According to AP, the US electorates, via Bush, Cheney, Rummsy, and Rice, seem to have out done the Soviets and ChiCom in so far as news.yahoo.com mistreating apparently quite ordinary folks while under the international spotlight, practiced with unscientific method and without legal process other than the one that says Bush is above the law; and worst of all, all to no gainful effect, due to comic incompetence at even the simple task of anti-terror through fear.
LOL!! I wonder how the Chinese treat the muslim militants they capture in Xinjiang Province?? Sure ain't nothing to be proud of, especially since the Han Chinese population of Xinjiang has grown from 300,000 to over 6 million since 1949.
Of course, this is just the Chinese version of "Manifest Destiny", I guess..
Beijing also has shrewdly capitalized on post-9/11 fears of Islamic terrorism to launch a "strike hard" campaign against Muslim "splittists"-groups of ethnic Uighurs living in the western Xinjiang province, the site of diffuse but violent separatist movements in the past. Yet according to Dru Gladney, an expert on Chinese Muslims at the University of Hawaii, most Uighurs have become less enamored with separation as they have watched chaos envelop their independent, post-Soviet Central Asian neighbors. Even Uighurs advocating increased autonomy primarily desire more freedom to study and utilize the Uighur language and to halt the flooding of the province with ethnic Han Chinese. (There were roughly 300,000 Han in Xinjiang in 1949; today there are more than 6.4 million.)
Still, the "strike hard" campaign has been exceptionally broad, perhaps reflecting Beijing's fear that some Uighur activists might link up with Tlbetans and other disgruntled ethnic minorities. Vocally linking its crackdown to the international war on terror (Beijing claims al-Qaeda terrorists are hiding in Xinjiang), the Chinese authorities have deployed 40,000 new troops to the province, burned Uighur-language books and held "political education" sessions for 8,000 imams. These campaigns are eerily reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution's brutal "education" brainwashing sessions. Meanwhile, the security forces have detained thousands of Uighurs and executed several alleged separatists. As Craig Smith of the New York Times noted after watching one man be sentenced to death, Xinjiang is "the only place in the country where people are regularly put to death for political offenses."
thirdworldtraveler.com
BTW, The Chinese leaders now use the term "inner-Party democracy" to publicly embrace the idea that the CCP should institutionalize the checks and balances within its leadership. As they say, a journey of 10k miles starts with one step.
Interesting.. the cliche can apply to China, but it can't apply to Iraq and the rest of the Mid-East??
What's even more ironic is, politically speaking, Iraq is now actually more democratic that China.
How does that feel TJ.. Having to admit that an Arab country can actually manage to have national, free and fair, elections, even in the midst of sectarian violence, but China cannot?
Hawk |
