US paid $200M to Palau to take care of 17 Uyghur detainees

Provided the "court" is as fault-free as always has been ...

 

Very well, your clever use of quotation marks around the word court is sufficient evidence of a vast-political-judicial conspiracy for me to doubt the public record's veracity! I guess you guys are right. I will now not renew my NYS Atty Registration this year in order to disassociate myself from this distasteful sham.

 

The quotation markers were not intended for mockery purpose -- I probably should have bolded or capitalized or underline it.

My point is that the standard/rule/criteria used could be very much affected by (geo-)political factors.

 

China is a despotic nation that actively represses religious freedoms, we have knows that for years, and they do not make much of an effort to conceal that. We know for a fact that Christians and Muslims and even Buddhists are denied the right to practice their religion free of government intrusion. The plight of the Uyghurs in China is something to empathize with, much like the plight of Christian minorities. For all the good China is doing for its people, it is still very much an anti-religion state that actively represses religious minorities. It is not unlike the repression of religious groups and practices under the former 'godless' Soviet Union.

I think this link might shed some light on the Uyghurs in general, they are probably some of the most repressed ethnic minority in the world, all in the name of American appeasement of the Chinese government (kind of like of how we threw Tibet under the bus and rarely manage the courage to come up with as much as a strongly worded statement when it is called for). Their plight has been ignored and their rights suspended in the greater interest of Chinamerica Co.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105188932

China has a lot of ethnic unrest brewing under the surface, although I strongly doubt it will ever amount to much with an overwhelming Han majority allied with the state to facilitate its own ethnic hegemony and eventual cultrecide of ethnic minorities.

 

So terrorist acts are fine as long the group is being oppressed. Surely Hamas is great and the old IRA was just super.

 

uh oh,now this thread is gonna get rowdy....

 

No, if they are terrorists then they SHOULD BE CHARGED AND TRIED. I am talking about the ethnic Uyghurs at large and their plight in China. It is like saying we should have ignored the rightful cause of Irish independence because the IRA existed. Not every Irish was a terrorist nor is every Uyghur, whom I understand are roughly 85 million strong in China and have tons of natural resources where they live. I am addressing religious rather than political freedoms. To me, the freedom to believe and practice that belief is much more fundamental than the right to vote. There are tons of authoritarian regimes that deny their people the right to vote or rig elections and yet manage to grant their people some personal freedoms. The state should NOT interfere into religion, nor should religion interfere into state functions.

I hope I clarified.

 

The Uyghur are treated much much better in China than the Palestinians in Isreal.

And there are about 19 million of them not 85 million, that's everyone in the Area. There are about 8-9 million Uyghurs and 7.5 million Hans currently.

 

I doubt it - remember the US Gov't (the DOJ) wanted to try/detain these guys indefinitely as "enemy combatants", the federal court system, which is an independent body, not electable or accountable to any other branch, said "no way" - and has basically been very resistant at all levels, all the way up to the Sup Ct. to the Bush Administration's attempts to circumvent due process in the war on terror, regardless of the nationality of the defendant.

This suggestion would be premised on the bizarre notion of a federal district court judge intentionally invalidating the gov'ts own atempts to detain these guys in order to conduct his own foreign policy? That just doesn't make sense on a number of levels.

 

I don't know about that. Muslim and Christian Israeli Arabs living inside Israel have full political and religious rights. They are some discrimination issues, but they are not systematic and they are no different than the occasional racism in America against Blacks or Hispanics.

I stand corrected, you are right, they are about 1-2% of the 1.2 billion Chinese nationals. That is still not a small number, if they were a country they would be bigger than many Muslim states even.

 

What about the people living in Gaza? I suppose they do not count as people.

 

They are a different country that is at war with Israel. They are NOT citizens of Israel, while the Uyghurs are citizens of China living on Chinese territory. Apples and oranges buddy.

 

So All China has to do is kick these Uyghurs out of where they currently live and declare them not Chinese and everything would be fine, now I get it.

 

If China wishes to scede Uyghurstan and make it clear to the rest of the world that it isn't part of China, but rather 'occupied territories' I'm sure the Uyghurs would be happy with that solution.

 

Considering that roughly 20% of Israelis are Arabs and they were not kicked out of Israel proper, your comparison is invalid.

Of course, China would never do that because the land on which many of those Uyghurs live is rich in resources. Not to mention that some of the other nuclear powers around China (namely India and Pakistan) would not take kindly to a refugee crisis in the tens of millions as a result of Chinese recklessness and appetite for ethnic cleansing, nor would the U.S. stand for it. So your scenario is completely unrealistic and would never materialize.

Try to tone down your Chinese nationalism a bit and maybe you will start thinking clearly and not be so defensive.

 

While I agree with you in principle - this comparison falls apart here. What country are the people on Gaza a part of? The land they live on is Israeli managed and controlled.

 

You said it much more aptly than I could. I am sure the Uyghurs would be thrilled with their changed status of "Occupied Territories" should the Chinese be willing to do that, which we all know they would never even consider it, because they desperately want that territory. I am guessing they would have tried to do that with the much larger Tibet issue if they ever had any intention of losing territory.

 

pirc1 is not that much of a Prc-nationalist compared to some of the other posters here.

 

If they are not terrorists, then why not just put them right here in U.S. and save the 200M.