Image by Derek Goulet via Flickr
with Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Report Presents: The Left Lens on Sep 28, 2020
The U.S. claims to hold a monopoly on human rights despite being the most egregious human rights violator on the planet. Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong discuss the domestic and international scope of U.S. human rights abuses and the hypocrisy of the evidence-free claims made against China.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
September 23, 2020
The Iraq invasion was a prelude to our current war run-up, the war run-up that the United States would experience when its global imperial hegemony came under threat during the 2020s. Like was the case in 2003, the empire’s propaganda machine has inculcated its narratives into the minds of a solid majority of the public. Like was the case in 2003, the main target of the empire’s violent rage is merely a scapegoat for the crises that the U.S. has been experiencing. The difference is that in 2020, America’s cultural psychosis is being directed towards preparing for a war far larger than the Iraq War, a war so destructive and costly that it could end up breaking U.S. hegemony for good.
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
4 February, 2010
Congratulations to the Swiss Canton of Jura, which recently accepted the asylum claims of two Uighur prisoners at Guantánamo, and to the Swiss federal government for agreeing to accept Jura’s decision on Wednesday.
The two men in question — Arkin Mahmud, 45, and his brother Bahtiyar Mahnut, 32 — were seized with 20 other Uighurs in December 2001. The US authorities realized almost immediately that all of these men, who are Turkic Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, had only one enemy — the Chinese government — and had been seized (or bought) by mistake. However, although the majority of the men were cleared for release by 2005, the Bush administration accepted that it could not return them to China, because of fears that they would face torture or other ill-treatment, but then struggled to find another country that would take them instead.
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
4 November 2009
At the weekend, six of the remaining 13 Uighurs in Guantánamo — Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province — were released to resume new lives in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau (population: 20,000). I have written at length about the plight of Guantánamo’s Uighurs, innocent men caught up in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, who were mostly seized and sold to US forces by Pakistani villagers after fleeing a settlement in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains where they had been living a Spartan live for several months, free from Chinese oppression. Some were hoping to make their way to Turkey, to find work, but had found their way hard, and had been advised to seek out the settlement; others nursed futile dreams of rising up against the Chinese government, and, while working to make the settlement habitable, occasionally shot a few rounds on their only weapon, an aged Kalashnikov.
I have also written about how the US authorities knew, almost immediately, that these men had no connection to either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but how, nevertheless, they flew them to Guantánamo, allowed Chinese interrogators to visit them, and tried, in their tribunals at Guantánamo, to make out that they were connected to a Uighur separatist group, which, obligingly had been designated by the Bush administration as a terrorist group to secure leverage with the Chinese government in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
31October 2009
As first reported by the Associated Press, six of the remaining 13 Uighurs in Guantánamo have just arrived on the Pacific island of Palau, where they have been given new homes. The AP’s source said that, overnight, police were guarding the house where the men will live, in the heart of the capital, Koror.
This partly solves one of President Obama’s outstanding problems at Guantánamo, as there were 17 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province) at Guantánamo when Obama took office, and they had already been waiting for three and a half months to be released, after District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered their release into the United States in October 2008. Judge Urbina did so because the government had failed to contest the Uighurs’ habeas corpus petition (after a devastating court defeat in June 2008), because they could not be returned to China, where they were at risk of ill-treatment or worse, because no other country had been found that would take them, and because their continued detention was unconstitutional.
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
21 October 2009
One year and two weeks ago, District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered that 17 Uighur prisoners at Guantánamo be released into the United States. Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, the Uighurs were seized and sold to US forces by Pakistani villagers in December 2001, after they had fled a settlement in the Afghan mountains, where they had ended up after fleeing Chinese oppression.
One of the men had secured a resounding court victory last June, when appeals court judges ruled that the government had failed to prove that he was an “enemy combatant,” involved in any way with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and in the wake of this ruling the government abandoned all pretense that any of other 16 men were “enemy combatants” either.
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
6 Aug. 2009
Four and a half months ago, 17 unjustly detained prisoners in Guantánamo wrote a letter to President Obama asking for their release. In the secretive world of Guantánamo, however, nothing is straightforward, and it has taken over four months for the letter to be cleared by the government’s censors and sent on to the White House.
The men who wrote the letter are Uighurs, Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, who had fled their homeland because of Chinese persecution, and were sold to US forces by opportunistic Pakistani villagers during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
by Luke Ryland
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Luke’s blog post
July 31, 2009
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).
In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, “all the way until that day of September 11.”
These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These ‘operations’ involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.
As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from ‘actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia’) as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.
AlJazeeraEnglish
July 18, 2009
As the Chinese government tries to control the situation in Xinjiang following riots there, critics say Beijing’s policies are partly to blame for the outbreak of ethnic violence.
Fighting between Han and Uighur factory workers in the industrial south is said to have sparked the Xinjiang riots. Now the two groups are becoming increasingly separate, as Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reports from Shaoguan in Guangdong province.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
see
Is The World Ignoring A Massacre of Uighurs In China? by Andy Worthington
Report From Urumqi: Thousands of Chinese Troops Enter City Torn by Ethnic Clashes
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
15 July 2009
In recent months, those who have been studying Guantánamo closely have come to the disturbing conclusion that the biggest obstacle to President Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo by January 2010 comes not from the fearmongering and opportunistic politicians who recently voted to prohibit the use of any funds to release or to transfer prisoners to the United States, and who also authorized legislation that “requires the President to report periodically to Congress on the status of Guantánamo Bay detainees and plans for their transfer,” but from the administration’s own Justice Department.
Echoing the position taken by the Bush administration, Eric Holder’s Justice Department is pursuing patently indefensible cases that should have been dropped before being presented to a judge, and is also engaged in what appears to be a systematic policy of delays when it comes to providing exculpatory material to the prisoners’ defense teams (in other words, material that tends to disprove the government’s case), or, in fact, any other material that is vital to mounting a proper defense. Moreover, when given the option to defend a judge’s right to order the release of prisoners against whom no case could be proved, the Justice Department sided with a notoriously pro-Bush judge in the Court of Appeals, who ruled that, although a District Court judge could demolish the government’s case against a Guantánamo prisoner, he or she was powerless to actually order the prisoner’s release.
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
14 July 2009
I have just received disturbing information from several Uighur correspondents in the United States, regarding the “riots” that began just nine days ago in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China.
When the unrest began, the world’s media suddenly discovered the story of the Uighurs, who describe their situation as akin to that of the Tibetans, but without the popular support. Once known as East Turkestan, the Uighurs’ long-contested homeland was conquered by the People’s Liberation Army in 1949, and anyone even remotely familiar with recent Uighur history will be aware that, in the 1960s, Mao Zedong encouraged Han Chinese to settle in the area in large numbers, and that the Uighurs — some of whom came to the attention of the West when 22 refugees were sold to US forces and imprisoned in Guantánamo — maintain that, as a result, they are marginalized and persecuted in their own country.
Democracy Now!
July 9, 2009
Report From Urumqi: Thousands of Chinese Troops Enter City Torn by Ethnic Clashes
Thousands of Chinese troops have flooded into the regional capital of the country’s western-most Xinjiang province following bloody clashes between the city’s Han Chinese and Uighur populations. Four days after the violence that left at least 150 dead and over a thousand injured, reports indicate an unsteady calm has returned to the city of Urumqi. We go to Urumqi to speak with Al Jazeera English correspondent Melissa Chan.[includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Melissa Chan, Beijing correspondent for Al Jazeera English. She is currently reporting from the city of Urumqi.
via Report From Urumqi: Thousands of Chinese Troops Enter City Torn by Ethnic Clashes
Democracy Now! – 7/9/09 – Report From Urumqi: Chinese Troops Enter Torn City (part 1 of 1)
mediagrrl9
July 09, 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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Martial law in Xinjiang as ethnic tensions flare – 09 July 09
Watch the entire 1st video or skip to the very end to see this most brave woman (2:23 in).
AlJazeeraEnglish
July 07, 2009
Violence broke out in up to four neighbourhoods in the western Chinese city of Urumqi on Tuesday, according to witnesses.
A group of armed Han Chinese people were seen marching towards an ethnic minority Uighur neighbourhood. Uighurs and security forces were also out on the streets.
Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reports on the third day of unrest in Xinjiang province, where authorities say 156 people have died so far.
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[More incredibly brave women.]
China Urumqi protests
Democracy Now!
July 7, 2009
Warning
Some of the following videos may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Uyghur Protests Widen as Xinjiang Unrest Flares
New protests have erupted in China’s western Xinjiang region, two days after at least 156 people were killed and over 1,000 wounded in the country’s worst ethnic violence in decades. On Tuesday, some 200 ethnic Uyghurs–mostly women–took to the streets to protest over the mass arrest of more than 1,400 people following Sunday’s clashes. Later, hundreds of ethnic Han Chinese marched through the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province. The two sides blame each other for the outbreak of violence.[includes rush transcript]
Guest
Nury Turkel, a Uyghur American Attorney. He is the co-founder of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and Past President of the Uyghur American Association.
***
mediagrrl9
July 07, 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
23 June 2009
Today I was delighted to be invited into a London studio for an interview about Guantánamo on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. The show, which airs on over 750 stations, is described as “pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the US,” and it was, therefore, a great pleasure to be able to talk about the case of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco (or al-Janko), the al-Qaeda torture victim whose release from Guantánamo was ordered yesterday following a habeas corpus review by Judge Richard Leon. Memorably, Judge Leon (an appointee of George W. Bush) lambasted the government for attempting to claim that, despite being tortured by al-Qaeda to admit to being an American spy, and then being imprisoned for 18 months by the Taliban, al-Ginco retained some sort of connection with either group that justified his indefinite detention. This was, he said, a sign that the government’s position “defies common sense.” Continue reading
Dandelion Salad 