Now, racist China starts targeting ethnic Kazakh Muslims

Agencies
November 25, 2017

Hong Kong, Nov 25: After a massive crackdown on the Islam-following Uyghur community in its Xinjiang province, China is now targeting the ethnic Kazakhs living on its side of the border with Kazakhstan - again on grounds of religion with the objective of forcing them to stop following their Islamic customs, including prayers five times a day.

According to reports, which are usually difficult to come by from Xinjiang the crackdown is happening in the Ili Kazakh, Tacheng and Altey prefectures of Xinjiang, situated along the border with Kazakhstan and home to around 1.5 million Kazakhs. Very little is reported on this community, many of whom moved to China in the last few decades, looking for a better life. However, all is not good for many of them.

Since the last one year, the Kazakh community in Xinjiang have noticed that Chinese security agencies have been imposing restrictions on their way of life, especially concerning their religious customs. In June 2016, a popular Kazakh Imam Akmet was detained by the police in Xinjiang. According to Radio Free Asia, while this Imam soon died in police custody, by July 2016, more than 100 of his friends and relatives had been rounded up by the local police.

Again on June 10, 2017, it was reported that at least 10 Kazakhs were arrested by the police in Karamay City of Xinjiang for having "close ties" ties with Uyghurs. Now, in the latest report by Radio Free Asia, Chinese authorities in Tekes county of Ili Kazakh Prefecture searched the homes of more than 30 thousand Kazakh families in the last week of October and confiscated Korans, prayer mats and beads and other religious articles. According to this report, the presence of security forces have increased in the area, with the police putting on a watch list all Kazakhs who returned to China after a long stay abroad.

Separately, the Chinese authorities have also issued orders to ethnic Kazakh Chinese nationals to hand over their passports. Local ethnic minorities in Xinjiang are also under pressure to attend flag raising ceremonies with Chinese flags and where the national anthem is played.

For decades, the largest ethnic group of Xinjiang, the Uyghurs, have been facing severe persecution. Things have worsened for them in the last few years with the government imposing large scale restrictions on them including denying them the basic right to practise their religion. It now appears that Chinese security agencies have similarly begun targeting the Kazakhs.

China and Kazakhstan share cordial relations and the Kazakh government is positively disposed towards China. However, there is a growing resentment against increasing Chinese presence in the country. For instance, in early 2016 impending land reforms that would give the Chinese the right to purchase land in Kazakhstan led to one of the biggest protests in the country in decades.

Though the Kazakh government has tried to keep this under wraps Chinese human rights violations against the ethnic Kazakhs, civil rights activists and journalists in Kazakhstan are using the social media to raise awareness on this issue and this June, a Kazakh writers' organisation gave a call for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev to take up the matter with his Chinese counterpart.

It is unlikely that Kazakhstan will consider it worthwhile to raise this issue with China, which in the recent years has invested billions of dollars in the country, according to Kazakh community leaders in Xinjiang. They say that if things continue the way they going the Community would find itself in a worse position than the Uyghurs as China pushes ahead with its crackdown on Islamic rituals and customs.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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News Network
November 10,2024

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Mangaluru: A tragic accident took place on Saturday at Chembugudde near Thokkottu, claiming the life of a 47-year-old woman after a tanker lorry ran over her. The victim, identified as Rahmat H Rashid, was riding pillion with her husband, Abdul Rashid G, on their scooter. 

The couple was traveling from Yenepoya Hospital to Bajpe when the scooter skidded on the poorly maintained road. Rahmat fell onto the road and was fatally struck by a tanker lorry that was coming from behind. Despite being rushed to the hospital, doctors declared her dead upon arrival.

The incident prompted a swift response from the DYFI Ullal Taluk Committee, which staged a protest on Saturday night, condemning the unsafe condition of the road. Nithin Kuthar, president of the committee, criticized MLA and Legislative Assembly Speaker UT Khader for failing to ensure safe infrastructure, despite touting the road as toll-free. 

Kuthar demanded immediate repairs, warning that the committee would march to the MLA’s office with black flags if the road is not fixed within a week.

Former DYFI State President Sunil Kumar Bajal also voiced frustration over the deteriorating condition of Thokkottu market, highlighting the struggles people face while crossing roads riddled with dangerous potholes. In response to public outcry, temporary repairs were made to the road at Chembugudde on Sunday, though locals remain wary and demand a more permanent solution. 

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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