Beijing urumqi

TAIPEI - Uighur rights groups are urging multinational corporations that have agreed to sponsor the Beijing Winter Olympics, to boycott what they call the “Genocide Games” and use their platforms instead to educate the world about China’s persecution of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province ahead of the 2022 event. So far none of the big-name sponsors have endorsed the Uighur campaigners’ calls for justice. Observers who spoke to VOA say that’s because companies haven’t felt the political pressure, which they expect to build as the games draw closer. “Here we are 12 months before the games begin. The fact that some companies are not yet talking about the boycott, I think it’s because they haven’t felt the political pressure or the effect of the boycott on their own products. But they will. You’ll see increasingly that happens,” Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Northampton, Massachusetts-based Smith College told VOA. “Every company is going to assess the state of … [Read more...] about Uighur Rights Groups Pressure Corporate Sponsors to Boycott 2022 Beijing Olympics

HONG KONG: Hong Kong disqualified four opposition members of its legislature on Wednesday (Nov 11) shortly after the Chinese parliament adopted a resolution allowing the city's executive to expel legislators without having to go through the courts. The expulsions came shortly after China's parliament adopted a resolution allowing the city's executive to expel legislators deemed to be supporting Hong Kong independence, colluding with foreign forces or threatening national security, without having to go through the courts. The 19 pan-democratic members of the 70-seat city legislature on Monday threatened to resign en masse if any of them was disqualified, saying that would reflect their unity and show how far Beijing was willing to go to crush opposition. While the city's Legislative Council is controlled by a pro-Beijing camp, the resignations of its pro-democracy lawmakers would turn it into a rubber stamp. The opposition members have tried to make a stand against what many … [Read more...] about Hong Kong disqualifies four opposition lawmakers following Beijing resolution

William Burns, the nominee for CIA director, testified before the Senate about links between a think tank he leads and a Chinese foundation that serves as a front group for the communist party. Burns said that he cut ties with the group, the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), “not long after” he took over as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But the founder of the foundation gave a pro-Beijing speech at a Carnegie event more than 14 months after Burns took over the think tank. CUSEF donated between $200,000 and $500,000 to Carnegie between 2015 and 2017. The founder of a front group for the Chinese Communist Party appeared at an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in May 2016, where he pushed a pro-Beijing argument regarding a decades-long stalemate over control of the South China Sea. The speech, by Tung Chee-hwa, the founding chairman of the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), was held more than 14 months … [Read more...] about Founder Of Chinese Front Group Spoke At CIA Nominee’s Think Tank Amid Beijing Propaganda Push

This month, Britain and Japan, the two most powerful offshore island nations on the Eurasian continent, undertook to strengthen a special relationship that they established over a century ago. In January 1902, the two countries agreed to a formal alliance, an arrangement whose scope was twice expanded, first in 1905 and again in 1911. The alliance’s objective was clear: They sought to contain Russian expansion in China. The current agreement again focuses on those countries, though it is China, rather than Russia, that the British and Japanese view as the primary threat to their security. The earlier treaties specifically provided for mutual defense, which led to Japan’s entering World War I on the side of the Allies. The current agreement does not go that far, but it does echo similar sentiments. Britain’s foreign and defense secretaries, Dominic Raab and Ben Wallace, and their Japanese counterparts, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi and Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, announced … [Read more...] about Britain is back in Asia, sending a message to Beijing

WASHINGTON - Uighurs who were once detained in internment camps in China’s Xinjiang region say they have been sexually abused and raped during interrogations by Chinese authorities, while also witnessing other fellow detainees being raped. Tursunay Ziyawudun, a 42-year-old Uighur women’s camp survivor who now lives in the U.S. state of Virginia, told VOA that she was beaten, sexually abused and gang raped during interrogations in an internment camp in Kunes county in northern Xinjiang in 2018. International rights groups estimate that over one million Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking minority groups in Xinjiang have been held in internment camps since early 2017. In leaked internal government documents , China has called such facilities “transformation through education centers” aimed at “washing brains, cleansing hearts, strengthening righteousness and eliminating evil,” and later described them internationally as “vocational training centers” to “counter terrorism and … [Read more...] about China Uses Rape as Torture Tactic Against Uighur Detainees, Victims Say