A Buzzfeed article 'This Is What A 21st-Century Police State Really Looks Like' on how China seeks security in Xinjiang.
Link:https://www.buzzfeed.com/meghara/the...-already-here?
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A Buzzfeed article 'This Is What A 21st-Century Police State Really Looks Like' on how China seeks security in Xinjiang.
Link:https://www.buzzfeed.com/meghara/the...-already-here?
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/-Uygh...sul-38802.htmlQuote:
Mosul (AsiaNews) – More and more Asian fighters speaking Chinese are seen in the streets of Mosul, jihadi Uighur mercenaries who came to Syria through Turkey at the start of the war. In the last few months, they and their families have moved from Rakka in Syria – the Islamic State’s capital – to Iraq.
In April 2015, many of them went from Turkey to Azerbaijan to attack targets in Nagorno Karabakh in what came to be known as the ‘Four-day War’.
Armenian intelligence informed the West and Russia that Uyghur, Turkmen and Chechen fighters left Azerbaijan for Turkey.
An interesting article, which claims to have interviewed Uighurs who had fought in Syria and no doubt their aspire to attack back home.
Link:https://apnews.com/79d6a427b26f4eeab...-to-Syrian-war
A Lebanese website reports:Link:https://www.almasdarnews.com/article...-region-video/Quote:
Two commanders belonging to the Turkistan Islamic Party jihadist group which operates against Syrian army-led forces in the country’s northwest were found dead recently, having been assassinated by unknown conspirators.
Needless to say this is the Uighur's jihadist group and on Twitter there is speculation by the AP journalist @gerryshih that various parties, including the Chinese, did the deed.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-use...144700817.htmlQuote:
China is adding facial recognition to its overarching surveillance systems in Xinjiang, a Muslim-dominated region in the country's far west that critics claim is under abusive security controls. The geo-fencing tools alert authorities when targets venture beyond a designated 300-meter safe zone, according to an anonymous source who spoke to Bloomberg.
China bans Orwell's ANIMAL FARM and the letter 'N'.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8235071.html
I had to double-check that someone wasn't channeling a Monty Python kit.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GEKRftOztfE/hqdefault.jpg
What is the truth behind such a headline in a Hong Kong based newspaper? Rather skimpy:Step forward Raffaello Pantucci, of RUSI and a long time watcher of Central Asia:Quote:
The size of the increase was revealed by Ji Zhiye, head of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, though he did not provide absolute figures.
Link:http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplo...jihadists-2017Quote:
While China clearly has something to worry about given the numbers of jihadists with links to China who have fought in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, it is worth pointing out that so far China has not shown any evidence of foreign fighters making it back home. Rather, we have seen these individuals killed abroad, or launching attacks against China abroad, suggesting that it is very difficult for people to return to China to try to launch an attack.
Bacon-and-beer punishment.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/chin...ims-camps.htmlQuote:
Former inmates have told of the horror after being detained in China's indoctrination camps for Muslims, where they were physically and mentally tortured.
Around 900,000 to one million Muslims are estimated to have been detained in such re-education camps in China's western province of Xinjiang as Beijing tries to clamp down on potential separatist movements.
Omir Bekali and Kayrat Samarkand, both former detainees, have told the Washington Post that these former prisoners have been forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, forbidden in Islam, as punishment.
More of a pointer to a 2017 ICCT report on Uighur jihadist fighters beyond China and a forthcoming book that has chapters on the Uighur insurgency.
So two links. The first is to the ICCT report:Link:https://icct.nl/publication/uighur-f...ist-challenge/Quote:
n November 2017, we co-authored “Uighur Foreign Fighters: An Underexamined Jihadist Challenge,” published by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism- The Hague (ICCT). Uighurs, specifically individuals of Turkic decent from China’s northwest province of Xinjiang, have become a noticeable part of the constellation of globally active jihadist terror groups
The second is really an advert and the book is due out next month:Link:https://icct.nl/publication/reflecti...ist-challenge/Quote:
There has been some relatively recent research in this area which we have followed with great interest. Michael Clarke has a forthcoming book Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (Hurst, 2018) in China that examines an array of issues related to Uighur terrorism and includes chapters by Raffaello Pantucci on “Uighur Terrorism in a Fractured Middle East” and Sean Roberts on “The Narrative of Uighur Terrorism and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Uighur Militancy.” Other recent research has focused on China’s use of technology as a counter-terrorism tool, including articles such as “China Has Turned Xinjiang Into a Police State Like No Other,” from The Economist, and similar research by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on “China’s Approach to International Terrorism,” and the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor on “The Uighurs and China’s Regional Counter-Terrorism Efforts.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/thousands...173224239.htmlQuote:
Thousands of Muslims gathered at a mosque in northwestern China on Friday to protest its planned demolition in a rare public pushback to the government's efforts to rewrite how religions are practiced in the country. A large crowd of Hui people, a Muslim ethnic minority, began congregating at the towering Grand Mosque in the town of Weizhou on Thursday, local Hui residents told The Associated Press by phone.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mosque-pr...084809410.htmlQuote:
Weizhou (China) (AFP) - Authorities in northern China delayed the demolition of a massive mosque on Saturday after thousands of people demonstrated to stop its destruction, local residents said, amid a nationwide government drive to tighten restrictions on religious activities. Across China, officials have sought to limit religious freedoms for Muslims as part of a widespread attempt to bring believers in line with the dictates of the ruling Communist Party. Protesters began gathering Thursday ahead of a deadline to demolish the grand mosque in the town of Weizhou in the northern Ningxia region, local residents said.
https://news.sky.com/story/china-den...camps-11471917Quote:
China has rejected claims one million of its mostly Muslim Uighur minority are being held in internment camps, while it has also insisted "there are no such things" as re-education centres.
The country responded to concerns, raised by a member of a UN human rights committee, that its Xinjiang region has been turned into "something resembling a massive internment camp, shrouded in secrecy, a sort of no-rights zone".
Human rights expert Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, last week highlighted reports that more than one million ethnic Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities are being held in counter-extremism centres.
Via SWJ Blog on Twitter, even if on the BBC I'd missed it.:( It is a short summary, with nothing new.
Link:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-45474279
A Soufan Group commentary and a couple of passages:Link:http://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrie...d-in-xinjiang/Quote:
What most recent analysis on the subject glosses over, however, is that China has attempted to portray broad segments of the Uighur population as a potential terrorist threat while offering no evidence of tangible connections to militancy.
(Ends with) While the government feels that a draconian counter-terrorism strategy has been successful in limiting attacks on Chinese soil, many recently implemented policies may prove to be counterproductive in the long-term.
A first-hand report on the situation from a previously unheard of Russian website. Makes you think.
Link:https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/10...illion-uyghurs
Great article David, thanks for posting.
Meduza is a Russian language blog, but not a Russian State Blog. They're based in Latvia.
Anyone interested in the CPC's population control measures that leverages the latest technology along with Uighurs armed with spears who are subordinate to Chinese armed with automatic weapons should read this article. There is more and more evidence that Xi is increasingly paralleling many of Hitler's behaviors. Seeking a pure race at home, note one comment fro the article.
The communist party (CPC), like Hitler believes expansion outside their borders is essential to their survivable. Like Hitler, they seem to be borrowing the same two models, one British and one U.S. Hitler admired the way the British established their empire and used state owned enterprises like British Petroleum and the East India Company to exploit regions they colonized for financial gain at the expense of the locals. The U.S. model Hitler referred to was removing the native Americans off their land and putting them in reservations. The CPC is currently doing this in Xinjiang. They seek to expand their socialist model with CPC characteristics globally. Will they export these population control measures to authoritarian governments?Quote:
In Beijing, officials no longer claimed that the opposition was composed of a small number of extremists. “It’s impossible to tear out weeds one by one,” said one party official in Kashgar. “We need chemicals that can deal with all of them at once.”
Anyone coming into Xinjiang goes through 5 hours of customs inspections? Multiple checkpoints, X-ray machines, computer/phone scans, review all written material brought in, iris scans, other biometric data conducted, apps uploaded to computers and phones so they can monitor for dangerous material / communications later. Check points throughout the town and in the stores.
This sounds familiar, a typical form of communist surveillance.
This would be funny if it wasn't true:Quote:
New teams of “active citizens,” usually composed of police officers or members of the Communist Party along with at least one Uyghur, are another change in Xinjiang life. They regularly visit Uyghur families to ask, as my new acquaintance put it, “strange questions,” and to search houses for forbidden books and other objects. These searches can last several hours — or several days.
The author sums it up.Quote:
Iman’s reeducation took place in a cell where he was kept with 19 other Uyghurs. The prisoners were made to march in their cell and chant the slogan “Earnest training, eager learning!” and they watched propagandistic films for hours. During a post-lunch break, the prisoners were permitted to sit for a while on their plank beds, and then their marches and propaganda viewings continued until dinner. Iman befriended a 60-year-old cellmate who was accused of preaching the Koran in messages sent to his daughter through an online messenger. The man received a sentence of seven years. Iman was luckier — after 17 days, he was released, but after his time in the camp, cameras recognized him on the streets, and people began to refuse him access to public transport and local supermarkets.
Quote:
I came to Xinjiang to see life with my own eyes as it had been many centuries ago, if not millennia. Now, what you can find here is a future that exceeds the most daring fantasies of George Orwell or Evgeny Zamyatin.
This is a forthcoming volume 'Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in China: Domestic and Foreign Policy Dimensions' and the Editor is an Australian SME, Michael Clarke on the issues.
The Amazon notice refers to:Link:https://www.amazon.com/Terrorism-Cou...orism+in+ChinaQuote:
Four areas of investigation are looked at: the scope and nature of terrorism in China and its connection with developments in other regions; the development of legislative measures to combat terrorism; the institutional evolution of China's counter-terrorism bureaucracy; and Beijing's counter-terrorism cooperation with international partners.
The Introduction is available to view. Not cheap at US$50, so perhaps one to suggest to your library?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources...a_hidden_campsQuote:
The first reports that China was operating a system of internment camps for Muslims in Xinjiang began to emerge last year.
The satellite photograph was discovered by researchers looking for evidence of that system on the global mapping software, Google Earth. It places the site just outside the small town of Dabancheng, about an hour's drive from the provincial capital, Urumqi.
https://www.afp.com/en/news/717/insi...ks-doc-1a73p63Quote:
On state television, the vocational education centre in China's far west looked like a modern school where happy students studied Mandarin, brushed up their job skills, and pursued hobbies such as sports and folk dance.
But earlier this year, one of the local government departments in charge of such facilities in Xinjiang's Hotan prefecture made several purchases that had little to do with education: 2,768 police batons, 550 electric cattle prods, 1,367 pairs of handcuffs, and 2,792 cans of pepper spray.
The shopping list was among over a thousand procurement requests made by local governments in the Xinjiang region since early 2017 related to the construction and management of a sprawling system of "vocational education and training centres".
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8648561.htmlQuote:
Uninvited, more than one million Han Chinese people have reportedly moved into the homes of Uighur Muslim families to report on whether they display Islamic or unpatriotic beliefs.
Sent to homes in Xinjiang province by the Chinese government, American anthropologist Darren Byler said they were tasked with watching for signs that their hosts’ attachment to Islam might be “extreme”.
The informants, who describe themselves as "relatives" of the families they are staying with, are said to have received specific instructions on how to get them to let their guard down.
As devout Muslims would refuse cigarettes and alcohol. this is seen as one way of finding out whether they were extreme.
“Had a Uighur host just greeted a neighbour in Arabic with the words ‘Assalamu Alaykum’? That would need to go in the notebook,” said Dr Byler, in research published by Asia Society's Centre on US-China Relations. “Was that a copy of the Quran in the home? Was anyone praying on Friday or fasting during Ramadan? Was a little sister’s dress too long or a little brother’s beard irregular?”
A Reuters article that combines open source (now removed) Chinese documents, analysis of satellite imagery and comments - including the Chinese explanation. The scale of the effort is amazing.
Link:https://www.reuters.com/investigates...s-camps-china/
A strategy that only an authoritarian country could employ. An attempt to remove the threat by impounding all military age males, and torture them to compel them to drink alcohol, eat pork, and denounce Allah, as though that will weaken their resolve to support jihad when and if released. It is probable the vast majority didn't support jihad to begin with, but will be more likely to in the future if the opportunity presents itself, since they learned to really hate the Chinese now. Getting to the opportunity, outside the gulags the Chinese have implemented robust population control measures, and have encouraged / forced the migration of several thousand Han Chinese into the region, some of which have moved in with Muslim families to monitor their behavior. This is North Korea on steroids.
I'm think back to one of Bob's World posts where he argued cognitively that the U.S. conducted proactive COIN with our Civil Rights Bill, clearly the Chinese are taking a very different approach. They are conducting similar operations in Tibet, but not nearly as oppressive. They see religion as a mental illness, although communism proven to be failed system in similar to religion in that believers then to deny facts that counter their beliefs. In short, it is a secular religion with its own form of radicalization.