security forces.”
China says Uighur militant groups based
abroad are using the Internet to inspire local Muslims to take up
violent jihad against the state. Critics says China’s long repression of
Uighur rights and nationalist sentiment has pushed people towards Islam
as the only permitted assertion of their community’s identity, and
pushed a minority towards a violent form of Islam. Clumsy attempts to
promote alcohol or forbid beards and veils may prove counterproductive,
they warn.
Sulayman said around 60 shops and
restaurants in the area had complied with the government order, and
there were no reports of protests. But in an unrelated incident in
neighboring Qinghai province on Friday, an angry crowd of Muslims
smashed windows of a supposedly halal store in Xining city, after pork
sausages and ham were found in a delivery van, according to the local government and photographs on social media.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/05/china-orders-muslim-shopkeepers-to-sell-alcohol-cigarettes-to-weaken-islam/
A shift in power
By Taha Meli Arvas – The
most important story in finance and global politics of the decade may
have taken place two weeks ago. Global finance, already on a steady
course in shifting eastward, took a large leap on April 19. By
implementing a plan, several years in the making, one nation crept
closer to joining the only current occupant at the superpowers’ table,
the United States.Recently having become
the world’s largest consumer of energy, China took steps to alleviate
its difficulty in getting its energy and may have simultaneously changed
the way global politics work.Despite being the third largest country on
earth, China is landlocked on its northern, western, and southern
borders.
This forces China to use its eastern
border for most of its transport needs. This means the vast majority of
the crude that the Chinese use travels almost 10,000 miles. China wants
an alternative. Not only because it would save several billion dollars a
year in transportation costs by knocking off 7,000 miles from this
journey, but primarily because it would no longer need to risk its
energy lifeline by having it travel through open seas and through
sovereign transport corridors. Enter the China Pakistan Economic
Corridor.
Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to Pakistan marking the first
state visit by that country’s president to Pakistan. While in Pakistan,
Xi and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed an agreement
launching the Pakistan China Economic Corridor (both variations of the
corridor’s names are used.) The agreement calls for China to invest over
$45 billion in Pakistan in the coming years with the first $26 billion
being invested almost immediately. Funds will be invested mainly in
developing Pakistan’s transport infrastructure and its perpetually
starved power grid.Pakistan and China share a relatively small border, one that is both neither fully uncontested nor well developed. The northern Pakistani/far-western Chinese border is an unlikely location for major economic development but that is exactly what is happening. The Pakistanis have agreed to allow the Chinese to use build, maintain and operate ports in southern Pakistan. Initially Middle Eastern crude will enter Pakistan at the Gwadar Port in southwest Pakistan where it will then be transported by road and rail north to the Chinese border. In the future, a trans-Persian-Pakistani pipeline is planned for cheaper and faster transport of Middle Eastern oil to China’s interior.
Most of China’s largest cities largely sit in the east and south. Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has worked hard in developing a high-speed rail network making the development of the interior more feasible. In the west, the minority Turkic Uighur population makes up the majority of the inhabitants of the Xinjiang province. Numbering over 10 million, the Uighur’s live in what is commonly called “East Turkistan.” Developing these areas, those that border Pakistan, may both bring jobs and investment to those areas which were previously ignored by Beijing. Doing so would be a win-win for China.
The major issue here is not that two countries have signed an economic cooperation agreement, but that American ally Pakistan has entered into a multi-decade-long, multi-billion dollar agreement with China, potentially replacing the U.S. as its “most favored nation.” China has recently been flexing its political and economic muscle with several spats over uninhabited islands claimed by both China and Japan. This has angered the Japanese and been met with disapproval by the United States. China has also invested billions in South America and more notably Africa. These investments while worrisome have not been cause for alarm by the United States, which has relatively little economic interest in these continents. However, Pakistan and Afghanistan are countries in which the United States has invested hundreds of billions of dollars. Allowing the Chinese to enter into these spheres of American influence may be the beginning of a new era in this part of the world.
The Chinese are, with the Japanese, the largest holders of American debt globally. They each hold nearly $1 trillion of American debt in their central banks. The world is watching China’s moves and is asking itself if the United States will allow China to use its economic might in historically American spheres of influence. In the next few years, this question will be answered and the world will either enter into a new era of a U.S.-Chinese oligopoly or the United States will answer with its own renewed efforts at holding on to these spheres.
http://www.dailysabah.com/columns/taha-meli-arvas/2015/05/05/a-shift-in-power
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