The New York Times has now chimed in on this story.

Wow. I guess the trolls are all about to have heart attacks right now.

What US goverment did this time, is OK!

And, you here have more and more morons.
1, U.S. has secret jails
yes，absolutely， the movie (Rendition) can tell us.

2, USA has racism...
yes absolutely

3, Hawaii want a independence.
Yes, you are right.

why you'd like repeat this all-knowns things again and again?

Michael Manning, the blogger here

@Taiko,

I think your question is either unadequate or not smart enough. I think sure Mr. Manning will tell you that he loves China and all he's doing is good for Chinese, one way or another. Maybe he thinks a unified China, or a China unified in today's way, is not good, or good enough, for the Chinese. But the Chinese are either ten-year-olds, or brainwashed by the evil Han chauvinists, which are in effect the same, that they don't know it.

It is just like Christian missionaries. They just want to bright you the correct faith. Your rejection is your own fault.

Michael, I would take the idiot psts of tctdh as a compliment. If the nature of your posts and the comments received did not deeply disturb him and his idiot buddies, they wouldnt bother. but it seems thay really have nothing to do and live in an intellectual vacuum of repetitive nonsense, deeply fooling themselves of their own worth and intelligence. So keep it up, no one will read any more of their stuff as they are the same mindless posts over and over.

Finally justice for the Gitmo Uygyurs. Next, hopefully will be a rescension of the Chinese imaginary ETIM as a terorist threat, then China will have no more legitimacy for its genocidal oppression of the Uyghur. Their purpose and murderous intent toward the Uyghur people will be clear to all with no US to back up their lies and manipulation.

I have some more great stuff to post on the desires of the Taiwan aboriginals for Independence, if I may? and some great quotes form tctdh/old wiseman from the past where he accuses others who disagree with him in just the same way he does you, what was that about a broken record? This one has been broken for years and is still spinning, mindlessly around and around.

I read somewhere yesterday that there is speculation that they might be released in or around the Washington D.C. area? Either way, I feel seven years in prison is enough; but I guess better than getting sent back to China..

Micheal, we love what you are doing. Don't care about how a few idiots criticize you. You don't have to answer their "demands".

Yeah Michael, what ABC said, and I must apologies for even responding to them. I only enflamed the situation by giving them (him) the time of day.

Keep blogging bruvva.

apologize even.. (I'd never be able to get by on a English teachers wage, less earn it).

tctdh

you bloody hypocrite, you are the one under the name oldwiseman who keeps posting amnesty international published articles. Do you really expect to be taken seriously?

I will be posting some of your earlier posts soon when I ahve time off from my more serious propaganda duties. Very interesting stuff. You have been sick for some, some time now, havent you ?

and BTW how are your shares in Telaxis going???????

You dont give a shit about Taiwan indigenous people but only about Hawaiins and Lakota, shame on you what type of Chinese nationalist are you?

btw, Im not a Yank dear mr. dog's breath,

bow wow wow, woof, woof.

Dear Michael,

you really have them rattled now, their mania is reaching fever pitch.

Im so surprized you are accused of so many things. I was accused on another thread here by an unmentionable and reprehensible whoremonger that I attack Singapore, which is totally untrue, Ive never done that. I mean perhaps a more accurate perception would be that I challenge the basic Confucian authoritarian ethic which underlies much suppression in NE & SE Asia, but of course they would never see that or understand that and of course revert to personal attack to prove their puerile and unrelated points. To which at times I feel justified to reatliate in alittle accurate ad hominen myself.

I find my post of lists of Uyghur political prisoners (there are many many more of course these days) quite relevant to the thread especially in regard the imprisonment at Gitmo of innocent Uyghurs and also in response to oldwiseman/tctdh's ridiculous post about secret American prisons which we all know too well about anyway and of course have no sympathy for. But of course he somehow in his limited understanding and delusional state thinks this is earth shattering and revealing and a challenge.GBut what it really does is just prove how out of touch he is especially in regards the thinking of a pluralistic and open society.

Anyway, blogmaster, these guys are really losing their marbles because they cannot control the discourse here. As previously mentioned this is for our entertainment and amusement, and dare I say for the education of the global community; boy they are sick. keep it up Mick.

@everyone: This is getting out of control. I'll continue to delete tctdh/sogdia/oldwiseman's spam posts, but please... the rest of you should police yourselves and not fill the comments section with crap to refute their crap! Thanks.

I saw something added to this story (not sure which pub I was reading it in though). There is the possibility that the US would hear their asylum cases or find other countries willing to accept them as political asylum seekers.

Some Chinese official already pounced on it and demanded that the 17 be repatriated for further punishment.

I spoke too soon. Today's Washington Post has an article about a DC community asking for their release into their custody.

"'We are here to help. Release them into our custody,' said Nury Turkel, a Washington aviation lawyer and past president of the Uyghur American Association, a District-based human rights group that uses another spelling of the ethnic group's name. 'We have people offering them places to stay, English training, employment. We don't want anyone to think they will be a burden on society.'"

Rest of the article is here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100702685.html

michael??? michael??? michael???MANNING.
we chinese dont need your concern and affection. we chinese can do our homework with hardship and eat bitterness.
your damm student name SPEC doesnt even know what is the meaning of WOMAN RIGHTS. he dont know how to respect woman by calling them prostitude openly in your blog.how can you michael be a true champion of human rights and champion of independence in any chinese sovereign territory or in other nation.
well well well. you michael manning want to be a hero in china??? hehe, you got no place here in china to be a hero. we have so many real hero from the past up to the present. so there is no place for you here in china. you better went to iraq or afhanistan or somalia and be their hero.and lets them decide what type of a hero they will decorate for you. i think they will build a palace that seal off without gate nor window for your exclusive use.

Well, it looks like the US don't want them either:

""Today's ruling presents serious national security and separation of powers concerns and raises unprecedented legal issues," said Brian Roehrkasse, the justice department spokesman.

"Although the US no longer treats these Uighurs as 'enemy combatants' of the US and has been seeking to transfer them out of Guantánamo Bay and to appropriate foreign countries willing to accept them, the government does not believe that it is appropriate to have these foreign nationals removed from government custody and released into the US"."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bf253334-94d1-11dd-953e-000077b07658.html

I stated ealier that I read a report that there was speculation that the Uighurs might be released into the Washington DC area: where a substantia; Uighur community exist. However, it appears wrong.

In my opinion, the Uighurs should be allowed to reside in America: they have created this mess, and violated x-many human rights; time for them to step up and take responsibility.

*They being the United States

MICHAEL...MICHAEL...MICHARL...MANNING.
please amswer all the QUESTION of oldwiseman and many writer here.
also please answer my question.
WHY YOU COME TO MY COUNTRY CHINA AND CRITICISE MY COUNTRY?
WHY YOU LEFT YOUR OWN COUNTRY U,S,A AND LIVE HERE AS YOUR SAFE DOMAIN?
WHY YOU ONLY KNOW HOW TO SING SONG AGAINTS CHINA AND DONT KNOW THE MEANING OF WOMAN RIGHTS?
WHY YOU NOT STAY IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY AND CRITICISE YOUR OWN COUNTRY FOR ALL THE MESS YOUR GOVERNMENT DONE ESPECIALLY THE CONSPIRACY OF 9/11?
WHY DONT YOU GO BACK HOME TO YOUR OWN HOME UNSWEET HOME TO HELP YOUR COUNTRY SOLVE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS?

another question.
WHY DONT YOU SIGN YOU SIGNATURE INSTEAD OF INITIAL?
WHY DIDNT YOU PRINT YOUR NAME UNDER YOUR INITIAL?
WHY DIDNT YOU POST YOUR OWN PICTURE IN YOUR BLOG SO EVERYBODY WILL SEE YOU?

a true hero always come out in the open and post his/her picture.
a TRUE HERO always sign his/her signature with PRINTED NAME, not initial without PRINTED NAME.
You should learn from our CHINESE HERO.

GO BACK TO YOUR OWN HOME UNSWEET HOME AND SAVE YOUR OWN COUNTRY FIRST.
CHINA DONT NEED YOU.

@Michael: About the COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT, have you ever informed your employer in Beijing about your online activities?!

Since you have believed in the COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT so much and you have made a special entry on this blog, we wonder that why you haven't informed your current employer about what you are doing with this blog. You should be very proud of it, at least it is a very "lucrative" business, isn't it?!

About the "FOREIGN EXPORT" certificate you have applied and approved, would you mind to share us what kind of "FOREIGN EXPORT" you really are?! We don't expect you to say the "EXPERT OF INSTIGATING ETHNIC MINOITY HATRED IN FOREIGN LAND", do we?!

@chin: My signature is affixed to each and every blog post. My name is Michael Manning. You can find my picture all over this site.

@oldwiseman: Let me remind you that it wasn't me who wrote that Uyghurs were being punished collectively. It was the HK Center for Human Rights, and I merely alerted my readers to their article.

Court blocks judge's order to free Chinese Muslims
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
October 9, 2008 Thursday 12:45 AM GMT

A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked a judge's decision to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims at Guantanamo Bay into the U.S.

In a one-page order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued the emergency stay at the request of the Bush administration. The three-judge panel said it would postpone release of the detainees for at least another week to give the government more time to make arguments in the case.

The appeals court set a deadline of next Thursday for additional filings but it is up to the judges to decide how quickly to act afterward.

"The decision is quite a blow," said Emi MacLean, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing many of the detainees. "We basically have to go to the men after telling them they would be released, and say that their detention is once again indefinite."

"It's hard to believe there is any sense of justice in a situation like that," she said. "We will continue to argue strongly that the judge's order is meritorious and continues to stand."

Don't give SillyYoungBoy the time of day Michael. You're wasting your time. Let them scream a lack of democracy in their own country. Your blog ain't no democracy, and you need not answer their childish questions.

D.C. Area Families Are Ready to Receive Uighur Detainees
by Steve Hendrix, Washington Post Staff Writer
October 8, 2008 Wednesday

When U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina was looking for a place in the United States to send 17 Chinese Muslim detainees he wants released from Guantanamo Bay, the Washington area was an obvious choice. The region is home to the country's largest concentration of refugees from the men's ethnic group, known as Uighurs, and members have promised to help resettle the prisoners.

"Our community said: 'We are here to help. Release them into our custody,' " said Nury Turkel, a Washington aviation lawyer and past president of the Uyghur American Association, a District-based human rights group that uses another spelling of the ethnic group's name. "We have people offering them places to stay, English training, employment. We don't want anyone to think they will be a burden on society."

Urbina has ordered the men, who have been held at Guantanamo for almost seven years and are no longer considered enemy combatants by the United States, released into the care of 17 volunteer Uighur families by Friday. According to one of the detainees' attorneys, the presence of a local community willing to receive the detainees was key in the judge's decision that they be released on U.S. soil.

"The local Uighur presence is critical," said Susan Baker Manning, an attorney for the detainees. "These men are halfway around the world from their home and their families. They've been held in grinding isolation, many of them in solitary confinement for about a year and half. They are going to need some help."

The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking people and the largest ethnic group of the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang, which Uighurs refer to as East Turkistan. The group has long complained of repression by Chinese authorities.

A few Uighurs settled in the Washington area as students in the 1980s, Turkel said. The number of asylum-seekers picked up in the mid-1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and amid increasing political pressure in China. Turkel came as a law student to American University in 1995 and was subsequently granted political asylum.

The refugees, who tend to be college educated, are attracted to the nation's capital because they often remain active in the Uighur cause and other human rights issues.

"They tend to be very political," Turkel said. "They will talk to anyone, the cashier at the grocery store: 'I'm from the northwestern part of China that has been occupied by communist China for 50 years. We've suffered just like the Tibetans, but nobody knows about us because we don't have a Dalai Lama.' That's a common daily conversation, and it's a lot easier to have it here than in Lincoln, Nebraska."

Elshat Hassan, 46, of McLean was a professor of chemical engineering for 15 years in China before he fled with help from the United Nations. He was settled in Buffalo but moved to Virginia after only a few months in 2006.

"I wanted to be with other Uighur people," said Hassan, who has volunteered to host one of the released detainees and plans to cook him a polo, a ceremonial dish of lamb, carrots and rice. After working in a Uighur-owned frame shop for six months, Hassan is now an information technology specialist for Booz Allen Hamilton. "I didn't know anyone when I came, but they all helped me. And now I will help him."

Turkel said the local group is close-knit and active, and the court was crowded yesterday with area Uighurs. They gather several times a year, often at a rented hall at George Mason University, for ethnic celebrations. The largest is Nations Day, Nov. 12, a mix of political seminars and a traditional dance party.

If the legal system delivers the detainees to Washington in the next several weeks, next month's gathering promises to be the biggest ever, Turkel said.

"It will be huge," he said. "Having them released into Washington is more than just having some guys released from prison. It sends a big signal to China."

@ Mr. Michael Manning:

You haven't answered these questions yet:

Did you inform your current employer about your online activity?! Who is your employer?!

What kind of the "FOREIGN EXPERT" you are?!

Are you aware that what you are doing on this block is exactly what your government is doing to INSTIGATING ETHNIC MINOITY HATRED IN FOREIGN LAND? Do you know this violates the laws in China?!

If you don't like China, you have the choice not come to this country?! What makes you to repeatedly come back to China?

Why you don't show the compassion toward your own minority countrymen as much as you have shown to the minorities in foreign country where you even don't know the language and culture?

You have enjoyed Freedom of Speech in China, Why you have played the dictator to delete other people's comments as long as they are talking about the minority conflicts and discriminations in your country? And the facts that your government has pumped hundreds of millions dollors to instigate hatred between government and people, and agitate minority conflicts.

When you applied the working "Z" VISA to China, did you make it known that you have a side job to run this blog?

WE ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE ANSWERS TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS FROM YOU.

ENGLISH TEACHER? FOREIGN EXPERT? AMERICAN AGITATOR OF ETHNIC HATRED IN FOREIGN LAND? RFA INFORMANT? or ALL OF THESE MIXED TOGATHER!

An "English Teacher" in Beijing: "She said that during her two years in Beijing as an English teacher she was not involved in any pro-Tibet activism, though she did work for the International Campaign for Tibet in Germany three years ago."

OnLine Behavior of International School Teacher in Beijing: "I don't know anymore specifics, but I received an Email from my principal warning us about our online behaviour after an international school teacher was deported from China."

English Teacher in Beijing Deported: "Dechen Pemba, a British-born ethnic Tibetan who worked as an English teacher in the city, was deported at the beginning of July. Chinese authorities said she was a member of an exile Tibetan activist group, a charge she denies."

VISA Regulation Shifting for ESL teachers in China "English teacher or an agitator of ethnic hatred in foreign land"

Two English Teachers spread the words of Jesus Christ? "Two American English teachers sent by the English Language Institute/ China (ELIC) were expelled from Tibet"

Reporter with hidden assignment? "Ray insisted that he went to the park strictly in his capacity as a journalist and took no part in the protest. He has worked for ITN for eight years and has been the network's correspondent in China since 2006."

CIA RECRUITS JOURNALISTS

C.I.A.'s Recruitment of Journalists for Covert Operations New York Times reported.
C.I.A. Established Many Links To Journalists in U.S. and Abroad; "C.I.A.'s Numerous Links With Journalists Differed Widely in Degree and ValueNew", York Times reported.

U.S. SENATE TESTIMONY: CIA RECRUITING JOURNALISTS AS SPIES It has been going on all the time.

German "CIA" Uses Reporters As Informants Spread/exchange intelligance, create/spread rumors, and instigate hatred between government and people, and agitate minority conflicts.

@jimba:

Waste time? We hope we are not wasting time here!

@ trolls

Michael Manning is not an English teacher, but as you see all of your crap will no longer be tolerated, so, I too on pain of being deleted and blocked will no longer respond to your puerile antics, how desperate you all really are, how pitifully sick you all must be. May Confucius punish you all in hell!

On topic, one would hope the US will, after, the usual due process of discussion and posturing, allow them to stay in the great land of the free.

The main point here is that they are innocent, never were enemy combatants, never were terrorists. This must surely gall the false government of China which calls itself the CCP dictatorship. The ETIM will next be exonerated, it stands to reason. Long live Liberty and Justice.

@kids:

Let him speak! He has to be like a adult, to make his own choice and take the consequences of it.

MICHAEL...MICHAEL... MICHAEL...MANNING.

ANSWER THE QUESTION OF OLDWISEMAN.

ANSWER THE QUESTION OF OLDWISEMAN NOW.

you want to be a HERO......
SO ANSWER THE QUESTION OF OLDWISEMAN NOW.

or you just pack your things and go back to your own HOME UNSWEET HOME. instead crying and shouting AND DISTURBING inside our HOME SWEET HOME CHINA.

and when you go back to your own UNSWEET homeland. try to learn the meaning of WOMAN RIGHTS. teach your 2 student to behave and respect WOMAN RIGHTS.

MICHAEL...MICHAEL...MICHAEL...MANNING.

you say your picture was all over this site.oooh.

Why you hide your face with SKELETON MASK. may our almighty GOD and ALLAH save your soul???

you was BORN to be a PIRATE again.

YOU MUST ANSWER ALL THE QUESTION OF OLDWISEMAN NOW.

MICHAEL...MICHAEL...MICHAEL...MANNING

Should i teach you how to sign a documents or letter or comments? ok. i teach you how.

if a person signing a DOCUMENTS...
it should not be INITIAL. it should be SIGNATURE with HIS/HER PRINTED NAME at the BOTTOM of the signature. the picture of the undersign should be unmask.

Also, are you ready to answer the QUESTION of OLDWISEMAN?

Ok. i will give you a certain time to let you ask your BOSS on how you should answer the QUESTION of OLDWISEMAN.

Michael Manning ?

THAT SWINE HAS JEW BLOOD, THAT IS WHY HE IS SUCH A BLOOD SUCKING FLESH YEARNING BEAST !!!

THAT PUNY LITTLE DICKY COUNTRY CANNOT EVEN LIVE IN PEACE WITH THE ONLY MINORITY PALESTINIAN PEOPLE WHO WERE COLONIZED AND TORTURED IN THEIR OWN LAND !!!!!!

WHY CANADA, AUSTRALIA, BRITAIN ARE PEACEFUL WHILE THE AMERICANS ARE ALWAYS AGREESIVELY AND OFFENSIVELY SEEKING BLOOD ? BECAUSE THE AMERICANS ARE CONTAMINATED WITH SOME MOST DESPICABLE BLOOD !!!

BOYCOTT COCO COLA AND SHEVRON !!!!!!!!

China says it won't torture Guantanamo detainees

The Associated Press
Thursday, October 9, 2008

BEIJING: China on Thursday rejected concerns that it would torture Chinese Muslims held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay if they are returned to China, saying they will be dealt with according to the law.

China has called on the U.S. to repatriate 17 Chinese Muslim detainees who were to have been released this week, saying they are terrorists and should be brought to justice, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference.

"Some people may worry whether these people could be tortured in China, I believe this is biased. China is a country under the rule of law, and forbids torture by any Chinese authorities, be they judiciary or public security," Qin said. (...yeah, and all those reported cases of torture come under the 1997 Criminal Law act too.... cheeee)

The Bush administration is trying to find a country to accept the group and has said the detainees might be tortured if they are turned over to China.

In a 19-page emergency request to a federal appeals court the Bush administration argued for the postponement of the detainees' release, maintaining there would be only "minimal harms" if the detainees were to stay at Guantanamo a while longer.

On Wednesday, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to put off the group's release for at least another week.

The move came a day after District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ordered the government to free the detainees by Friday, saying they have been cleared of wrongdoing.

The detainees, captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001, are Uighurs from Xinjiang — an isolated region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations — who say they are oppressed by the Chinese government.

"We have raised our position to the U.S. and we hope they will take this position seriously and repatriate these 17 people to China shortly," Qin said.

The U.S. Appeals Court set a deadline of next Thursday for additional filings, when it will be left up to the judges to decide how quickly to act — and in whose favor.

Qin said the men are members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which China says is an Islamic terrorist group that seeks to split the western region of Xinjiang from China. The U.S. listed it as a terrorist organization in 2002.

China has blamed the group for sporadic violence and has repeatedly urged the U.S. to turn the Uighurs over to Chinese authorities.

The Uighur detainees have become a diplomatic and legal headache for the U.S., which no longer wants to hold them but does not know where to send them. Many countries fear diplomatic repercussions from China if they receive them.

Albania accepted five Uighur detainees in 2006 but has since balked at taking others.

The Uighurs' case is among dozens currently being reviewed by federal judges after the Supreme Court ruled in June that foreign detainees at Guantanamo have the right to sue in U.S. civilian courts to challenge their imprisonment.

Spec, Reobuck et al. by responding we are only egging this plot on. Please, ignore these ignorant fuckers, feel sorry for them like you would any retarded child, and continue commenting like they don't exist.

Michael, keep deleting their (his) posts. As I said, I'm more than happy to help you out if you haven't the time.

I am sorry that these people (wiseoldman) are Chinese. They don't understand what freedom of expression is and they are an enemy to the Chinese people. They work for the government, and it just proves how little freedom, or human rights we have.

michael, how much does CIA pays you for every post? don't be selfish man, i would love to earn that easy money too, would you post the contact numbers and more informations about ur boss?

michael, how much does CIA pays you for every post? don't be selfish man, i would love to earn that easy money too, would you post the contact numbers and more informations about ur boss?

Michael, you won't be staying in that country for long, =)

Dear Michael
I am sorry you are in such situation.I only want to tell others that Michael was really a foreign teacher in Xinjiang.We worked together.And he was a businessman later .Now he works in
Beijing.What he said is true.I am Chinese.I have the same feeling with Chin.I can't understand why wiseman has such opinion to China?
Michael,i hope you are well in China.
Anna

I don't blame on michael. These questions from oldwiseman are too difficult to answer if I were him.

How you convince anyone that you are so concened about the minority in a foreign country that you can not speak their language, don't know their culture, but you are not concerned about your own black, Hawaii minorities at home.

China has many good things to say, such as economic growth, Olympics, ... Michael has not said a single good word on China on his blog in the past three years, he must have some reason just to find teh bad things to say. He also has some reasons that he has to come back to the country he doesn't like again and again.

MICHAEL...MICHAEL...MICHAAEL...MANNING

WHERE IS YOUR ANSWER FOR OLDWISEMAN QUESTION?
WHERE IS YOUR SIGNATURE WITH PRINTED NAME?
WHERE IS YOUR PICTURE WITHOUT MASK?

pls......MICHAEL. show the WORLD you are a TRUE HERO.

tell your 2 student SPEC and JIMBA to learn more about WOMAN RIGHTS.

All the WRITER here in your blog are waiting for your response.

is your BOSS tell you what to do now??? ooooo poor little MICHAEL MANNING.

Chin, here is Michael's photo gallary? ai... bendan.

nice to see you in your picture with your dad and mom and the picture that you dance with the young lady. i also love dancing but not so lucky as you. most of the girl dont love to dance with me. in all the picture i saw. it seem to me you have a happy family life and a intelligent person.
but the only problem that i dont understand is why you hate my country and my countrymen.and i dont understand your motive coming to china. is it your BOSS order you to spread BLACK PROPAGANDA then DESTROY my country step by step just like it happen in IRAQ AFGHANISTAN SOMALIA and other weak poor nation? but Sir michael manning. it is not so easy job for you to do it here in CHINA. even the whole military of uncle sam are not capable to do what they want to do...why not go back to your own homeland and use all your learning in school to solve your country financial crisis.
well, as for me its just a friendly advice for you. STOP THOSE BLACK PROPAGANDA NOW.
its up to you to decide your own. but Sir michael manning. as a man. you should ANSWER all the QUESTION of Sir OLDWISEMAN.
thanks for the picture.

Michael, back in 2003 I made a mistake by hating America, while I should have addressed my hatred to Bush and the neocons that surrounded him (are they still? I don't really care anymore). My rage on the invasion of Iraq blinded me of the fact that those who supported the invasion only did so because they've been duped by Bush administration.

I've said once in this blog that American are willing to learn from mistakes and move on. And that makes America such a great country today.

And this time I have to give my utmost respect to the American justice system. Yes, Bush tried to game the system by labeling the detainees as 'unlawful combatants'. But his trick has been challenged by American judges and American lawyers ever since then. That said a lot of good things about democracy in America.

I hope the Uighur detainees can find a welcome in their new place.

BTW Michael, while I'm a great supporter for democracy and openness, I think you really should delete all those OOT (out of topic) comments by your regular trolls. Those comments serve nothing to our discussion but to drag it away to nowhere.

Comments that accuse you as a CIA agent should be kept, though. Those comments are so amusing, they show your attackers' hopeless and immature way of thinking.

And @spec, please stop feeding the trolls. Yes I know, they hurt my eyes too. But please just ignore them.

Thanks.

Actually, I love China. That explains why I've stayed here for almost 4 years now.

What many Chinese people don't seem to understand is that you can love a country, love a people, and still criticize them.

I love America, too... but that doesn't stop me from appreciating all the humor directed at the Bush Administration and our other negative qualities.

The US is fucked up. I love it! China is fucked up. I love it, too!

@michael: We "love" you, too! We want you not just be deported, we want see you to be tortured in the prison before they deport you, just like these 17 Uyghur "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay prison being tortured before they make a big news to release them!
You love your mother, do you fuck your mother? NO! YOU DON'T FUCK YOUR MOTHER because you have deleted every single comment that fucks your mother, every single comment saying the Black people, Hawaii people, native Indians want independence from your mother, every single comment saying the inhuman dirty things that your mother has been doing to other people.

OLDWISEMAN IS RIGHT ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE ON THIS BLOG IS EXACTLY THE SAME DIRTY THING THAT YOUR MOTHER IS DOING TO THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!

Sir michael. if you want to live and work in my country CHINA. you are warmly welcome.
Sir michael. if you HATE my country CHINA. its another story.
Sir michael. whether you LOVE my COUNTRY or NOT. we CHINESE know how to LOVE and DIE for our COUNTRY similarly how we LOVE and RESPECT our parents.
we CHINESE are not weak like before what you call us....
SICK MAN OF ASIA.
LOOK DOWN AT US.
KILL AND MURDER US CHINESE AND...
DISHONOR OUR WOMAN.
Sir michael. forgive me to remind you that DONT PUSH US CHINESE ANY FURTHER THRU BLACK PROPAGANDA.
Sir michael. i cant force you to do anything if you want to walk the way you choose.

Thank you very much for those beautiful picture.I will treasure it even if one day...
WE MET IN WAR or IN PEACE.

You people are seriously nuts.

Michael, your blog is becoming a magnet for serious nutters :)

First it was tctdh/oldwiseman, and now you have chin.

As spec (or was it jimba?) said, you're way too patient.

Michael,

Can you stop being hypocritical? You hate China, you want it to be splited, you want a weak China that American capitalism can easily take advantage of, you also want a turbulent Middle East that Israel can control and occupy others' land forever. We Chinese all know that.

However, you born in a wrong time. You didn't catch the golden age for color revolution. In the 80s, Chinese young people were enthusiastic to American dream, human rights... You would enjoy greater popularity in that time.

Doing the same thing in different time can achieve totally different results. In the 80s, you would be the one carry enlightenment; now, you are the untouchable. The worst thing is you still confess you are doing us a favor, as if Jews are the most innocent people in the world.

Don't feel disappointed. You mother must have a reason to born you in this time. She must want to to witness how righteous Americans slaughter greedy Jews on the Wall Street.

Michael, looks to me that your blog is either 1. being targetted by CHinese net-police and you are now getting smashed by a platoon of these WWW-KGB wankas; or, 2. your blog is discussion of the month in a ultra-nationalist Chinese discussion board.

Either or Michael, and not wanting to tell you how to run your blog, but you need to step up and deal with this onslaught, otherwise, your blog will will quickly loose its appeal to interested netizens: other than these ultra-nationalist lil red guards... how would not know freedom of expression if it tapped them on the shoulder.

Dear all,

Michael's blog is neither anti-Chinese nor pro-Uighur independence. He may be guilty of posting articles not found within the usual litany of state-run Media, and this makes it all the more worthy of discussion in a mature and logical manner.

If you as loyal Chinese citizen's happen to disagree with what is posted, then retort in a mature and intelligent manner. Personal attacks on Michael only makes it appear that China truely does have trouble with "freedom of expression". No one here "hates" China, and as Michael posited, one can on the one hand love a country, but on the other hand be critical of that country's political system. I would advise you all not to confuse the two.

So, please, all, continue posting, but try and do so in a mature way. Address the content, avoid personal attacks on Michael, and if you happen to disagree with what is posted, please advise us with information that explains why the post is wrong, but at the same time, information that is applicable to the post.

jimba. WORTHY? MATURE? MANNER?
ooooooo, jimba. you are not WORTHY enought to write this 3 word, Why? its because you and spec are not MATURE enought WITH YOUR DIRTY MIND hanging around.. openly speak and write the word PROSTITUTE in this blog. you and SPEC have a dirty MANNER that even dont understand the WOMAN RIGHTS. are you and SPEC wanna to be a HERO here in CHINA? go back to school in your own homeland again and learn more about the word PROSTITUTE and about WOMAN RIGHTS. ask your psychologist about the hardship and bitterness of those woman working in the street.
ooooooo. you jimba and spec are BLACK HEART LIVER, how can you face the people all over the world and preaching about HUMAN RIGHTS and INDEPENDENCE? insulting woman all over the world.

Chin, behave yourself. I've never called anyone a "prostitute". Please, if you have nothing intelligent to say, remain quite.

chin is a liar.

chin are you chinese net agent?

Whats wrong with the word prostitute? what kind of medieval prudery are we dealing with here, there are far worse terms. PROSTITUTE is a noun describing a person male or female who give sexual favours for money or favors in kind, it is the oldest profession in the world. There are far worse words for such people which have not been used here. What is with these idiot children, who cannot bear hear/ read the word. Oedipus complex?

What is it woth these peole who go around calling their own prostitutes 'ji', 'chickens' guffawing and mocking them behind their backs. It would seem those most vocal against the term perhaps are most guilty of over co-habitataion with such LADIES, and their inverted guilt spoofs all over this blog. Really Prostitute an offensive word.

How about what these automatons are writing about Michael? Are they offensive words? They, as usual are trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill, then tie their paranoid, hateful, ultra nationalsit delusions to it, to prove to their own scattered psyches that they are right. Such doubt must be terrible to live with - such doubt demands one tear down anything which threatens the lie. What a fragile existence.

That article about China saying, it would not torture the Gitmo Uyghurs makes me laugh. Seeing Chinese state media is so relible, trutworthy, representative of truth and transparent, we surely must believe functionary Qin's statement. We must or be accused by the bandit trolls of ...

Of course China (read CCP) wouldn't torture them - they wouldn't have too. They would be summarily executed on arrival.

p.s.
This is a statement of an individual expressing his/ her right to free speech!

viva la fucking stupid socialist morons

@ ray

Not bad English but frnakly you are a liar and a fraud. Michael hasnt done anything here to be ashamed of or discourteous to Chinese. Another ad hoc lie from you , 'ray'. All accustions are based upon a premise that is not true. Ah, how right was Orwell. This was Bush's strategy in creating his 'enemies' to pull off acceptance for his and China's war on terror. Just tidy up your grammar a nothch 'ray', your last sentence gave you away, dear righteous American. And , like the Chinese trolls here who claim to speak for all Chiunese, stop assuming the right to speak for all Americans, this arrogance. Please ask our forgiveness.

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — For centuries, hospitality to weary travelers has been part of the Uighur culture. The Uighur land in what is now the far western province of China carried merchants traversing the famed Silk Road.

So in many ways it was only natural for Elshat Hassan, 46, of McLean, to open his home to the most weary of his countrymen. He plans to host one of 17 Uighurs who have been detained by the U.S. for nearly seven years at Guantanamo Bay.

"They will be free, finally," Hassan said of the detainees, describing plans to prepare a traditional meal for Uighur guests: polo, a pilaf consisting of rice, lamb, carrots and onions.

The tiny Uighur (WEE-gur) community in the Washington, D.C. area has been largely anonymous, but is suddenly in the spotlight: A federal judge this week brushed aside White House objections and ordered the 17 Uighurs to be freed inside the United States.

Under the judge's order, the detainees will live in the D.C. area with Uighur-Americans who have agreed to take them in. The detainees were to have arrived on Friday, but the judge's ruling has been put on hold while an appeals court reviews the ruling.

Nury Turkel, a past president of the Uyghur American Association, frequently gets blank stares from Americans when he identifies himself as a Uighur-American. But he has a ready answer.

"We're just like Tibet," Turkel, 38, says. "Just like the Tibetans, Uighurs face discrimination ... and brutal oppression under Chinese rule."

With no Dalai Lama to promote their cause, the Uighurs' bid for autonomy and cultural survival in their Central Asian homeland north of Tibet has largely been anonymous.

Turkel guessed that perhaps only 1,000 or so Uighurs live in the United States, with the largest concentration in the Washington area. Most have come as refugees or to seek higher education, and he said Uighurs have one of the highest approval rates in the U.S. for asylum applications.

The Uighurs are Turkic ethnically and linguistically. They are Muslims, generally regarded as moderate in their beliefs. Human rights groups say the Chinese government has been brutal in its suppression of Uighur culture and religion.

The Chinese government says the Uighur detainees are part of a dangerous international Islamic terrorist group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and has demanded the detainees' extradition.

The Bush administration concedes that the Uighurs never intended to fight the United States, but insists the detainees are still a danger because they trained with radical Islamic militants in Afghanistan.

The detainees' supporters in the Uighur-American community say Uighurs are staunchly pro-American.

Hassan said that despite the unfair treatment the detainees have received, the fact that the United States is refusing Chinese demands for extradition will go a long way toward damping anti-American sentiments that may have festered among the detainees during their detention.

"If they go to China, their destiny is death," Hassan said. "They have suffered for seven years in Guantanamo, and it's unfair. ... But compared with death, they're still alive."

In Beijing on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry insisted the detainees would be treated lawfully if extradited.

"Some people may worry whether these people could be tortured in China, I believe this is biased. China is a country under the rule of law, and forbids torture by any Chinese authorities, be they judiciary or public security," said ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

A U.S. university professor who has studied the Uighurs and traveled frequently to China's Xinjiang province, or East Turkistan as it's called by Uighurs, said the comparisons of the political situations in Tibet and Xinjiang are generally valid.

The professor, who requested anonymity because he fears speaking on the record about the Uighurs could prompt Chinese authorities to bar him from traveling there, said the Uighurs' struggles with Beijing have largely been nationalistic and secular, rather than part of a broad international Islamic terror group like al-Qaida.

In his travels in China, the professor said Xinjiang stands out as sort of a boom town, with rapid new construction to accommodate a growing population and an increasing middle class.

He said that both Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese who are rapidly moving into the region appear to be benefiting from the boom, but Uighurs say they are disadvantaged.

The influx of ethnic Han combined with Chinese suppression of Uighur religion and language is destroying the culture, Uighurs say. And Uighurs are barred from the best jobs and economic opportunities.

"The Chinese government does everything it can to dilute the Uighur culture," Turkel said.

Hassan said he does not anticipate neighbors reacting fearfully to the presence of a Guantanamo detainee. When his co-workers at Booz Allen Hamilton learned of his plans to sponsor a detainee, several extended dinner invitations when the time comes.

Is Maria Chin's prostitute in mention? She also seems ultra fascist. What could be the arttraction? Just cash or love perhaps. If the latter this would explain Chin's apopletic state of mind. Maria is his girlfriend but she's a working girl. Probabaly high class mind you, but reading back over all of the posts this is the only reason I can find for Chin's strange aversion to the word. After all China is full of such working girls. 'street workers' as he derogatorily calls them right up to high class Shanghai call-girls, every one in China knows who they are and what they are. and calls them such. it is no shame but atrend within China since Deng's opening. Been to Shenzhen lately have you Mr. Chin? So, calling a woman a prostitute is indeed no act of denying women human rights. How did Chin ever twist this around like that/ And why, is probabaly a better question. Guilt perhaps. Poor Maria.

@roebuck: I couldn't have said it better myself... "All accustions are based upon a premise that is not true." Exactly, and there's no way to defend against non sequitors.

The people who make those arguments in the comments here are just like those in the United States who would say... "I'm not voting for Obama, because he's a Muslim and a terrorist."

But he's neither.

Nor am I any of the things I have been accused of... SIGH.

Was Chris patten denied his human rights by the Chinese government? Chris Paten a Whore/

Friday, October 16, 1998 Published at 15:05 GMT 16:05 UK

World: Asia-Pacific

Patten: From 'whore' to 'Cold War warrior'

Chris Patten: Accused of China bashing again

As Hong Kong's last British governor, Chris Patten was labelled a whore, serpent and tango dancer by the pro-Chinese media.

Now the China Daily newspaper has branded him a China-hating Cold War warrior in a scathing review of his controversial new book East and West.

[ image: Mr Patten - 'narrow-minded']
Mr Patten - 'narrow-minded'
The paper says the book demonstrates Mr Patten's ignorance about China and is full of "dust-laden ideology which is hardly worth refuting".

"Faithfully bound to Cold War thinking, Patten completely exposes his anti-China obsessions in his book," says the article's author Wang Hui.

"I wonder whether it is a deep-rooted prejudice against China plus Western-type megalomania or his political failure that has fuelled his hatred towards China. Maybe both.''

Patten tells West: 'Stop kowtowing'

Mr Patten became the 28th governor of Hong Kong after losing his parliamentary seat in Bath in 1992.

The BBC's James Miles: Mr Patten's comments have enraged China
In his book, he says China is rapidly becoming a threat to world peace.

Mr Patten urges the West to stop kowtowing to Beijing and speak up against human rights abuses.

He also argues that the booming China market is more myth than reality and calls Mao Zedong an "angel of death" like Hitler or Pol Pot.

[ image: Mr Patten handed over the reins to Tung Chee-hwa]
Mr Patten handed over the reins to Tung Chee-hwa
The China Daily accuses him of vilifying Chinese leaders, diminishing the importance of the Chinese market and toadying to supporters of the 'China Threat' argument.

''The retired governor has done everything he can to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people with extremely provocative language,'' it adds.

Mr Wang also criticises him for encouraging leaders to make a fuss about dissidents and Tibet and for continuing to accuse China of curtailing Hong Kong freedoms.

When Mr Patten introduced democratic elections shortly before the handover, Beijing branded him "a whore" and "guilty for a thousand years".

China said his actions violated the Sino-British agreement covering the transfer of sovereignty.

But the article says Mr Patten can no longer affect relations as the two countries bask in a new found friendship following British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent visit.

China has not commented officially on Mr Patten's book.

Mr Murdoch dropped East and West
Concerns about Beijing's reaction to East and West are thought to have been behind a last-minute decision by publisher HarperCollins not to handle the book.

HarperCollins is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's New Corporation, which has business interests in China.

The latest criticism will come as nothing new to Mr Patten after the colourful insults heaped on him during his days as governor.

Not all his nicknames were vicious - Hong Kong affectionately dubbed him Fatty Patty because of his appetite for Peking Duck, steamed fish and egg custard tarts.

SO MUCH FOR THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF PROSTITUTES IN CHINA. HOW DEHUMANIZING. HOW SHOCKING. HOW UTTERLY DISRESPECTFUL OF WOMEN! MAKING A PUBLIC SPEACTACLE OF WOMEN! HOW INTOLERANBLE CHIN. WHAT A VIOLATION OF WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS! IN CHINA'S MINDS ALL PROSTITUTES ARE CRIMINALS, CRIMINALS AND CRIMINALS ONLY, AND WE KNOW WHAT HAPPPENS T CRIMINALS IN CHINA, DONT WE? BTW, CHIN, ARE YOU THE SON OF A A PARTY OFFICIAL?

Public Shaming of Prostitutes Misfires in China
Traditional Discipline Draws Angry Outcry

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 9, 2006; Page A10

BEIJING, Dec. 8 -- To local officials combating Shenzhen's reputation as a den of vice, it seemed like a good idea, the perfect way to dissuade provincial girls from turning to prostitution in the big city and frighten away the men who patronize their brothels.

So after raiding the karaoke bars, saunas and barbershops where prostitutes often ply their trade, police officers in the southern Chinese boomtown paraded about 100 women and their alleged johns in the street, using loudspeakers to read out their names and the misdeeds they were accused of committing. News photographers snapped away while thousands of residents lined up to take in the show.

The spectacle, which took place Nov. 29 in the Shenzhen district of Futian, was in many ways unremarkable for a nation in which wrongdoers have long been subject to public humiliation. In particular, it recalled the Great Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, when Chinese accused of being intellectuals or reactionaries were routinely paraded in front of jeering crowds that found entertainment in ridiculing them, insulting them and sometimes beating them.

But times have changed, the Futian Public Security Bureau discovered. Instead of being praised for cracking down on vice, the Futian police came under a hail of criticism for violating the right to privacy of those who were paraded about in public.

The swift outcry, in newspaper interviews and on the Internet, provided a dramatic illustration of the distance this vast country has traveled since the Cultural Revolution, when many people embraced such tactics and even those who opposed them were afraid to speak up for fear of retribution.

The reaction helped explain why U.S. and other Western complaints about human rights restrictions in China are sometimes ignored here. Although Chinese and foreign activists can point to many remaining abuses, particularly by police forces such as Futian's, many Chinese view the human rights situation as such an improvement over times past that they would rather emphasize how far they have come than how far they have to go.

"This shows that the public has a stronger sense of human rights and privacy protection," said Kang Xiaoguang, a sociologist with the Rural Development Institute at the People's University of China.

"Twenty years ago, this kind of parade would have been greeted with unanimous applause," he said. "But now it gets more criticism than support because more people realize their rights should be protected. And of course, they have more channels to voice their criticism, like the Internet."

An outraged Shanghai lawyer, Yao Jianguo, started the uproar over Shenzhen's tactics last Friday with an open letter to the National People's Congress, the Chinese legislature. In it, he charged that the Shenzhen parade was illegal under current laws and likely to have a "baneful influence" on the Chinese people and the country's reputation abroad.

"These people were just alleged criminals," Yao complained. "It was not yet determined that they had violated the law. The police publicly humiliated them, which violates the legal process. This brutal form of punishment has long been abandoned by our society with the development of civilization and a legal system."

The All-China Women's Federation also voiced a complaint, deeming the parade an insult to the image of Chinese women, news media reported. "The public parade damages the criminal suspects' self-esteem," a spokeswoman said. "With the development of human civilization, such barbaric punishment has no place in modern society."

The government made no official response. In Shenzhen, the municipal Public Security Bureau told local reporters it had nothing to do with the Futian district's parade. But it declined to say whether the spectacle was illegal or whether any Futian police officers would be disciplined.

Xu Desen, the Futian district Communist Party secretary, endorsed the parade as a good way to discourage prostitution. Speaking to local reporters, he praised police for the crackdown and said it would continue.

In ebbs and flows, Shenzhen and its surrounding suburbs have been waging a campaign against prostitution for several years now. But the sprawling city, ringed by vast expanses of factories staffed by workers away from their families for long periods, has remained the home of a flourishing sex industry.

Moreover, it abuts Hong Kong, where men know they can get a raunchy and comparatively inexpensive night on the town with just a quick train trip across the border. Several of the alleged johns who had been hustled down the street in yellow prison uniforms were from Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reported.

But many Chinese citizens thought the police went too far this time. Over the past week, they have spoken out -- with relative anonymity -- on the Internet. A few upheld the tactic as effective dissuasion and noted that the prisoners wore surgical masks to shield their identities. But most agreed with Yao.

"Even while carrying out the law, police should well respect human rights," one commentator said. "Is there any article in Chinese law saying that police can parade people in front of the public? If there isn't, then who empowered you to do that?"

Another upset writer accused the Futian police of going back to the bad old days. "Public exposure? That was the kind of thing that happened during the Cultural Revolution," he said. "Those who made prostitutes parade in the street lost face just as much as those who were put on parade."

Focusing on the law, another contributor noted that prostitution is usually considered a violation of the social order and is punished by administrative detention rather than a criminal conviction and formal prison time. "These are legal citizens, enjoying dignity endowed by the constitution," the writer said, "so it is unlawful for the police to parade them in front of the public."

Sir psychonationalist. i am a businessman. i travel a lot, not only the big city of my country. i travel to the big city of many country. and to tell you the truth. i met many beuatiful woman that you discriminate them with your distasteful word like spec and jimba by saying that unWORTHY, unMATURE and unMANNER WORD. why you, spec, and jimba openly insulted those woman? because you lack education. so with your psychomaniacs mind. you are not fit to write here about HUMAN RIGHTS, INDEPENDENCE. go back to school and study again. and learn more how to respect the WOMAN RIGHTS.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1010/p02s01-usju.html

Overstepping? District Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered the government to release 17 Chinese Muslims in the US.

CHARLES DHARAPAK/AP
Showdown ahead over 17 Uighur detainees
The Justice Department says the judiciary does not have the power to release Guantánamo detainees into the US.

Reporter Warren Richey talks about the US government's effort to block the release of 17 Uighurs from Guantanamo into the US.
A dispute over what to do about 17 Chinese Muslims detained at the Guantánamo Bay military prison is developing into a major showdown over the power of the judiciary to enforce fundamental constitutional rights in the war on terror.

The 17 men, all members of the oppressed Uighur ethnic minority in western China, have been held as enemy combatants by the US military for seven years, despite their insistence that they are not enemies of the US.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the government to release the men. But US District Judge Ricardo Urbina didn't stop there. He also ordered the government to bring the Uighurs physically from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to his courthouse chambers on Friday where they would be allowed to walk as free men out the front door and down the steps of the courthouse.

Justice Department lawyers filed an emergency appeal. "The government should not be forced to take the extraordinary step of bringing 17 aliens trained for armed insurrection against their home country [China] to be released in Washington, D.C., without the opportunity for this court's full appellate review of the crucial and novel legal questions presented," the lawyers said in their brief.

On Wednesday, the appeals court halted the men's release and instructed lawyers for the detainees and the government to file a new set of briefs.

The showdown over the Uighurs arises less than four months after the US Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision, Boumediene v. Bush, extending the constitutional right of habeas corpus review to terror suspects being held at Guantánamo Bay.

Habeas corpus requires that the government justify before a neutral judge why it is depriving an individual of his or her liberty. If the judge finds insufficient support for the deprivation, the judge is authorized to order the prisoner released.

There is no doubt in the Uighur case that Judge Urbina has the power to order the release of the 17 men being detained as enemy combatants. But the central issue in the looming dispute is whether the judge overstepped his authority when he ordered the government to bring the men to the US.

By merely arriving in the US, the Uighurs would be entitled to a broader array of freedoms and legal safeguards than if they remain outside US borders.

Government lawyers are concerned that if Urbina's order to bring the Uighurs to the US is upheld, it might encourage other Guantánamo detainees to do the same.

LEGAL LIMBO

The Uighurs have been in a legal limbo at Guantánamo for years.

At the time of the US military intervention in Afghanistan, the men were living in camps allegedly run by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which the Chinese government says is an Islamic terror group.

The 2001 bombing raids forced them to flee to Pakistan, where local villagers turned them over to the US military for a $5,000 bounty for each.

Lawyers for the Uighurs say they never took hostile action against the US, though they received weapons training at the camps.

Urbina in his order suggests the military's evidence against the Uighurs is weak. "This court recognizes that the [Uighurs] acquired weaponry skills at 'training camps' in Afghanistan after fleeing China, but will not draw adverse inferences based on other unsubstantiated allegations," the judge writes.

In their appeal, government lawyers say the Uighurs "sought to wage terror on a sovereign government [China]." Lawyers for the Uighurs denounced the government's charge as unsourced and provocative.

WHERE SHOULD UIGHURS GO?

Despite this statement, the government says it no longer seeks to detain the Uighurs as enemy combatants and is "diligently" searching for a third country to accept them. The State Department has contacted nearly 100 countries. The Chinese government is asking that the men be sent back to China, but the US has refused that option out of concern that they might be subject to human rights abuses.

Lawyers for the detainees complain that the government is taking too long to find a third country. They suggested that rather than keeping the men in indefinite detention at Guantánamo, they be permitted to stay in the US with Uighur families and other supporting groups pending relocation to a third country.

In embracing that option, Judge Urbina acknowledged that "normally … the court would have no reason to insinuate itself into a field normally dominated by the political branches."

But the Uighurs' circumstances were "exceptional," he said. The case "strikes at the heart of our constitutional structure, raising serious separation of powers concerns."

Justice Department lawyers said in their brief that the power to admit an alien into the US resides with the political branches of government, not the judiciary.

Chin, what the hell are you talking about? When have I EVER called anyone a prostitute.

Do you often make up stories?

Thanks.

J.

Chin, grow up and stop talking bullshit, ok. You immature little man.

Does anyone feel my frustration here? Now they simply LIE to try and paint us in a negative light. HOW DESPERATE ARE THEY!?!

So effing sad! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh!

@michael:

READ IT AGAIN!

We "love" you, too! We want you not just be deported, we want see you to be tortured in the prison before they deport you, just like these 17 Uyghur "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay prison being tortured before they make a big news to release them!

You love your mother, do you fuck your mother? NO! YOU DON'T FUCK YOUR MOTHER because you have deleted every single comment that fucks your mother, every single comment saying the Black people, Hawaii people, native Indians want independence from your mother, every single comment saying the inhuman dirty things that your mother has been doing to other people.

OLDWISEMAN IS RIGHT ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE ON THIS BLOG IS EXACTLY THE SAME DIRTY THING THAT YOUR MOTHER IS DOING TO THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!

oh chin you make me laugh you scared little puppy dog. Own who you really are and leave others alone. Are you a professional illegal immigrant, traveling to so many big city as you call them? Always getting caught and deported back to the worker's paradise? Uh? No wonder you are so twisted and distort people's words and speech. You are miserable, not even your so called professional girlfriends can make you happy. Get with the police perhaps and publicly humiliate prostitutes, it might make you feel big and strong, just like China, you poor, sick little boy.

@mohammet

charming, enchantee! beautiful such beautiful, sweet, meaningful words.

@michael:

READ IT AGAIN!

We "love" you, too! We want you not just be deported, we want see you to be tortured in the prison before they deport you, just like these 17 Uyghur "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay prison being tortured before they make a big propaganda value out of it to release them!

You love your mother, do you fuck your mother? NO! YOU DON'T FUCK YOUR MOTHER because you have deleted every single comment that fucks your mother, every single comment saying the Black people, Hawaii people, native Indians want independence from your mother, every single comment saying the inhuman dirty things that your mother has been doing to other people.

OLDWISEMAN IS RIGHT ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE ON THIS BLOG IS EXACTLY THE SAME DIRTY THING THAT YOUR MOTHER IS DOING TO THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!

Washington Post
Thursday, October 9, 2008; A20

AFEDERAL APPEALS court intervened yesterday to block one judge's precipitous decision to order the release of 17 Chinese Uighurs held for years at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Issuing the emergency stay was the right thing to do, but not because the Uighurs don't deserve their freedom.

There is no question that these men should have been freed long ago. As the U.S. government has acknowledged, the Uighurs were not enemy combatants intent on doing harm to the United States or its interests. The focus of their enmity was their home country of China, which has a long and despicable history of oppressing Uighurs -- though that does not justify the terrorism some militants have embraced. As early as 2003, U.S. military personnel concluded that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo were attractive candidates for release, yet they have languished at the camp because they could not be returned to China for fear of retribution. Albania accepted five Uighurs in 2006, but no other country has followed suit, in part because of Chinese threats of retaliation. We urged President Bush to grant asylum to some of these men; had he done so, he could have avoided this judicial intervention.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina had ordered all 17 Uighur detainees to be flown from Guantanamo and brought to his courtroom in Washington on Friday. Judge Urbina said he would discuss logistics for their release into the Washington area, home to a sizable Uighur community, at that time. Judge Urbina is understandably frustrated, as we have been, at the continued detention of the Uighurs. But he should not have acted as he did. The judge's conclusion that he had the power to release the men into this country is one that no other court has reached and that no higher court, including the Supreme Court, has evaluated.

Everyone involved in the matter agrees that the United States has no rational justification for continuing to hold the Uighurs. Where there is stark disagreement is over whether a federal judge has the legal authority to order their release into the United States. Judge Urbina may ultimately be proved right, but his decision is legally untested and has the potential to affect future administrations, with unforeseen consequences. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was correct to put Judge Urbina's decision on hold, as the Justice Department had asked.

Now the appeals court should evaluate the decision carefully but move as quickly as possible to decide its merits. In the meantime, the Bush administration must act with urgency to find permanent homes for these men -- and the president must make sure that at least some of those homes are in this country.

mohammat I doubt if you really are a Muslim. No educated, devoted, sensible and spiritual Mussulman would ever speak like you - you are a Chinese agent and impersonator for sure, I call all Muslims to publicly declaim this imposter, he gives Islam, the religion of peace, a very, very bad name. Mohammat is an impostor!

@roebuck

Ther are only two possibilities:

(1) michael got paid to do this. He deserved what is going to happen to him
(2) michael is a moron and he is dying in the hands of peopel like roebuck, jimba...

why do you address me false mohammet?

who pays you would probably be a better question mr. projectionist, mr. holder of the destinies and future of mankind. LOL.

I dont give a shit about America, they are not my tribe, so why address me with your twisted , perverted delusions. Back off.

Mohammat is a supporter of extremist and terrorist activities and is thus an ETIM supporter and an enemy of the Chinese people. As such so are tctdh and Chin as they are friends and suporters of this Mohammat. Read his words, they ARE Taliban words. If true, his friends tctdh and Chin should be investigated as accomplices to terrorist sympathizers and treated severely under Chinese law. Expose the terrorists. The enemies of China, tctdh and Chin!!!! and the false Mohammat.

mohammat is obviously an Al-Qaida operative, lets track him and get the reward. he may also lead us to Bin-Laden.

The New York Times
Published: October 11, 2008
Editorial

A federal judge in Washington has struck an important blow for the rule of law by ordering that 17 detainees be freed from Guantánamo Bay. But the Bush administration is fighting the ruling to avoid having the case become an open window into the outlaw world of President Bush’s detention camps.
The detainees are members of the Uighur Muslim minority of China, which is violently oppressed by the Beijing government. They were swept up in Pakistan after the American invasion of Afghanistan and thrown into indefinite detention as “illegal enemy combatants.”

They are not enemy combatants, legal or illegal, nor are they terrorists. Their detention — along with the detention of others held at Guantánamo without charges or real hearings — has gravely injured the nation’s tradition of due process and its international standing.

The Bush administration admitted long ago that the 17 Uighur detainees were not a threat to this country, but it would not allow them into the United States. Instead, Washington began asking other countries, mostly in Europe, to give the detainees asylum from China, which was demanding their return.

Those nations refused, partly out of fear of China’s reaction. The State Department argued that allowing some of the Uighurs into the United States would encourage other nations, but the White House refused.

Then, in June, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo detainees had a right under the principle of habeas corpus to challenge their confinement. The court rejected the administration’s claim that the detainees were outside the reach of the courts.

The Uighurs filed habeas corpus petitions, and Judge Ricardo Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington ordered them released. Judge Urbina said it was time to “shine the light of constitutionality” on the Bush administration’s detention camps.

They need the light. The Bush administration told the countries it was trying to persuade to take the detainees that they posed no threat. It has stipulated in court documents that they are not a threat. But after Judge Urbina’s ruling, the government suddenly claimed the 17 men were a threat, and managed to obtain a stay of the judge’s order from the federal appeals court in Washington.

Meanwhile, Washington is still trying to find a country to take the Uighurs — assuring those nations, no doubt, that they are no threat. The search is reportedly focused on countries that recognize Taiwan and thus are less worried about offending China — a list that includes Burkina Faso, Belize, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. Some human rights advocates suspect the administration sought the injunction to buy time to quietly ship the Uighurs to one of these remote countries.

The administration must not be allowed to do that. The appellate court should affirm Judge Urbina’s ruling and allow the detainees into the United States. The government’s counterproposal — if the Uighurs cannot go somewhere else, they should stay at Guantánamo — is more absurd than its other arguments.

The administration is not afraid the Uighurs will take to the streets against the United States government. It is afraid they will take to the microphones.

The New York Times
Published: October 11, 2008
Editorial

A federal judge in Washington has struck an important blow for the rule of law by ordering that 17 detainees be freed from Guantánamo Bay. But the Bush administration is fighting the ruling to avoid having the case become an open window into the outlaw world of President Bush’s detention camps.
The detainees are members of the Uighur Muslim minority of China, which is violently oppressed by the Beijing government. They were swept up in Pakistan after the American invasion of Afghanistan and thrown into indefinite detention as “illegal enemy combatants.”

They are not enemy combatants, legal or illegal, nor are they terrorists. Their detention — along with the detention of others held at Guantánamo without charges or real hearings — has gravely injured the nation’s tradition of due process and its international standing.

The Bush administration admitted long ago that the 17 Uighur detainees were not a threat to this country, but it would not allow them into the United States. Instead, Washington began asking other countries, mostly in Europe, to give the detainees asylum from China, which was demanding their return.

Those nations refused, partly out of fear of China’s reaction. The State Department argued that allowing some of the Uighurs into the United States would encourage other nations, but the White House refused.

Then, in June, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo detainees had a right under the principle of habeas corpus to challenge their confinement. The court rejected the administration’s claim that the detainees were outside the reach of the courts.

The Uighurs filed habeas corpus petitions, and Judge Ricardo Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington ordered them released. Judge Urbina said it was time to “shine the light of constitutionality” on the Bush administration’s detention camps.

They need the light. The Bush administration told the countries it was trying to persuade to take the detainees that they posed no threat. It has stipulated in court documents that they are not a threat. But after Judge Urbina’s ruling, the government suddenly claimed the 17 men were a threat, and managed to obtain a stay of the judge’s order from the federal appeals court in Washington.

Meanwhile, Washington is still trying to find a country to take the Uighurs — assuring those nations, no doubt, that they are no threat. The search is reportedly focused on countries that recognize Taiwan and thus are less worried about offending China — a list that includes Burkina Faso, Belize, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. Some human rights advocates suspect the administration sought the injunction to buy time to quietly ship the Uighurs to one of these remote countries.

The administration must not be allowed to do that. The appellate court should affirm Judge Urbina’s ruling and allow the detainees into the United States. The government’s counterproposal — if the Uighurs cannot go somewhere else, they should stay at Guantánamo — is more absurd than its other arguments.

The administration is not afraid the Uighurs will take to the streets against the United States government. It is afraid they will take to the microphones.

Thanks for the mention mo-i feel in very good and noble company. now exactly where was that in Waziristan yo were hiding out?

ooohh Mo, or is that Ho? a real live terrorist supporter supported by the likes of chin and tctdh, hmm, extremely interesting, very revealing. I feel a hammer coming down.

You and you and chin and tctdh are all of one mind I presume? very interesting Mo, very. Come find me in...Sarajevo.

Keep posting our drones are zooming in on you right now

oh and btw, mo, try and be original rather than copy-cat. It helps your credibility. We are closer to you now than a minute or two ago. I love the chase.

It would be interesting to know if this is a concentrated effort by the Chinese authorities to disrupt this blog, or are we simply dealing with a few retarded Chinese who missed out on the special olympics?

I think mo is neither a Muslim or net police but working in conjunction with chin and tctdh. He is however by the nature of his posts a terrorist sympathizer- how many postings of that bin Laden interview were there? Ive lost count. but, a good indicator that he and his supporters are in fact backers of the enemies of the world, the US and China. im getting close now and enjoying it immensely. tctdh is a Taiwanese but working for the CCP. Chin is a net police with bad gambling debts and a string of loose women he cannot afford. he is angry because he is exposed and is not doing his job. Suicide is the usual retort of such bought prostitutes such as chin who would do any thing for money. You see, the madness starts to creep in and gradually, the delusion sets in, they see them self as self important, they believe they are big business men, but the money dries up , the whores leave them and then the state apparatus warns them of their uselessness. Arsenic is the usual method of disposal. tctdh is losing all of his ill-gained investments and has turned into a demented old man. Im getting close to mo's shack.

@jimba

are you an 'online American pig' as the charming Mo claims?

chin go back to your screen and your so called lady. you are a mindless fool who is no longer listened to. Im busy tracking down a Muslim imposter, remember your terrorist sympathizer, friend, and soul mate, the false mohammat and am soon going to bed with my new chinese girlfriend ( not a ji) right now, and will deal with your absurd reductions sooon. In the mean time keep away from the medicine cupboard, wont you little puppy dog. BTW, was Maria, ever, umm... satisfied with you? Know what I mean?

re:

"we believe in GOODNESS not a SATAN who kill young, old. woman, children and infant all over the world. by using the world TERRORIST. hehe."

Sounds just like CCP policy in Xinjiang to me. is that what you mean Chin? maybe you aren't as bad as god awfully seem??????????

Chin, show me were I've ever "disrespected women"? Of course you can't, so now we all know you're a liar too.

Tip: if you're going to try and character assassinate me, try and be a little more honest about it, ta. But, I must say, I am a bit perplexed by your obsession with me?

Spec, I didn't catch that, I just can't be bothered reading his mountain of manure.

...found anything yet Chin?

Apology accepted.

Now, fly away troublesome bird.

ah chin, corrections, corrections, oh how arduous is my task. I must correct your god awful language so the rest of the world understands your absurdity. Here are the correct sentences and spelling for the above 'post'. I hope you can all understand the erudite and insightful Chin now. if a newcomer please take the time to read back on some of his posts, Im sure you will really feel a warm sympathy for this champion of nonsense. but please don't laugh too much or be too hard on him, after all he is only a lost little fella out there trying hard to make a buck working for the net police; and as well , he is very, very , close to the edge, close to losing his mind.

it should read:

"malicious words"

untrue i write fact that is why I am known as spec(ialist)

"unworthy, immature and unmannered"

get your spelling and grammar right before making an absolute fool of yourself and a laughing stock across the entire world of netizens with some of the poorest chinglish i have ever encountered

"alzheimer"

my memory is perfect I remembered you boasted on another thread that your Mexican girlfriend had told you to stop writing and you were leaving. I reminded you of this, of your little umm #$%&*@!**&^* gal and look what we get from you. Vomit everywhere all over the blog! Now what happened there. You came back. Is it because of what I suspect: she wasn't satisfied with you little chinny? eh? Can you answer that? poor Maria. Listen, I'd like to meet her sometime if possible. Im sure we would enjoy each other's company

"better go see a psychiatrist"

hey im not the one who is suicidal, suffering from delusions of grandeur and taking on the personality of a big business man even though i am only a little no body. Pardon?

"because you are a near hopeless case"

on the contrary it is hope which propels me onward daily in exposing sham little buggers like yourself. I thrive on hope.

"want some?"

no thanks, Im stuffed full of Hunan pig.

Ouch.

@ Jimba

As far as i know you are an 'online American Pig' according to the false muslim Mohammat. Is this true Jimba? Come on now, fess up.

아메리칸 돼지. 지옥 에나 가라. 모든 사단이있다.

@ Spec, well, the last time I checked my passport I was neither a pig nor American? Then again, I guess anyone who has heteradox views will be called silly names... so who cares :)

@ Chin, you can't even spell women rights, so how do you know what they even are?

oh Lee, Lee darling, im shamed, shamed, shamed.

Sorry about the water cube. wish I was there with you and Chin. Are you his ESCORT so to speak? If i saw it and walked along the beautiful streets of Beijing WITH YOU SWEETY I'd think

yooooooooooooooooooooooooooahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

hahahhaaaaaa.

More seriously, I know all about women's rights in Korea and what Korean women have been through historically in face of an oppressive patriachal/Confucian, misogynist culture. How much in the last decades they have struggled to be free of rapists and perverts who have been protected by a biased male judiciary. Not that different to the way women have been treated in China but perhaps a little worse. So i understand dear just how sensitive you may be. But love, dont listen to chin. He is a Communist whore and a liar and very, very stupid as well. He will try and deceive you if he can; but I am sure you are far too intelligent for that. Anyway if you ever need some nice companion for a day out please contact me and BTW, Why do you hang around with an effing little creep like CHIN, I must ask again? Are you sure you are safe. You must be sooo lonely. Dont downgrade yourself, there are better guys around. Be careful, love, Specky the smooch.

oh chin by the way,

the reason Maria forced you ( you wimp) off line a few months ago was she knew what a complete fool you were making of yourself. She tried to save you international humiliation. What a great gal; but look at you trying to convince educated people from a pluralistic society about women's rights.

This coming from a Confucian retard where women still walk the streets with tiny little feet because of the low esteem women were treated with for millenia in China and the greater CONFUCIAN culture area.

Listen buddy just fuck off, you are an idiot - you hear that ohhhh big bad word, oh my pure Confucian ears so used to hypocrisy cant bear that word oooooo. Fuck off or ill start telling you what my nice new chinese girlfriend is like. Wanna hear?
(note my correct usage of 'wanna,' you unedeucated idiot). Wanna hear how happy she is pig brains?

Well to start with she is just 18.5 years old and from Zhejiang and quite stunning out here sooo alone in a capitalist/imperialist country controlled by white males. She is studying business. I took her under my wing so to speak . She tells me she cant stand chinese men because they are sexist pigs. I said to her i know, I know, I know sweety, I know just how it is. Come here, lets walk in the park together. Oh what a sunset...and what a beautiful unending evening...it lingers, it goes on, still. She loves making dumplings for me. Yummy. Want some?

tgt

may I ask who 'we' are? LOL

i agree U.S outta everywhere. Yes I m with you but who'd the #$@% are you?

@ jimba, thanks for clearing that up. Im relieved to know you aint no American pig.

i reckon then the only thing you really are is 'online',

keep it up.

keep anonymous

for the categorizing misfits

and their licentious babel.

hmmm never been caled a
미국 흰 돼지

before.

Great

and lee sweety. is that creep doing things to you, by any chance, let me know i have a lot of friends in beijing and if he so much as mistreats you in any way, Ill make a call and get his head punched in for him. Right babe? Bye sweety

Not really interested in Chin and his cohort of fools.

Back on subject, anyone have any news regarding the Uighur GTB inmates?

@spec: Stop posting unrelated crap about Korea please.

By the way... for anyone who wants to know, based on IP addresses:

A) Chin = Lee = victim
B) Psychonationalist = roebuck = James
C) mohammet = oldwiseman = Jon = tctdh = sogdia

Anyway, it's nice that you fellas agree with yourselves and support your comments with other fake comments... but please stick to one name.

Celil allowed to meet with mother, sister
Article Comments (22)
OMAR EL AKKAD
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
October 13, 2008 at 7:58 PM EDT

OTTAWA — Even through the grainy, often-undecipherable audio of a secretly recorded prison conversation, the sound of uncontrollable weeping is clear.

For the first time since his arrest nearly three years ago, Huseyin Celil's voice has resonated beyond the walls of his prison. Mr. Celil – a Canadian citizen who is serving a life sentence on terrorism charges in China – was allowed to meet with his mother and sisters in a remote northwest China prison last week. The conversation was secretly recorded using a cellphone, and a copy of that recording has been obtained by The Globe and Mail.

The Globe has also learned that Canadian consular officials travelled to northwest China to meet with Mr. Celil's family before and after the family met him (Canadian consular officials have never been allowed to meet Mr. Celil personally), and the Canadian officials were provided with a copy of the recording.

Mr. Celil, 39, is an ethnic Uyghur – a Muslim minority group that resides primarily in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. Human-rights groups complain that Beijing has clamped down on Uyghur rights, especially since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, using the war on terror as a pretext.

Mr. Celil and his wife fled to Canada and received Canadian citizenship in November of 2005. Mr. Celil was arrested in Uzbekistan and handed over to China in the summer of 2006. He was travelling on a Canadian passport at the time. China accused him of terrorism and sentenced him to life in prison. Chinese officials have never recognized his Canadian citizenship.

It is difficult to make out much of the half-hour conversation, which was recorded secretly through layers of clothing as about half a dozen Chinese prison guards watched. The first three minutes of the recording, however, are dominated by the sound of Mr. Celil's mother and sister sobbing.

Uyghur translators are also able to make out a few words and phrases, including a point where Mr. Celil's sister says “May the Almighty make it easier,” and times when Mr. Celil uses the Uyghur words for “sunlight,” “darkness” and “my children.”

“Mr. Celil has said that his health has been deteriorated badly and he needed to see a doctor, but he has not been allowed so far,” said Mehmet Tohti, a Uyghur activist and member of the Uyghur Canadian Association. “It is obvious that staying in solitary confinement, without any exposure to the sun and served only one meal with no nutritional value made him vulnerable.”

In another portion of the recording, Mr. Tohti says Mr. Celil can faintly be heard using the Uyghur words for “my country” – a reference, his family says, to Canada.

According to Mr. Tohti, who spoke with Mr. Celil's family after the meeting last week, Canadian consular officials travelled to Urumqi in northwest China, the location of Mr. Celil's prison. Mr. Tohti said the officials met with Mr. Celil's family twice, and in the second meeting were provided a copy of the audio recording.

A Foreign Affairs spokeswoman in Ottawa did not respond to requests to confirm that officials had received a copy of the recording.

Mr. Celil, who has no contact with the outside world beyond these infrequent meetings with his family, has repeatedly asked why Canada has not come to his aid.

After his arrest, the Harper government pushed hard on his behalf, with top government officials stating publicly that they had seen no evidence to support the charges against the Canadian (Mr. Celil has always denied the charges against him).

But Chinese officials have made it clear that they consider the matter closed, and officials in Ottawa say privately that efforts on Mr. Celil's behalf have been ramped down, in part for fear that pushing the issue could hurt other aspects of Ottawa's relationship with Beijing.

Activists in Canada had hoped to focus attention to Mr. Celil's plight in the lead-up to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, but those efforts yielded few results.

The audio recording marks only the second time since his arrest that Mr. Celil's own words have been made public. In May, The Globe obtained a copy of a letter he wrote to his family from prison. In the letter, he asks his wife to tell Canadian officials his story, and apologizes to his mother for the suffering his imprisonment has caused her.

A GUANTÁNAMO HOMECOMING

News Week
Published Oct 11, 2008
Dahlia Lithwick
From the magazine issue dated Oct 20, 2008

What happens at Gitmo, stays at Gitmo. That was always the hope. When the Bush administration fenced off a dusty little patch of lawlessness in Cuba, the idea was that breaking the law abroad would somehow preclude us from breaking it at home. But last week revealed—yet again—that the worst of Guantánamo was always destined to spill over into the United States. Gitmo's lawlessness is now our own. The prison camp was created to construct a "legal black hole," a place where U.S. and international human-rights law would go to die. The case of 17 Uighurs—Chinese Muslims from western China's Xinjiang region—is one of the blackest chapters of the story. The Uighurs fled Chinese persecution (including forced abortion and banishment) and settled in Afghanistan. The 2001 U.S. bombing raids forced them to move to Pakistan, and they were allegedly turned over by local villagers to American authorities in exchange for a $5,000 bounty per head. They were transferred to Guantánamo more than six years ago and were cleared for release in 2004. The U.S. government credibly feared they would be tortured if returned to China, and since no other country will take them, they have remained at Gitmo all this time.

In September, an appeals court found that one of the Uighurs, Huzaifa Parhat, had been labeled an "enemy combatant" and subject to indefinite detention, based on "bare assertions." The Bush administration has conceded that none of the Uighurs is an enemy combatant. Last week a federal judge in Washing-ton ordered that all 17 Uighurs be freed, immediately, into the care of American supporters. Bush administration officials managed to delay their release in a last-minute petition to the appeals court. These Uighurs didn't just steam into Guantánamo Bay off a Carnival cruise. They were brought here in error and abused in error. And now to remedy that error they will be forced to stay there indefinitely. As Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a landmark Supreme Court decision this past summer, "The costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody." The Justice Department managed to halt the ruling, by repeating discredited claims that the Uighurs associated with terrorists, and squawking about the perils of bringing Guantánamo to Washington. But in truth, Guantánamo has been in Washington for some time. Newly released military documents prove that two American citizens held for years as enemy combatants at Navy brigs in Virginia and Charleston, S.C., had been interrogated and incarcerated according to the Guantánamo rules, not U.S. law. According to e-mails that surfaced last week, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency for months and years in the early part of the war on terror, and deprived of light, correspondence and human contact, while their nervous interrogators worried for their sanity.

As has so often been the case when illegal conduct is authorized at Guantánamo, it was military officials who pushed back. Career military personnel were the first to cry foul at prisoner abuse and biased prosecutions at the base. And last week's documents indicate they were openly dubious about what one described as "the 'lash-up' between GTMO and Charleston" when it came to American citizens detained in the United States. Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU's National Security Project explains that while we may only now be officially discovering that interrogation policy had spread from Guantánamo to the United States, the wall between what was constitutional here and there was never insurmountable: "For years, the administration defended its detention and treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo by asserting that the Constitution did not apply because it was outside the United States. But the documents show the administration was meanwhile secretly trying to create a lawless enclave within the country."

Both presidential candidates have called for the closure of Guantánamo, and when that happens, the remaining prisoners will likely be brought to this country for prosecution, detention or deportation. Once these prisoners go on trial here, we will have to stop thinking of them as "them." It will be harder to tune them out when they are not just nameless men behind barbed wire, but real people with stories and families and names. What happened in secret for six years at Guantánamo will start to redefine what it means to be American. And that's why it's a fitting coda for the whole Gitmo fiasco that former enemy combatants who had no connection to terror or terrorism may someday take up residence in our own backyards.

Lithwick is a NEWSWEEK contributing editor and a senior writer for Slate. A version of this column also appears on slate.com.

© 2008

Looks like the Uighur community in Washington want to adopt the GTB "spittists", but I'm not sure if the US govt. are so open-armed?

D.C. Uighurs wait to take in Gitmo detainees

By MATTHEW BARAKAT – 3 days ago

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — For centuries, hospitality to weary travelers has been part of the Uighur culture. The Uighur land in what is now the far western province of China carried merchants traversing the famed Silk Road.

So in many ways it was only natural for Elshat Hassan, 46, of McLean, to open his home to the most weary of his countrymen. He plans to host one of 17 Uighurs who have been detained by the U.S. for nearly seven years at Guantanamo Bay.

"They will be free, finally," Hassan said of the detainees, describing plans to prepare a traditional meal for Uighur guests: polo, a pilaf consisting of rice, lamb, carrots and onions.

The tiny Uighur (WEE-gur) community in the Washington, D.C. area has been largely anonymous, but is suddenly in the spotlight: A federal judge this week brushed aside White House objections and ordered the 17 Uighurs to be freed inside the United States.

Under the judge's order, the detainees will live in the D.C. area with Uighur-Americans who have agreed to take them in. The detainees were to have arrived on Friday, but the judge's ruling has been put on hold while an appeals court reviews the ruling.

Nury Turkel, a past president of the Uyghur American Association, frequently gets blank stares from Americans when he identifies himself as a Uighur-American. But he has a ready answer.

"We're just like Tibet," Turkel, 38, says. "Just like the Tibetans, Uighurs face discrimination ... and brutal oppression under Chinese rule."

With no Dalai Lama to promote their cause, the Uighurs' bid for autonomy and cultural survival in their Central Asian homeland north of Tibet has largely been anonymous.

Turkel guessed that perhaps only 1,000 or so Uighurs live in the United States, with the largest concentration in the Washington area. Most have come as refugees or to seek higher education, and he said Uighurs have one of the highest approval rates in the U.S. for asylum applications.

The Uighurs are Turkic ethnically and linguistically. They are Muslims, generally regarded as moderate in their beliefs. Human rights groups say the Chinese government has been brutal in its suppression of Uighur culture and religion.

The Chinese government says the Uighur detainees are part of a dangerous international Islamic terrorist group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and has demanded the detainees' extradition.

The Bush administration concedes that the Uighurs never intended to fight the United States, but insists the detainees are still a danger because they trained with radical Islamic militants in Afghanistan.

The detainees' supporters in the Uighur-American community say Uighurs are staunchly pro-American.

Hassan said that despite the unfair treatment the detainees have received, the fact that the United States is refusing Chinese demands for extradition will go a long way toward damping anti-American sentiments that may have festered among the detainees during their detention.

"If they go to China, their destiny is death," Hassan said. "They have suffered for seven years in Guantanamo, and it's unfair. ... But compared with death, they're still alive."

In Beijing on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry insisted the detainees would be treated lawfully if extradited.

"Some people may worry whether these people could be tortured in China, I believe this is biased. China is a country under the rule of law, and forbids torture by any Chinese authorities, be they judiciary or public security," said ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

A U.S. university professor who has studied the Uighurs and traveled frequently to China's Xinjiang province, or East Turkistan as it's called by Uighurs, said the comparisons of the political situations in Tibet and Xinjiang are generally valid.

The professor, who requested anonymity because he fears speaking on the record about the Uighurs could prompt Chinese authorities to bar him from traveling there, said the Uighurs' struggles with Beijing have largely been nationalistic and secular, rather than part of a broad international Islamic terror group like al-Qaida.

In his travels in China, the professor said Xinjiang stands out as sort of a boom town, with rapid new construction to accommodate a growing population and an increasing middle class.

He said that both Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese who are rapidly moving into the region appear to be benefiting from the boom, but Uighurs say they are disadvantaged.

The influx of ethnic Han combined with Chinese suppression of Uighur religion and language is destroying the culture, Uighurs say. And Uighurs are barred from the best jobs and economic opportunities.

"The Chinese government does everything it can to dilute the Uighur culture," Turkel said.

Hassan said he does not anticipate neighbors reacting fearfully to the presence of a Guantanamo detainee. When his co-workers at Booz Allen Hamilton learned of his plans to sponsor a detainee, several extended dinner invitations when the time comes.

Thinking about it some more - a great way to procrastinate in spite of my thesis being due in two weeks - I give the GTM detainees two chances of settling in America: Buckley's and none. America doesn’t harbor terrorists, and if China did so with Al Qaeda the diplomatic reaction from the U.S. State Department would be as swift as it is nuée ardente. Thus, I am willing to bet that they will not be resettled in America, Australia, or any other country for that matter who rattles democracy in one hand, while stroking the red dragon by the other.

nice poste a la nuée ardente (have to look that up). Good point Dr. Jimba. one would hope differently. An acceptance could also indicate an America moving away from its recent past and the hysterics and concerted manipulation of the American fear button under Cheney's puppet repub. government. I suppose as Noam Chomsky has said recently, there really is only one party in the states. Despite your dour prediction which I am inclined to accept, I do also hope that there is a chance for the almost forgotten Uyghur of Gitmo, they've certainly suffered enough. If a good, big[sic] democracy does not end up taking them I would still be surprised to see them returned to Red Dragon Land and certain death. Albania, at least accepted the former releasees.

If not a too direct request could you tell us what aspect of Xinjiang your doctorate is on?

how have you managed to write a dissertation and keep up your contributions regularly here? great effort, Good luck.

thanks, got it -

nuée ardente definition
nuée ardente (no̵̅o̅ ā′är dänt′)
noun pl. nuées ardentesno̵̅o̅ ā′är dänt′
a thick, deadly volcanic cloud of steam, dust, ash, etc., that explodes violently, may begin to glow, and rushes down the sides of the volcano

Sir Michael. nice to see you write again. rest assure that I Chin stick to one name.

@ Spec, Yeah, returned to sender is out of the question. Maybe they will be placed in Albania? Or maybe Canada: they often tell China to run'n'jump.

My thesis is a critical study of civil rights in Xinjiang. My aim is to determine whether conditions in Xinjiang allow for the development of civil rights (e.g., relious freedoms; fair trail; association etc) post-ratification. I look at government documents, I examine institutional deficiencies, and Xinjiang's civil society... cutting a long story short, I determine that even if China was to ratify the Int. Cov. on civil and political rights, civil rights violations as per the treaty will continue to manifest.

Chin (Lee, victim): You've been caught... IP addresses do not lie. So, please, just stop with the BS ok.

Eh, five or ten minutes a day ain't so bad. That's how much I usually spend on here, give or take an hour :P Writing a thesis is at once wonderful, and isolating. I tend to not do things by halves, so, I have become the person I used to laugh at: a nerd! Although, off to thailand next month with a few mates - looking forward to that, and forgetting about Xinjiang for a few weeks! haha.

PS: Great article by Milward.

ooooooooo jimba. really? haha. maybe you are jealous.

Should I be jealous that you use multiple names to support your own arguements? No, not really. I just think you're a looser.

you are so funny and a big liar.ok busy now. will write you later. LAZY.

god Jimba dont feed the little creep. Im repentant believe me especially seeing the other ##$%hole also turns out to be mo and sogd. In fact there may only be 3 or 4 people posting taking into account the unmentionables various disguises. I did know however that Mo was not a Muslim. Im chuffed I have a little gist of what in fact constitutes a real Muslim.

Anyway I figured you were basically online most of the time, like me, Im addicted to this blog now. Its too easy to switch over from my other work and check and comment. I know- I need help, iM losoing it, reality is becoming extremely distorted ( again)- Im gone...but not finished. Chiang Mai is one of my fav palces hope you get there. If you are going there let me know, there are some old school historians living there you may like to meet and discuss your interesting topic with.

I dont see why Australia under honest Kev shouldnt take them but of course there is his sinophilia in the way.

Yes, Professor Millward's article should be given more currency. I often wonder how much state functionaries pay attention to academic writings let alone advice (and some of it coming out of the United states regarding the Uyghur I find abhorent) but one would hope for a trickle down effect with the article in mention.

Published: October 9, 2008

English PEN is seriously concerned about the detention of Uighur journalist and poet Mehbube Ablesh, who was arrested in August 2008 after posting two critical articles online. We are seeking details of any charges against her, and are calling for her immediate and unconditional release if she is being held in violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory.
According to PEN's information, journalist and poet Mehbube Ablesh, aged twenty-nine, worked for the Xinjiang People's Radio Station, a government-run station based in the provincial capital Urumqi, until she was dismissed from her post in early August 2008 and arrested after posting critical articles online. It is thought that she is held for posting articles critical of Chinese government policy and the provincial leadership in Xinjiang Autonomous Region. She is believed to be held in Urumqi, and no details of any charges have been made public.

The Xinjiang Autonomous Region in north-west China is home to many Muslim Uighurs, some of whom have waged a low-level separatist struggle for independence from Chinese rule for decades. It is widely believed that the Chinese government has exaggerated the alleged terrorist threat in the region to suppress peaceful political and cultural expression. According to Human Rights Watch:

"Much like Tibetans, the Uighurs in Xinjiang, have struggled for cultural survival in the face of a government-supported influx by Chinese migrants, as well as harsh repression of political dissent and any expression, however lawful or peaceful, of their distinct identity. Some have also resorted to violence in a struggle for independence. Chinese authorities have not discriminated between peaceful and violent dissent, however, and their fight against "separatism" and "religious extremism" has been used to justify widespread and systematic human rights violations against Uighurs, including many involved in non-violent political, religious, and cultural activities."

Writers and journalists are amongst those at particular risk of arrest in the region for speaking out, and the government crackdown on peaceful dissent intensified in the run-up to the Olympic Games and throughout the month of Rammadan.

sir michael. since 2 weeks ago. i carefully study your beautiful picture. all are so memorable and have sentimental value.
but 1 picture i am so confuse about is your 24 birthday picture. you write below your picture its in the beach house. but actually when i study carefully about your picture...
1.it look dark in the background. so i guest its inside a dark room.
2.the camera that picture was taken was self timer because of the height and the angle where you sit with your head bow staring at the cake alone without any jolly mood.
3.you mention 4 person was celebrating with you. but the picture show you are along. and your mood was not happy.
4.the candle of the cake was not place on top and it was lighted round the cake.
5.the light of the candle was steady. and its the candle light that reflect the brightness on you, the cake, the bottle, a blanket hanging and most interesting on it even the table brightness.

thanks,

Add a mechanism of "comments moderation", like blogspot

so, im not the only fascinated by Michael's visage. iTS NOW MY SCREEN SAVER. i find it inspiring, mesmerizing. But really, this is taking it too far. hmm, candles, self timers, etc what could he have been up too?

Spec, yeah, I want to get up to Chiang Mai, but I've only got 16 days. We're doing a day in Bkk, a week in Phuket and then 8 days in Koh Samui (be there for full moon party). LOS is a wonderful place.... although, freaking $aud is getting killed atm. I might have to rob a bank, or try and get on the pension to get the Xmas bonus ($1,400) from Uncle Kev. :D

Btw, are you studying, or, what's the XJ connection?

no connection.

I am a pedant.

let me know if you go to CM. have fun. Do not get lunacy.

Good for you. My interest has become so frayed. Then again, give me a few weeks recovery and I'll probably bounce back.

I certainly will. But I can't promise about going crazy - it's also a 30th B'day celebration. ha.

If you think my grammar is bad now, wait till I kill a few million brain cells... yikes!

umm, allright then, self destruct if you feel you have to - a little oblivion can be most recuperative. a little time out of mind, of no thought, of memory loss for the better - yes and then back into the fray. Only 30 you can afford to lose heaps of cells and still continue to function into the impending doom! Umm, if possible, thesis title?

well, actually, I probably won't go too wild... but the thought is enough to make my liver quiver with anticipation.

Re: thesis title... erm, I would prefer to keep that one away from the public vortext that is this blog. As you say, the less these trolls know about me the better.

However, I'd be more than happy to chat to you away from here. Is there any safe way of reaching you?

yusufjan19@gmail.com

jimba. i recommend you when you go to thailand...

Amari Orchid Resort - Pattaya - Thailand

Address

Amari Orchid Resort
Pattaya Beach
Pattaya
Thailand
Room starting at USD 132
for single occupancy,
including ABF and service charge.

Introduction to Amari Orchid Resort

The vibrant town of Pattaya is a focal point for both commercial development on the Eastern Seaboard and entertainment. With it's beautiful beaches and extensive shopping and leisure facilities, it is also the ideal location for a family holiday.The Amari Orchid Resort, situated in 10 acres of tropical garden, offers superb accommodation and facilities including a range of restaurants, an outdoor pool, a professional quality tennis court and easy access to both water sports and golf courses.The business centre, meeting rooms and access to videoconferencing services will also impress the business traveller.

Offering comfortable accommodation, a splendid location and excellent facilities including modern audio-visual equipment, video-conferencing facilities and flexible function space, the Amari Orchid Resort is the perfect venue for your next seminar or conference for up to 200 guests.

Location of Amari Orchid Resort
Set amid ten acres of luxuriant gardens at the end of Pattaya's crescent shaped bay, the Amari Orchid Resort offers a relaxing retreat from this city by the sea. The facilities and services of the resort make it ideal for both leisure and business travellers.

Rooms at Amari Orchid Resort

The 236 comfortable guest rooms and suites have spacious interiors and are tastefully furnished and decorated with bright local fabrics. The guest rooms boast colourful views of either the blue waters of Pattaya Bay or the vivid colours of the exotic landscaped gardens.

Restaurant at Amari Orchid Resort
La Gritta Italian Restaurant
Pattaya's favourite Italian restaurant, La Gritta, specialises in delicious Italian specialities and seafood dishes. La Gritta has 80 seats and is open from 18:00 to 23:00 every day.

hope you and spec go to thailand and have a nice vacation. as for me. i am going to tokyo in the middle of november. hope you enjoy your trip.

oh chin come with us mate, we'll get on fine. you wont go missing. lets go snorkelling together? or how about a trip into Cambodia together, walking? piss off, its too late for you to be nice. Go to Tokyo and get lost.

ok. no problem for me. whether i am nice or bad. we both are still stranger to one another. we are difference from one another. its just only recommendation. to say frankly. i am happy that you go on vacation and forget a little moment to say etc etc of my country. have a happy trip to thailand as soon as possible. bye bye.

Thanx for the tip Chin. I visited Pattaya once. It's a nice place...erm... especially if one is single. Alas, those fun days are past me and if my partner knew I was going to "Pattaya", or as she refers to it, "that big open-aired brothel" she'd revert to unstable-lady and there is nothing more frightening than a women scorned.

Spec, cheers, I'll add you to msn, and we'll chat.

Jimba. i forget to tell you if you ars in thailand. there is a restaurant name
"NO HAND RESTAURANT". you try it. whenever i go to thailand. my friend took me there.the address is...

Rama IV Road, near no. 854. It is easy to get there. Just ask a taxi-driver!

The taxi-driver will take you to the right building (there are more Galaxy buildings). They will welcome you and you will find the place in the second floor.

Do not be too early. Though they open at 6:00 PM it might be possible that nobody is around but mama-san ('lady-manager'). The lady speaks English, of course, and she will answer all your questions.

The service charge on a dining companion is 720 Baht for the meal. Dining companions will feed you, serve the drinks, sing karaoke., and ...

will not provide any sex services - believe it or not,

ok. enjoy it and dont forget to use con...... hehe.

This is one of the most interesting blogs at the moment.

Yes, Ejnare. In fact, it used to be even better in the past (someone called it "brilliant", but don't remember who) when topics of all varieties were discussed. Recently, the entries have been mostly of a political nature, focussed on the plight of the Uighurs, and Michael had taken a lot of criticism for that. However, we know that Michael is moderate fellow, in fact, slightly liberal, who will cast his absentee ballot for Obama/Biden in the next election. I think that if Michael reports on some positive aspects of XJ, and passions having subsided, this blog can regain its old glory!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/world/asia/19xinjiang.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

check out the new article on the crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang

@ LN

three stand out comments from the article link you posted:

#
'“The Uighurs are lazy,” said a man who runs a construction business in Kashgar and would give only his last name, Zhao, because of the political delicacy of the topic.

“It’s because of their religion,” he said. “They spend so much time praying. What are they praying for?”'

#
'As dozens of worshipers streamed into the mosque for prayer on a recent evening, one Uighur man pointed to the sign and shook his head. “We didn’t write that,” he said in broken Chinese. “They wrote that.”'He turned his finger to a white neon sign above the building that simply said “mosque” in Arabic script. “We wrote that,” he said.'

#
'Enforcement can be haphazard. In Kashgar, many Uighur restaurants remained closed during the fasting hours. “The religion is too strong in Kashgar,” said one man. “There are rules, but people don’t follow them.”'

@Arjun

positive aspects? Like? Every one is happy and enjoying economic prosperity and ethnic harmony. See the expressions on the faces of the Hotan people in the article cited above for an indicator!

Yes, Roebuck. As a perennial contributor to this blog and being extremely knowledgeable on XJ, you surely are aware of the massive transformation taking place in XJ. Can't find anything positive at all? Is it all cent per cent negative? BTW, are you in some kind of writing assisnment? A thesis/dissertation (a la Jimba)? or contribution to Lonely Planet/Rough Guide? Is it just a passtime? My gosh, you are right... this blog is addictive...

eh, I think Arjun has a point. It will be better for this blog and everyone concerned if passions detumesce: The belle-époque days seem much more appealing than the trench warfare we've experienced of late.

140 comments
Passions raised,somewhat?

Is this a record

@flotsam

Possibly, but all passions (dangerous as they are in the pursuit of truth) seem to have subsided. Arjun could perhaps stimulate discussion by naming some of the positive aspects of the 'massive transformation' of the XUAR, he lauds, have for the autochthonous Uyghur. Perhaps they have at least learnt the meaning of an old Greek Story about a Trojan Horse?

@ jimba

'...detumesce: The belle-époque... ' love it mate love it...

@Jimba: Awesome! Perhaps you can use some of that bombastic vocabulary in your thesis.

@roebuck: No, I did not mean to include "ethnic harmony" among the positives. That is a far cry from reality. But it would be a nice goal to shoot for.

@spec: Among the positive things (or rather, non-negative/neutral) are some of those posted in the past, viz., Sun-dried tomatoes; Motorcycle madness; Baseball in XJ; Solar eclipse, et cetera. I know Michael is a middle-of-the-roader, and moderately liberal, unlike the Big Three (Spec, Roebuck & Jimba, not necessarily in that order). It does not take many brain cells to figure out that Michael had been taking all that heat largely because of what the Big Three have been posting.

@arjun

umm i think that is true to a degree; but troll criticism has largely been due to the topic/nature of his posts. One more recent example is the apoplectic response by tctdh under his 5 guises concerning Michael's post about 'collective punishment'.

Michael posts accurately in terms of the present and im afraid Arjun despite your optimism the present and the situations which arise from it are rarely positive and rarely good for the majority of Uyghur. On that note I do think who you call the big three, the unholy trinity, do provoke troll displeasure as well; but if you read back over their comments( mine included), they are opinions and observations about life in the XUAR where the rubber hits the road. It is any opinion which deviates from the happy clappy hao hao vision of Xinjiang UAR, which infuriates them, i.e. hard truths concerning racial/ethnic prejudice, human rights abuse, torture, summary executions, illegally gaoled gitmo boys, Han transmigration, Ramadan crackdowns, forced abortion, religious purges, mosque closures, workplace disparity, Olympic period persecution of Tibetans and Uyghurs...etc. look them up. If what you see as positive equates to the funky little sideline issues of "Sun-dried tomatoes; Motorcycle madness; Baseball in XJ; Solar eclipse, et cetera.", thats cute but a long way away from many, many Uyghur realities in the putative Uyghur Autonomous Region and id say politely you truly must either have your head in the sand or dont care or dont see the actual process going on or dont want to.

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/10/17/a-pastors-plea-for-the-guantanamo-uyghurs/

A Pastor’s Plea for the Guantánamo Uyghurs
17.10.08

The story of the Uyghurs in Guantánamo — innocent men caught up in the chaos of the Afghan invasion in late 2001 — has long been a prevalent theme in accounts of the arbitrary injustice of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 detention policies. Last week, Judge Ricardo Urbina, recognizing that their continued detention was unconstitutional, ordered the men’s release into the United States. The ruling was appealed by the government — and another ruling is expected soon — but in the meantime community leaders in Tallahassee, Florida, who put together a resettlement plan for three of the men, have been talking about their reasons for doing so.

The following is the text of a sermon delivered by Brant S. Copeland, the Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee, on September 7, 2008, which rather movingly explains, with reference to the Bible, why religious communities are required to help those in need. I can only hope that it will be made available to the appeal court judges who will decide the Uyghurs’ fate.

Pastor Copeland’s Sermon

Ever hear of Uyghurs? If the answer is “No,” don’t feel bad. Neither had I until a few weeks ago.

Uyghurs are an ethnic group who live in what is now the Xinjiang region of China — way up in the northwest of that vast country with Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, and Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and India to the west. Uyghur country is sparsely populated. It’s mostly deserts and mountains. I think it’s fair so say that most Americans have never heard of it.

Uyghurs speak Turkic, and most of them are Sufi Muslims — have been since the 13th century. Like their neighbors in Tibet, the Uyghurs have been persecuted by the Chinese government for decades, but unlike the Tibetans, they don’t have a spiritual leader like to Dalai Lama to tell their story and keep their plight in the international headlines.

The US State Department officially lists Uyghurs as the victims of state persecution on account of their religion, and that status is a sticking point in Chinese-American relations.

Now this is a sermon, not a social studies talk, and in any case I’ve told you just about everything I know about Uyghurs. Now I’d like you to meet a few Uyghurs — in your imagination at least. Each has a slightly different story, but I’ve learned enough to give you a general picture.

Turn your calendar back to the year 2001. Having fled China to escape persecution, some Uyghur men were living in a refugee camp in the mountains of Afghanistan — the Tora Bora mountain range, to be precise. It seems they were in that settlement on September 11, 2001, when, far away, in cities they had never heard of called New York and Washington, D.C., planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

We all remember what followed: The declaration of a “War on Terror”; the invasion of Afghanistan; the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the bombing of the Tora Bora caves.

The men in this story made their way across snow-covered peaks into Pakistan, where they hoped to find refuge. Some local tribesmen took them in, fed them a feast, and then betrayed them. They turned them over to the military authorities in order to collect the $5,000 bounty per person the Americans were paying for allies of Osama bin Laden. The problem is, these Uyghurs had never heard of Osama bin Laden.

Twenty -two Uyghur men were caught in that snare and were eventually hooded, shackled, and flown to the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

That was seven years ago, and they’ve been there ever since. They’re not “terrorists.” What they are is refugees who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’re certainly not “the worst of the worst,” as we were once told was the case with all the prisoners at Guantánamo. What they are, in Biblical terms, is the “least of the least.”

There are now seventeen Uyghur men being held in Guantánamo. I’ve told you a bit of their story because there’s a chance that in October a federal judge in Washington D.C. will be ordering their release –- or, in legal terms, their “parole.” If that should happen, these Uyghurs will have no place to go. Return to China is impossible, and it appears no other nation in the world will risk China’s displeasure by showing hospitality to Uyghurs.

The volunteer attorneys who represent these men are hoping that there might be some communities around the country who would agree to take a few of them in — give them housing, find them jobs, teach them the skills they will need to make new lives in the country that has imprisoned them for so long.

A few weeks ago I was approached by someone close to these men’s case and asked if I thought Tallahassee might be a place where three of these Uyghur men might find hospitality. “I’m asking you,” this person said, “because I’ve heard of the First Presbyterian Church and thought that if any congregation would be willing to work on a project like this, it would be yours.”

I thought about that. I thought about the welcome our session gave to the family of John Spenkelink, back in 1979, when Florida reinstituted the death penalty and John’s family needed somewhere to hold John’s funeral. I remembered the time refugees from El Salvador occupied our chapel, living there during Holy Week to raise awareness of their nation’s plight. I thought of the Vietnamese families we have embraced through the years and of the folks fleeing Hurricanes Katrina and Rita three years ago. I remembered all that Cajun food being cooked in our kitchen, and how I didn’t eat anywhere else for a whole week.

More than that, I remembered how the faith communities of Tallahassee pulled together to minister to those 700 Katrina victims who found themselves in Tallahassee. I remembered sitting around the table with Christian pastors and clergy from Temple Israel and Masjid Al-Nahl, one of the two local mosques, planning pastoral care for the folks at the Red Cross Center. I thought about the conversations I’ve been having with colleagues in the organization called “Tallahassee Interfaith Clergy,” which is co-chaired by me and Rabbi Jack Romberg.

I put all that together in my head and I told that person, “Yes. I think the congregations of Tallahassee would be up to that challenge.”

In the past few days the momentum has been picking up. I sent out an e-mail to my ministerial colleagues explaining the situation. Every time I check my e-mail I get another message saying, “Yes, we’ll help.” We’re talking with a local Presbyterian pastor who worked for three years resettling refugees up in northern Virginia. He’s an expert. He says he’ll show us how it’s done.

And as we worship the triune God this morning, a conversation is taking place with the governing body at a local mosque. “If you’ll take the lead,” we’re telling the Muslim community, “the other faith communities in Tallahassee will help. We’ll stand with you, and together we’ll follow God’s call.”

I said this was a sermon, and it is. It’s a commentary on today’s reading from Romans. I didn’t know it at the time, but all week long the Holy Spirit has been writing my sermon for me, putting into context these words from the Apostle Paul.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not covet” and any other commandment are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

For Christians, the meaning of the word “neighbor” is found not in a dictionary, but in a story. You know that story well — the parable of the Good Samaritan. Neighbors, that story implies, are not just the folks who live nearby; they’re the folks whose need cries out from a ditch on the road to Jericho, or from a Red Cross Service Center, or even from a prison on Guantánamo Bay.

Seldom does that cry arise at a convenient time, and it almost always involves crossing some kind of boundary. That’s the nature of “neighbor” in the Christian tradition. Jews and Muslims have different traditions, but I suspect they would arrive at much the same conclusion when it comes to the story I’ve been telling you.

A patriot might say that what our nation has done to these men is shameful, and ought to be put right in order to restore our nation’s honor. A prophet might say that they have suffered a great injustice. A Christian might well agree with both the patriot and the prophet, but when it comes right down to it, these men are simply our neighbors, and Christ commands us to love our neighbors.

The story of these Uyghur refugees is far from finished. The congregations of Tallahassee will be writing the next chapters. Let us pray that when their story is told to our children, they will give thanks to God for our faithful response to God’s call.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press).

Ajurn, if you need me to explain those words to you just let me know, ok. Furthermore, if I take away from your "opposite end" experience then I am sorry for you. But, if you've ever bothered to read my posts you would know that I am rather moderate in my outlook; although, I do have my position on issues like any other person: strike me down if some of them relate to Xinjiang.

The 'me, myself and Irene' duet of tctdh and Chin were not only outraged at us "big illiberal three", but also aghast that Michael would dare to make posts critical of the CCP. By using your clearly superior powers of observation you might have noted that they were a little below reasonable, moderate or rationale.... but of course your grudge lies with us so I doubt you'll acknowledge this position.

Now, I must transfer my fanatical beliefs onto my thesis... mwah ha ha ha... errrr.

Oh, one difference between Michael and I - which should be pointed out - is that I have far less tolerance for idiots: no inference intended of course :) Have a “fantabulous” day.

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@ lovemaker

oh I forgot this was a Turcophone blog!

@ Jimba

Im not sure if Arjun was taking the piss when he commented on your 'bombastic' whatever ( how'd he read it like that is my deeper question) however, analytical powers once activated discern a flagrant bias in his comments not doissimilar to the neg/trolls we know so well. only post pretty, cute, interesting posts aligned with ideas of XUAR as a great beautiful place; and dont post truths concerning life on the ground ( even though he denies ethnic harmony exists) i think he means well overall but in reality he has not been able himself to offer any of those great positives of tranformation he speaks of...of course if he did it would sound too much like Han tokenism and paternalism. Wow look at the highways and the skyscrapers and the income of certain minkaohan who have made the transition away from the ignorance and poverty of tradition, religion and superstition, etc. Its a minefield but Id be glad to consider any well argued ( non -hackneyed) proofs in regard his suggestion.

BTW have you been watching 'The first Australians'

we see in this riveting series about the colonization of australia and the dispossession of the aboriginals some very similar arguments and tricks used by the british to rob the australians of their land, culture and race as teh Hna use when suppressing the uyghur and other 'lazy' races. it is now known as genocide.

APPEALS COURT HALTS RELEASE OF 17 GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2008; 10:23 PM

A federal appeals court Monday blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslims into the United States from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until it can hear further legal arguments in the case.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed a federal judge's order releasing the men, and it ordered oral arguments in the government's appeal, to be heard Nov. 24.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ordered the government Oct. 7 to release the men, all Uighurs, who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly seven years. The same panel temporarily stayed Urbina's order a day later.

The government has been trying to find new homes for the Uighurs for years. It no longer considers them enemy combatants and provided no evidence in court that they posed a security risk. The men cannot be returned to their homeland because they face the prospect of being tortured and killed. China considers the men terrorists.

Judges A. Raymond Randolph and Karen L. Henderson sided with the government and issued the order without comment; Judge Judith W. Rogers dissented, writing that the Bush administration's legal theories were flawed. The government has argued it can detain the Uighurs without cause until it locates a new home for them.

Justice Department lawyers have argued that only the president or Congress has the legal authority to order the Uighurs' release into the United States. They have also said that immigration laws would preclude them from entering the country because they received weapons training at a camp operated by a designated terror organization.

Rogers rejected those arguments, writing that courts have the power to order the release under habeas corpus, a centuries-old legal doctrine that allows prisoners or detainees to challenge their confinement in federal court. The judge also rejected the argument that immigration laws would bar the Uighurs' entry, writing that such an interpretation would "rob" the men's rights of meaning.

Even if the men had received weapons training, she wrote, that "cannot alone show they are dangerous, unless millions of United States resident citizens who have received fire arms training are deemed to be dangerous as well."

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, "We're pleased the court has granted our motion for a stay pending the appeal, and we look forward to presenting our arguments before the Court of Appeals."

P. Sabin Willett, who represents the Uighurs, said he was disappointed by the order, and he accused the government of running out the clock until Bush leaves office in January.

Urbina ordered the men released to live with Uighur families in the Washington area.

"Because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause, the government's continued detention of the [detainees] is unlawful," Urbina said from the bench.

btw, the incredible historical documentary, 'The first Australians' is available online no matter where you are:

http://www.programs.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/content/#/upload/

better try for the actual series shows this one, hope is OK michael.

http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/

Oh, yeah. We are “teh Hna”. Sure, we couldn’t hear enough about the mockeries of harmony and might not be able to do what we are promoting, but, man, there sure are people couldn’t do what they are preaching. Right, we “teh Hna” couldn’t conveniently say we voted labor/liberal, republican/democrat (the other) party. And we are just what we are: “teh Hna” who have long rap sheets against whichever minorities the freedom fighters are currently defending for. Sure, we are the one segregating, who are born “teh Hna”, die “teh Hna”, who say “fantabulous”. Anything new?

@spec & Jimba:
The main reason of my suggesting to Michael to mix things up -- like he used to -- was so that there will be less of the angry reaction that we have seen. And I believe that you do not disagree with me on that (even though you believe that there is a complete dearth of anything good for the Uyghur in XJ). Let me say from the outset that I am always for the underdog (I rejoiced the thrashing of the Aussies by India in Test cricket simply beacuse the Assies win all the time) and I pray for peace, prosperity and religeous freedom for the Uyghur. However, unlike you, I am cautiously optimistic that that will actually happen in the future (i.e., if things calm down, and if there is no terrorist atttack).
Look, whether we like it or not, the Middle Kingdom is on the rise; the old silk route of gravel and dirt is being transformed into a new one of asphalt and steel; commerce between the East and the West will grow; and XJ, situated at the crossroads, will benefit from that. You and I cannot stop that train even if we try to. Let us only hope that the disenchanted minorities get their fair share. Now to the specific points.

@spec: " ... your head in the sand or don't care or dont see the actual process ... or don't want to". Yes, I would like to be an Ostrich right now and bury my head to get away from all the miserable things around, but can't find any sand ... no desert or beaches around. No, truly, I wish everybody well. As for "funky little sidelines", let me try: (1) The Economist reported that attached to the "Strike hard" policy is an allottment of money for the disgruntled minorities (You never reported the last part here); (2) In 2004, two ethnic Uyghur billionaires made the Fortune 500; (3) An Uyghur Basketball player played in the NBA. There must be other positive stories. You just have to look hard. re: "flagrant bias in his comments", I can only say that it it your comments that are the most extremely one-sided. "offer any positives of the transformation", see comments above.

@Jimba: Yes, please go ahead and give us the meanings of those words. Could not find them in either the Oxford or Chambers dictionary, or in the Oxford dictionary of Idioms. And yes, "ad hominen" too. "If you bother to read my posts ... I'm rather moderate in my outlook". Yes, I do read your posts, Jimba, and I relish them. You are very articulate, reasonable, rational, and all that. Agree. "rather moderate" you appear to be. But in the final analysis, your conclusions are always the same. It is always dark clouds in the horizon, there is never a silver lining. "Your grudge lies with us" Disagree. I have no grudge at all. In fact I do not disagree with much of what you write. Only you do not seen to agree to anything I have say. As for Michael's tolerance, totally agree. He has sa uperior tolerance limit, and he will be successful in life because of that trait.

Final word: Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace and prosperity to all. Peace and prosperity to the Uyghur. Peace and prosperity to the Han. Peace and prosperity to everyone. Adieos!

two uyghur billionaires and 9 million impoverished. Things are looking great. Im not one sided Arjun just realistic about what is actually happening - your aquiesence to the inevitability of a Colonial power destroying another's culture is tantamount to support of genocide.

have you any real idea what the Strike Hard was all about? My god what a buy out! A little bit of money for x number of summary executions, x number of official executions, restrictions on gathering, the jailing of 20,000 youth, and a basic pogrom against all expressions of religion deemed subversive by the state - for a period of roughly six years - and some people get a little money out of it, money which by the time it passes therough the chain of corrupt hands and reaches the village level probabaly amounts to 2 yuan per villager. My god! What propaganda, what sops for the ignorant!

Uyghur are natural and athletic people whay should it surprise you one is in the NBA. Is this due to China's Xinjiang policy? Arjun you are....? Whats your point of view in fact? Realist?

Get a heart, get real and get honest. Peace to the Uyghur my foot! How can there be peace when an undisclosed cultural war goes on, as token millionaires are cut out by teh Hna cookie cutter and used as propaganda pieces? Remember and remember well that Rebiya was a millionaire and lauded by the party and feted. What does 2 billionaires mean? Your attitudes are paternalistic amd your mentality is colonial and racist, just is , you cant see it.

afterthought re Uyghur billionaires.

There have been extremely wealthy Uyghur business men throughout Xinjiang's modern history, especially pre-CCP occupation in the Republican period when trade with teh SU and elsewhere was at a peak. There will be wealthy Uyghur businessman because they are good at business when they have a chance to compete. Some do, many dont.

Trade is what makes people wealthy. Of course presently some Uyghur will profit; but the greater proportion of wealth does not reach Uyghur hands but teh Hna hands and is siphoned back to the interior (gou li : coolee) of China. Oil, gold, uranium profits, where do they go?

Sure Xinjiang will be prosperous because of teh Hna trade with CA but how much of that will really benefit the Uyghur raher than the colonists is the real question Arjun in his optimiustic vision does not consider, nor does he estimate the reality of inter-cultural politics or racial prejudice alive and well in the Uyghur Autonomous Region. So please Arjun save us your platitudes or you force one to get 'one-sided' again.

Ajurn said: "But in the final analysis, your conclusions are always the same. It is always dark clouds in the horizon, there is never a silver lining."

Depends what paradigm you're coming from: From an economic perspective - with particular reference to the recent official release that the Govt. plans on doubling rural GDP by 2020 - then I would say there are many good times ahead for all and sundry in XJ; From a human rights perspective that focuses on civil and political rights within the region... then, yes, I can totally see where you get this idea from. I cannot see a "silver lining"; but, as China proved during the Olympics, when they want to do something, anything is achievable.

Want, as per the Oxford dictionary: "have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for: e.g. I want an apple" I simply doubt the CCP want improved civil and political rights in Xinjiang, unless those who benefit from it are those Han suzerain loyal to the Chinese state.

A gentle bird does not sing, because it has an reasonable answer.
A crazy bird sings, because it has no reasonable answer.

jimba are you the.......

@Jimba:

"From an economic perspective ... I would say there are many good times ahead for all and sundry in XJ". Thanks, Jimba, we have just agreed.

"From a human rights perspective that focusses on civil and political rights ...". Well Jimba, we all know that there are no political rights in Mainland China right now for anybody (except for the party members, perhaps?). Agree?

Just a note. The student leader of the Tiananmen massacre was an Uyghur.

Chin: beware of translating Chinese metaphors into English. They often sound silly and make no sense.

Although I do understand, unfortunately, Chin, I am a human; not a bird.

FYI: Birds usually sing as communication for one of two purposes: either "go away" (secure a territory), or "come here" (secure a mate).

Also Chin, comparatively, Bird's Cerebrum is less developed than humans. The cerebrum or cortex is the largest part of the human brain, associated with higher brain function such as thought and action. It allows us to reason Chin.

Reason involves the ability to think, understand and draw conclusions in an abstract way, as in human thinking... birds cannot do that, although, neither can you so I understand why you've decided to use such an artless metaphor. But, don't let me stop, please, fly away chirpless birdie! - that’s me singing “go away”.

Arjun, agree almost. Comparatively, I believe the XJ minorities experience more broader restrictions on those rights than China proper because of a confluence of historic resistance, rejection of the Han version of nation building, the CCPs management of the autonomous system, stability, stability, stability, which is inevitability tied in with development, center-local relations etc etc. My op, if China was to reform its legal system so that Chinese law is more aligned with international law – and hence allow for a more normative interpretation of the ICCPR - the last to benefit from this would be the XJ minorities.

yes Jimba, in fact the real problem you point to is an entrenched racism and ethnic prejudice. Thats the spade that needs to be called a spade and the radix of all problems in Xinjiang. Han Chauvinism basically.

Which has always been the basis of my argument re negative CCP policy in XUAR and hence my strident criticism. Until this goes nothing changes Arjun as all directives stem from this putatively outlawed racist attitude within the CCP and the greater Han population in general. It may morph at times into its benevolent guise, which is also known as paternalism ( 'realists' such as Arjun in self-deception often adhere to this form telling themselves of the inevitability of the demise of the people etc; but, hey there will be economic benefits - for some, etc).

So yes Jimba nothing will really change for the uyghur under Hna rule.

re: your above cited projected rural benefits for the XUAR, I would also question the real benefit that will come to basic subsistence farmers as the region is further modernized. Look now at how little change the majority of farmers( some have done well but they are in the extreme minority, the majority continue to struggle against rising costs and stricter government control and directives toward monoculture i.e. cotton planting for the internal production market, etc. - look into it.) I doubt if this rural increase in per capita wealth will come to pass for the Uyghur - sounds good on paper. Carrots before Donkey trick - otherwise if unhappy, and unhappiness is expressed - the Big Stick!

@ Arjun.

ONE of the leaders of the Tianamen students was 'Orkash' or wuerkaixi in its sinicized form. He was minkaohan Uyghur and grew up in Beijing . He was not THE leader of the students, but one of them, who escaped into HK by boat. So thanks for reminding us. but why?

CHINA ISSUES “WANTED LIST” AS US BLOCKS RELEASE OF UIGHURS

Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:42
World Bulletin / News Desk

China released a "wanted list" of eight Uighurs it claimed had "threatened" the Beijing Olympics as US federal appeals court has blocked the release of 17 Muslim Uighurs from the Guantanamo Bay prison until November.

China released on Tuesday a "wanted list" of eight Uighurs it claimed had "threatened" the Beijing Olympics and were bent on achieving independence for East Turkistan.

The eight, all members of Muslim Uighur group, belonged to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), police said.

"The eight are all key members of the ETIM," Wu Heping, a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry, told reporters.

The suspects are named in a statement handed to reporters as Xiamisidingaihemaiti Abudumijiti and Aikemilai Wumaierjiang, Yakuf Memeti, also named Memetiming Memeti, 37, as the head of the ETIM, Emeti Yakuf, Memetituersun Yiming, Memetituersun Abuduhalike and Tuersun Toheti.

In August, just a few days before the games opened in Beijing, 16 border police were killed in East Turkistan in an attack China blamed on Uighurs.

The eight "seriously threatened the security of the Beijing Olympic Games and China's social stability, while at the same time composing a threat to the security and stability of relevant countries and the region," Wu said.

Beijing is also pushing the United States to hand over 17 Uighurs, held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay.

Rights groups have accused China of exaggerating the so-called "threat" in the region in order to crack down on Uighur demands for greater autonomy and religious freedom.

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the Europe-based World Uyghur Congress, dismissed the list of names released on Tuesday as "politically motivated" and said he had never heard of the suspects.

"They have produced no evidence to support these claims," he told Reuters by telephone.

Release of Uighurs blocked

Meanwhile, a US federal appeals court has blocked the release of 17 Muslim Uighurs from the Guantanamo Bay prison until more legal hearings are held in November.

The men have been held at the US detention camp for more than six years without charges.

A federal judge on October 7 had ordered the men released and brought to the US capital, home to a significant Uighur community.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Bush administration in halting the Muslims' release while the government prepares its full appeal. Lawyers for the detainees, a group of Muslims from China known as Uighurs, had asked that they be freed into the U.S. pending the time-consuming appeal.

The appeals court ordered both sides to submit additional briefs by Nov. 7. Judges will hear oral arguments on Nov. 24.

The panel "ordered that the motion for stay be granted and the district court's order directing that appellees be released into the United States be stayed pending further order of the court," the decision said.

The Uighurs were living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led coalition bombing campaign began in October 2001. They fled to the mountains, but were turned over to Pakistani authorities, who then handed them over to the United States.

The group has been held in limbo at Guantanamo -- despite being cleared for release by the US government. The men cannot be returned to China because of fears they would be tortured there as political dissidents.
Only Albania has agreed to take Uighur detainees, welcoming a group of five in 2006.

There are about 255 detainees at Guantanamo, which was set up in January 2002. Most have been held for years without being charged and many have complained of abuse, torture.

Historical records show that the Uyghurs have a history of more than 4000 years. Throughout the history the Uyghurs developed a unique culture and civilization and made remarkable contribution to the civilization of the world.

East Turkistan has 8 million Uighurs.

The Uyghurs Islam in 934, during the reign of Satuk Bughra Khan, the Kharahanid ruler. Since that time on the Islam continuously served Uyghurs as the only religion until today.

After embracing Islam the Uyghurs continued to preserve their cultural dominance in Central Asia. World renowned Uyghur scholars emerged, and Uyghur literature flourished. Among the hundreds of important works surviving from this era are the Kutat-ku Bilik by Yusuf Has Hajip (1069-70), Divan-i Lugat-it Turk by Mahmud Kashgari, and Atabetul Hakayik by Ahmet Yukneki.

East Turkistan was occupied by the communist China in 1949 and its name was changed in 1955. The communist China has been excersizing a colonial rule over the East Turkistan since then.

for more info on the 8 most wanted Uyghur and their photographs

in chinese see

http://www.stnn.cc/china/200810/t20081021_883016.html

for more fotos in Uyghur see

http://bbs.salkin.cn/read.php?tid-42236.html

taken from discussants post on current ND thread which also discusses the issue of prejudice and racial discrimination in the job market in XUAR and elsewhere in PRC toward Uyghur ( and Tibetans to some degree).

http://www.mutantpalm.org/2008/10/21/the-new-terrorists-and-some-unnamed-countries.html

Mutant Palm
The New Terrorists, and Some Unnamed Countries
October 21st, 2008 at 7:16 am (Uncategorized)

In a press conference today, the Ministry of Public Security released its second list of most wanted terrorists for plotting attacks on the Olympics and generally working towards separatism in “restive”* Xinjiang. The first list was released December 15, 2003, and included Hasan Mahsum, who had been shot dead by Pakistani forces two months earlier - the delay may have been because of DNA testing.

The first list included: Hasan Mahsum (ETIM, deceased), Mamtimin Hazrat (ETLO), Dolqun Isa (Uyghur Youth Congress), Abudujelil Karikax (ET Information Center, UYC), Abudukadir Uapqan (ETIM), Abudumijit Mamatkrim (ETIM), Abdulla Kariaji (ETIM), Ablimit Tursun (World Uyghur Congress), Hudabardiy Haxerbak (ETLO), Yasan Mammat and Atahan Abduheni. The addition of the WUC and UYC were received rather skeptically, especially since the list said these groups were working with ETIM. Most of the crimes they were accused of were general charges of recruitment, funding and bombmaking, and specific charges of gun violence and robberies.

So who’s new? This time the second list (English here) goes all out on details: aliases, nicknames, birthdays, education level (one university, 2 vocational, 1 high school, 2 junior high and 2 primary school level - not Mohammed Atta stuff), and ID and passport numbers, which seems awfully pointless but police paperwork is what it is. Moreover, while the previous list did include, in some versions, what appears to be Latin-based spellings of their names, the current list is only available with pinyin versions of their Chinese phoneticized names. Also, places are consistently referred to as “a Middle Eastern country”, “a South Asia country”, “Middle East and West Asian countries”, “a south Asian nation”, etc. etc. - never the name of Pakistan, Afghanistan, or where ever else it is they’re referring to.

Memetiming Memeti: Alleged to be the new CEO of ETIM, replacing Mahsum in 2003. He is said to have released a video “on the world’s largest video sharing website” in June 2008, but I can’t find any record of a YouTube video with any of his names or aliases. In fact, reports of videos on YouTube began in July. Moreover, there is no mention of the videos released in August, or Abdullah Mansour who appeared in it. Searches for Chinese and English translations of his alleged quotes (“要把2008年变成中国的哀悼年”, “turn the year 2008 into China’s year of condolence”), mainly turn up this list and references to an August 7 Caijing Online article that says a video was released on YouTube June 26/27 and states they want to make it a year of condolence, but not as a direct quote. The video is not included in IntelCenter’s DVD of TIP’s greatest hits, the YouTube account for TIP was deleted, and there’s no English record of such a video. Also, it is always referred to as being posted on June 26-27; why the ambiguity?
Emeti Yakuf: alias Seyfullah, Memetiming’s lieutenant, apparently. He is also said to have released a video in June, and his alias does match the name of the man in a video released in July by the “Turkestan Islamic Party”. In fact, the The wanted list does not mention the TIP, but instead says that these men all belong to ETIM - a confusion of organizational names and movements the Chinese government has produced for quite a while. Interestingly enough, neither man is accused of conducting the bus bombings they claimed responsibility for in the video, which the Chinese government previously denied.
Memeti Tursun Yiming: Logistics and fundraising. Organized “more than 10″ (but less than 30? Are they bigger than a breadbox?) terrorists to infiltrate China and launch attacks in early 2008.
Memeti Tursun Abuduhalike: ETIM’s Webmonkey. He apparently “made video footage of terrorist attacks against the Beijing Olympics for Memetiming Memeti and Emeti Yakuf, and broadcast them on a major video-sharing website.” Sorry, that’s Xinhua’s bad translation, they made videos of terrorist threats. Not attacks.
Xiamisidingaihemaiti Abudumijiti: Sent to “a Middle East country, where he preached separatism and extremism among local Chinese (当地中国人)”. Either he’s a really convincing guy, or by “Chinese” they mean “Uyghurs”. He planned to blow up a Beijing supermarket before the Olympics.
Aikemilai Wumaierjiang: Assisted in supermarket plot.
Yakuf Memeti: Planned to sneak into China via a South Asian country to attack during the Olympics, but apparently got distracted by a plan to attack an oil refinery in said South Asian country, which also failed “due to strict security”.
Tursun Toheti: Saw the video in a West Asian country and wanted to join. Asked for explosive formulas and plans, made and tested explosive to attack the Olympics. Obviously, something came up.
The PSB is clearly attempting to issue more information on their suspects than in the past. Now if they could just focus on issuing it more clearly and distinctly.

—————————————————

*There is apparently a style guide out there on writing about Xinjiang in the Western press, and the word “restive” is the default adjective for the province. I’m starting to think its a spellcheck feature.

You raise a valid point Spec. While it would be churlish to suggest that the central govt. promotes policy that goes against the spirit of youhui zheng ce (or preferential policies), local Han sentiment towards the Uighur, or more importantly, towards their own ethnic group, has created an environment whereby economic runoffs from development have benifited, chiefly, the Han ethnic group. This is well documented by academic sources outside of China (see Bequelin or Clarke), but at the same time, there is also another compelling argument that the minorities are doing much better off than they would do if Beijing was not presently there.

Beijing as in a ubiquitous control sense... Obviously, Beijing remains where it has always been geographically located :P

Yes, yes, that is the argument in the positive sense; but what reality can the present Uyghur situation be compared to since 1949 or more correctly 1955 when the XUAR was finally stabilized sufficiently to be named such?

We wont know how better off they may have been without Beijing's strong hand in the area. Again, of course, the question rises who says they are better off now and on what basis?

Traditional culture and poverty may be more acceptable by many than the trappings of a Chinese induced 'modernity' with no Autonomy to speak of or the dignity of self-rule. The later being sacrificed to the greater vision of the Chinese Nation, largely by Han instrumentation itself ( enforced communism) and the compliance of the political survivors of the pre-CCP and ETR days, namely Saifudin and Burhan Shahidi.

Whats more there is the issue of the peasantry who still form up to 80- 90% of the Uyghur population. One may truly ask how better off their lives are under Communism. Life is still hard, and tough and poverty rules in many small communities. Freed of the bane of feudalism they were launched into almost three decades of collectivization and the insanity of Maoist rural policies, then the insanity of politics in the Cultural Revolution.

Deng's reforms obviously brought the biggest historical change the peasantry had experienced, but in the present climate I observed on my most recent trip to the XUAR the complaints were that farmlands are being bought up by Han settlers and developers ( also in some cases uyghur but they in the minority) to build units and town houses upon ( see the extension of Kashgar city toward the present railway station as an example of former farmlands being transformed into suburbs) from impoverished Uyghur farmers.

Environmental issues are also at hand. Declining snow melt from glacial peaks, encroaching desertification, water stealing by Han farmers from Uyghur eriks, etc. Better off or another stage in a long , long story of a Master-Slave relationship? Just, this time it is a modern relationship and there are gadgets available to make life easier that to some degree may placate people for a while.

Ultimately, however, material possessions for the few will not outweigh the rightful sense of dignity that has been denied the Uyghur since this latest phase began out from the remnant 'medieval' of the pre-1980's past and into the glorious future of the Chinese nation since Deng's reform. Its all alright to say they are better off, but if voices arise to the contrary are raised we see that nothing has really changed for the uyghur. Its allright to be happy; its even allright to be unhappy but it sure aint allright to express that.

Jimba what will we do without you when in the land of smiles?

addenda.

of course the only possible comparison to what things may have been like if the region had not fallen to the Maoists in 1955 is that the SU would have taken the area before then and developed it as a satellite Republic.

If so, what would the region look like now?

Well, for one , it would be an independent nation, as are all of the other central Asian regions brought under the SU ( including Mongolia).

Tradition and religion and language would have taken a battering as happened in the 'stans' from 1928 onward but would now be in rennaisance. This battering is only beginning to occur in earnest now under the CCP who because of economic and logistical difficulties have only begun to develop the region and increase Han settlement in the last decade or so as their power grows. with this expanding sinification comes the real indicators of what could be called ethnocide in the region - give it another ten years and we'll see.

There would have been far more modern infrastructure in the region ca. 1991 than there was under CCP rule at that time, as we saw in the neighbouring CA stans.

The region like Kazakhsatn would have much oil and mineral wealth to build upon while at the same time experiencing all of the problems the former soviet republics are now experiencing.

Nonetheless, they are nations and are independent albeit under the shadow of a resurgent Russian imperial stance!

Poverty rate up, American dream a bust for more people, speaker says

Published: 2008-10-03

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (CNS) -- For more and more people, the American dream isn't turning out the way it was envisioned, said Cathy Hinko, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition in Louisville. "So many people say of people who are poor, 'It's their fault,'" noted Hinko in a presentation to members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Sept. 26. "(They say), 'America is the land of opportunity; there's the ability to make it in America.' And that is true for some people," she said. "But there are also systems in place that say that isn't so." For one thing, she said, more people are moving into poverty, and the middle class is no longer rising. Hinko's presentation on "The High Cost of Being Poor" was one of more than a dozen small-group sessions and workshops held during the society's Sept. 23-27 national meeting in Louisville. A host of statistics and graphs punctuated Hinko's presentation. And as she quantified poverty in America, some Vincentians nodded in agreement, recognizing in the numbers the people with whom they work.

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@spec:

For the present state of unhappy situation in XJ, you blame the CCP and Han racism. I think you are off target on both. First, if the KMT were in power right now, instead of the CCP, I doubt if the situation would change. Second, racism is evil and should be outlawed everywhere if possible. But that is easier said than done. Racism was probably born the moment races appeared on this planet. Among the bloggers here, you are the one who constantly injects race in the discussion. I do not recall Michael or Jimba of ever doing that (correct me Jimba, if I am wrong). Your own racial prejudice againt the Han is easily the most palpable feature, even to the neutral observer. The Han is not necessarily more racist than any other group. A case in point. The Economist reported that thousands of a tormented Muslim group in Burma have found safe haven in Kunming with the help of the local Huis there. The real cause of the conflict in XUAR is the Al Qaeda-inspired events that had taken place. And you have either totally missed that point, or had your head buried in the sand. You had criticized the carrot and the stick approach. Would you rather have the carrot and the stick or only the stick without the carrot (the carrot without the stick is not an expected option)? I wonder, how you came up with the RMB 2 per capita calculation. Why not wait and see the size of the carrot before dismissing it altogether?

@ Arjun re:

"Yes, Roebuck. As a perennial contributor to this blog and being extremely knowledgeable on XJ, you surely are aware of the massive transformation taking place in XJ. Can't find anything positive at all? Is it all cent per cent negative? BTW, are you in some kind of writing assisnment? A thesis/dissertation (a la Jimba)? or contribution to Lonely Planet/Rough Guide? Is it just a passtime?"

whats it matter to yu why I do what I do. Why should yu know?

Yu periodically appear here in a stance of superiority and make character and value judgments on contributors, partake of guessing games re their identity and generally post 'presentist' evaluations of the situation in East Turkestan as I notice you have done in your most recent post above, without any consideration of the historical. Read more is all I can say or perchance go and talk to people.

Every situation is historically constituted and you seem way out of touch there. the so called Al Qaida actions (if Al Qaida in fact exists at all or on that matter if the ETIM even exists at all) are the product of many influences in the region. Its just not as simple as yu put it. Yes i can see yu do live with your head in the sand. Its without excuse as yu are plainly intelligent. Yu choose to do that Id say. Hmmmm...why?

Race it seems to me is an issue anywhere in the world and no doubt one on this blog also generated by the Han trolls who seem to be in demise. Your comments above seem innacurate and accusatory but not my place to comment upon any further.

In response to the 'what if' scenario posted above another outcome of the SU having taken east Turkestan (it was called such and recognized as such in the 1940s without any threat of being named separatist for ding so by the KMT) rather than the CCP is that there would today be a residual Russian population in the region rather than 8 - 9 million Han Chinese. Race? Think about it and think why it is a large issue today. Any one who knows anything about Xinjiang knows this is a major issue. Your interpretations are twisted here Arjun.

re your last missive aimed at me.

Why would I write for an idiot publication such as Lonely Planet? I abhor all such guides and their generalized populist Orientlaist approach to other peoples and countries. Like you they are ahistorical and settle for potted little historical narratives which direct mindless western youth into their experience of the far away, remote, regions they are now 'exploring' - a total wank. Its just a past time your Honour.

BTW for your files Arjun and...:

James hasnt posted here since before the Olympics. He's gone. I posted as psychonationalist tongue in cheek at the time about two weeks ago re the idiocy of two trolls in particular, but as Roebuck I have never posted annything backing up the statements of James or said psychonationalist. The latter's statements were independent comments not backing anything I had posted as roebuck. See above.

Broken American Dreams

By Schuyler Ebbets
OpEdNews.Com

We hear so much today about patriotism and the greatness of America after the September 11 attack, but millions of Americans live desperate slave like existences and they hold little hope for a better life. One tragic and all to common example of this massive American tragedy are two friends I have; Ann and her ex husband Bill, now in there middle forties. They were once young and filled with hope and strength and they too believed in the American dream. After more than fourteen years of grinding work and struggle within the American system, they achieved little and nearly lost everything.

Ann and Bill both graduated from two-year collages and entered the skilled workforce in the early eighties in the city of Nashville, Tennessee. Bill earned $6.00 an hour as an engineering draftsman and Ann earned $5.00 an hour as a secretary. They had a combined yearly 'take-home' pay of about $15,000. Ann and Bill worked and saved for three years while living in an over priced run down two-room apartment. They were able to scrape together $3500 for a down payment on a tiny 800 square foot house near the metropolitan Nashville airport. They borrowed $57,000 at 13% interest and their house payment was $710 each month, amounting to over half their combined monthly take-home pay. If one of them was laid off or became sick they could loose their garage size house.
They had both played by the rules all of their lives, acquiring education in fields that America needed. Bill graduated at the top of his class in mechanical drafting with a 4.0 average. Ann completed two years at MTSU earning a secretarial degree, which included courses in accounting, bookkeeping, shorthand, and typing. Ann excelled at typing with a phenomenal 100 word a minute speed, and near perfect spelling.

Within three years of landing his first job and immediately after buying their home, Bill was laid off. It was the beginning of a trend, which continued with increasing frequency. Firms only hired him when they were overwhelmed with work, bringing him in to put out fires and then quickly letting him go after the crisis had past. Soon the pattern of lay off started with Ann also. The various corporations hired her to perform miracles for them, like typing a 500-page survey in three weeks, or organizing ten years of jumbled filing in three days. After pushing her at top speed for a few months, and getting their backlogged work caught up, they laid her off. The two of them bounced from job to job, hired only to work in the most dire and stressful of circumstances.

Eventually employers became reluctant to give Bill a chance after he passed the age of thirty-five, stating that his resume had "to many jobs on it". At one interview Bill was told that he "looked like a screw up who couldn't keep a job". Another perspective employer called one of Bill's references to find out why they had let him go after only six months. They were told that "Bill was laid off because he was a very efficient worker and we couldn't keep him busy." Even in light of this information Bill just wasn't what they were looking for. Ironically, as a result of his old fashioned work ethic and his belief in giving 100% to each employer, Bill ended up getting laid off sooner and perspective employers considered him a risk.

The metropolitan airport became an international hub and the air traffic over Ann and Bill’s neighborhood increased by 1000%. Every two minutes, for ten hours each day, plains roared directly over their roof. They couldn't have children in their little dream home, the noise level outside had reached dangerous decibel levels. They couldn't sell the home with the increased air traffic people weren't interested.

Ann lost count of how many times she had been laid off when she finally found work typing medical insurance reports for an insurance corporation. She was treated like a machine, and expected to type for eight hours each day. She was not permitted to perform different duties during the day, allowing her the opportunity to rest the tendons in her wrists and hands, and recover from the terrible pace. They worked her until her tendons were permanently damaged. In the eighties there wasn't yet a name for what had happened to Ann. Now it's called carpal tunnel syndrome.

It was becoming increasingly difficult for them to hold on to their little house. Between the layoffs and unexpected expenses Ann and Bill struggled valiantly, but the two of them had reached the end of their financial, physical, and psychological endurance. When the airport offered to help them sell their home, they readily accepted. Eventually a young couple who didn't want children and who had previously lived next to an interstate bought the house. Ann and Bill soon divorced, the stress and disappointment had literally torn their marriage apart.

After 14 years of hellish work by the two of them, they received a two thousand-dollar check at closing. They had paid $710 each month totaling $119,000, for a house worth $57,000, and yet they didn't own it, nor had they paid anything towards the principal. It had all been interest money paid to the banks. The cycle of exploitation would begin again with another young couple. They too would sign an outrageous mortgage agreeing to pay for thirty years, but the odds were, like Ann and Bill, they wouldn't make it past fifteen. The banking system would make another $120,000 on the same cracker box house under the runway, a house they had sold four times before and made more than $500,000 on, and yet somehow still owned.

Ann never fully recovered from her disability, unable to support herself, she moved in with her mother. Bill eventually went to live in a one-room apartment and later moved in with his father. His lifetime of learning and skill landed him a job making $7 an hour as a temporary worker for an employment agency.

Their careers, their dreams, their bodies, dedicated to a country that exploited them. They gave everything to the corporations that they worked for and the banks they borrowed from. It was their labor that helped the privileged few to make their fortunes during the eighties, but Ann and Bill did not share in those fortunes. They had instead been sacrificed, so that those fortunes could be made.

More was required of them than generations, which had come before, but to them the least was given. They were held to the highest standards that America has ever required of its people. Theirs was the generation that was educated to the highest level. They were told that anything less than perfect was not good enough.

Ann and Bill were victims of the 'conservative work ethic', which rewards and respects only those who own, and not those who work. They were victims of, 'the free market economy', being charged obscene interest rates by the banks and any corporate entity that wanted a piece of them. They were the little people who make up the majority of Americans, that which is pure and good and without sin in our culture. They are the ones doing most of the working and suffering and dying for this country, where is their American dream?

Schuyler Ebbets is retired and lives in Tennessee with his wife where he now spends his time writing.

Measuring racism with the absence of events such as apartheid is always going to be a challenging prospect. What I would say is more the case in China's instance is that the Han feel less of a need to be politically correct; void from the memory of slavery, or the legacy of a civil rights movement. From my observation, Han distain for foreigners - especially black people - is still a noticeable feature in Chinese society; as is the general antipathy towards the Uighur ethnic group, who, are generally associated with petty theft, and trouble-making etc. I found this recent commentary on attitudes towards race in Asia as applicable in the case of “Han Chauvinism”: “In Asia, it is acceptable to be racist, or at least unapologetic about being so. In Asia, race is in your face.” So, maybe it is not so much the case of the Han being any more racist than say Europeans, but more to do with an established social ambivalence towards racism that manifests itself into a real or perceived chauvinism; the sort Spec was alluding too?

Regarding AQ-inspired events as the real cause of the conflict in Xinjiang: Isn’t this looking at a symptom of a deeper social ill and then casting the rash as the cause for the cancer? All badly thought up metaphors aside – Chin, I just thought of you – I remain unconvinced that AQ has a deep influence within XJ. Beijing’s accusations that ETIM is linked to AQ are circumstantial and fragmentary at best. I could go on and list why I think ethnic disenchantment sometimes spills over into violence, Islam being but one cause of these events, but... I have a thesis to write and I am seriously procrastinating at a seriously wrong time.... hungry...

New America Media EDITOR'S NOTE: With the ghosts of Vietnam still haunting the United States, the nation is doomed to repeat its misadventures abroad, in Iraq and beyond, until a profound reckoning with its bellicose heart of darkness occurs.

For almost three decades after U.S. helicopters flew over a smoke-filled Saigon, Vietnam served as a vault of tragic metaphors for every American to use. In movies, in literature, someone who went to 'Nam was someone who came back a wreck, a traumatized soul who has seen or committed too many horrors to ever return to normal life. In politics, Vietnam was a hard-learned lesson that continued to influence U.S. foreign policies. It was an unhealed wound, the cause of post-traumatic stress, the stuff bad dreams were made of, hell in a small place.

Then came Iraq. Many comparisons have been made about the two wars. But what Iraq may have finally done is not so much remind us of Vietnam as ultimately usurp it from our national psyche.

Fighting the Vietnam War brought a multitude of symbols and icons to the American mind. A new set is now being acquired in the current war. One can almost imagine one era being replaced by another in the way that two kids might trade cards: "I'll take My Lai for your Haditha"; "I'll take 'Hearts and Minds' for 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'"; "Let's have Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh for Muqtada al-Sadr and Osama Bin Ladin"; "I'll take Tiger Cage for Abu Graib"; and "Let's have your Gulf of Tonkin for my WMD."

In another generation, when a future U.S. president sends troops to occupy some intransigent country on a dubious objective, American pundits will most likely ask this familiar question made new: "Will it be another Iraq?"

Yet, for a long time, Vietnam functioned as a benchmark for spectacular American failure, and despite subsequent successful U.S. overseas ventures, it remained a deep, searing wound. It took some time after the war's end before movies were made and books sold on the topic. There was a willful repression of America's only military defeat, followed by a flourish of Vietnam novels and movies. Together they constructed a mythic reality around the nation's experience in Vietnam that challenged our old notion of manifest destiny and examined our loss of innocence.

In the 1980s, conservatives began to claim that the Vietnam Syndrome -- which they saw as an undesirable pacifism on the part of the American public and the U.S. government -- has been "kicked." Most famous of them all was George Bush Sr., who declared in 1991 after victory in the Persian Gulf War that "the ghosts of Vietnam had been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert."

But Bush Sr. spoke too soon. The glory of winning did not translate into a second presidential term, and Vietnam continued to haunt our national psyche. When president Clinton withdrew troops from Somalia after 18 soldiers were killed in Mogadishu in 1993, diplomat Richard Holbrooke called it the new "Vietmalia syndrome." Later, Clinton was reluctant to deploy military force in Bosnia. Sen. John Kerry, a Vietnam vet, lost his bid for the presidential election in 2004 because of his ambiguous relationship with Vietnam: During the campaign he billed himself as a war hero despite his stint as an anti-war protestor after the war. Sen. John McCain, who was tortured in Hanoi as a POW during the war, caused an uproar when he used the term "gook" to describe his Vietnamese captives during his 2000 presidential campaign bid. Nor does it seem to help his presidential efforts this time around when the senator, who felt Vietnam could have been won had it not been hampered by politics, is supporting the military surge in Iraq while most Americans desire troop withdrawal.

What we are learning now with the enormous failure of Iraq -- the lies and deception from the White House, the images of Iraqis wailing beside their dead loved ones, the shattered homes, bloody sidewalks, tortured prisoners, body parts in market stalls, burnt-out cars, roadside bombs, downed helicopters and horribly maimed American soldiers -- is that tragedy cannot simply be overcome with some supposed military victory, but with another tragedy of equal if not greater proportion.

Indeed, the war in Iraq is showing us that the so-called Vietnam Syndrome cannot be "kicked," as it were, by winning but by losing, as it forces us to face our collective grief and guilt anew. For all the horrors committed in the name of democracy, and all the soul-searching Americans did after the Vietnam War -- remember that '70s mantra, "No More Vietnams!" many screamed from the top of their lungs? -- we failed to alter the bellicose nature of our nation.

Years ago, the poet Robert Bly argued that Americans have yet to experience ablution over past atrocities. "We're engaged in a vast forgetting mechanism and from the point of view of psychology, we're refusing to eat our grief, refusing to really to eat our dark side," Bly told Bill Moyers on national public television. "And therefore what Jung says is really terrifying -- if you do not absorb the things you have done in your life ... then you will have to repeat them."

In this sense, individual karma is not so different from that of a nation. For it's many a country's fate, too, to keep on repeating acts of barbarism until, hopefully, it comes to some profound reckoning with its own heart of darkness.

China has its own beauty, but a mindless man can not see and feel it.

are you the one,JIMBA.

if an ignorant did not study diligently about the past and present of China.
how can the ignorant define the future of China?

is that you JIMBA?

China is now back in her old glory with satisfaction and composed;
but the ignorant mean man now is full with depress, stress with jealousy .

are you the one,JIMBA?

Chin et al., if ignorance could be measured you'd be in the Guiness Book of Records.

@ Jimba,

brilliant post above. So in there. Great But...? Why do you pit your intelligence and insight against this useless twerp Chin? I know how enfuriating he is and how much he deserves strangualtion but...

Broken American Dreams really?

How informative.Who doesn't know that? Who effing cares? America is looking after itself and will eat the cake it has baked with or without the cream.

The broken dreams of the Uyghur would be a more pertinent issue on this blog.

Comparisons between America and China are anachronistic, socially and politically light years apart; and whats more, boring due to desperate overkill by certain fools who no longer are able to think analytically or honestly, have no grasp of political and cultural realities in the Uyghur Autonomous Region, post off topic trivia in the belief that somehow it exonerates China where it is guilty of gross mismanagement of its colonized peoples and propagating nascent ethnocide; and also, in the deranged belief that posting such polemic that they somehow pose a challege to the beliefs of certain contributors here, who frankly as I do noooooo longer read any such posts. Amen! On with the show.

Chin ALL I can think of to say to yu and ask of yu is simply this: if yu want any credibility or renown apart from being known as a total pest and a nuisance retard please tell us:

What is the UN definition of "Cultural Genocide"? What is the difference between cultural genocide and what some term Ethnocide? Difference please?

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44375

RIGHTS-US: Freedom Recedes for Uighurs at Guantanamo
By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Oct 21 (IPS) - Seventeen Chinese Muslims who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for seven years will now have to wait still longer to discover whether a U.S. appeals court will confirm or reverse a judge's earlier decision that they be immediately released into the United States.

Monday, a split federal appeals court refused to allow the immediate release into the U.S. of the 17, which means they will remain in prison for at least several more weeks.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with the George W. Bush administration's argument that the Muslims' release should be halted while the government prepares its full appeal. The court will hear oral arguments on Nov. 24.

"The latest decision regarding the continued illegal detention of the Uighur detainees is extremely disappointing," Larry Cox, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Tuesday.

"The Bush administration claims that only it can decide the Uighurs' fate, but has created a situation that makes any fair resolution impossible," he said. "The Bush legacy will forever be inextricably linked with willful violation of the human rights of people who, in this case even the government agrees, pose no danger."

Meanwhile, lawyers for the detainees were said to be considering other options. It has been reported that an appeal directly to the Supreme Court might be a possibility, since that court ruled last June that foreign detainees at Guantanamo have the right to appeal to federal judges to challenge their imprisonment.

Two appointees of the first President Bush voted to halt the detainees' immediate release. They are Judges Karen Henderson and A. Raymond Randolph.

But in an outspoken dissent, Judge Judith W. Rogers argued that the detainees should be freed. She noted that the Bush administration had acknowledged the Uighurs were no longer considered enemy combatants even as it continued to argue the detainees were a national security risk based on little more than the fact they had admitted to receiving weapons training in Afghanistan.

"The fact that petitioners received firearms training cannot alone show they are dangerous, unless millions of United States resident citizens who have received firearms training are to be deemed dangerous as well," Rogers wrote. "And, in any event, the district court found there is no evidence petitioners harbour hostility toward the United States."

She added that the government's appeal was problematic "given both the length of time that petitioners have been denied their liberty" and the years the government has already had up to now -- with little success -- to justify the Uighurs' continued imprisonment.

The appeals court's move came after U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina on Oct. 10 ruled that the government should free the detainees immediately and ordered them brought physically to his court. Urbina said it would be wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the Uighurs since they are no longer considered enemy combatants.

The detainees were days away from being released when the government requested and received a stay of Judge Urbina's ruling to allow time for an appeal.

Lawyers for the Uighurs had carefully set up arrangements for the Uighurs' to be placed in the custody of religious organisations and individuals in the U.S.

Among the central issues in the case is whether a federal judge has the authority to order the release of Guantanamo prisoners who were unlawfully detained by the U.S. and cannot be sent back to their homeland. The Uighurs, who are Turkic-speaking Muslims in western China, have been cleared for release from Guantanamo but fear they will be tortured if they are turned over to China.

Also at issue is the potential use of immigration law by the government to prevent the Uighurs from entering the U.S. It is possible they could be freed into the U.S. by a federal court, but then immediately re-arrested, detained and ultimately deported because they had not been legally admitted into the U.S.

Judge Urbina's ruling may yet become one of the historic decisions in U.S. jurisprudence. He wrote, "Because separation of powers concerns do not trump the very principle upon which this nation was founded -- the unalienable right to liberty -- the court orders the government to release the petitioners into the U.S."

The Bush administration has said it was continuing "heightened" efforts to find another country to accept the Uighurs.

Albania accepted five Uighur detainees in 2006 but since has balked at taking others. Other nations are said to have followed the same tack, reportedly out of fear of diplomatic repercussions from China. Foreign policy experts have also noted that the U.S. appears to have greatly diminished leverage in the world community to persuade other countries to accept the Uighurs.

Uighurs are from Xinjiang -- an isolated region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations. They say they have been repressed by the Chinese government. China long has said that insurgents are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang. The Uighur detainees were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001.

The possibility that Judge Urbina's decision will prevail cannot be ruled out. From time to time, a decision of a lower court judge is reversed by an appeals court -- but ultimately affirmed by the Supreme Court.

David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and one of the Uighurs' attorneys, told IPS that this is precisely what happened in another landmark Guantanamo case, Hamdan v. Bush.

"Surprisingly," Cole said, "Hamdan prevailed in the district court, when U.S. District Judge James Robertson courageously ruled that trying Hamdan in a military tribunal of the kind set up by the government would violate the Geneva Conventions."

But Cole added that, "Not surprisingly, that decision was unanimously reversed, on every conceivable ground, by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in an opinion joined fully by then Judge, now Chief Justice, John Roberts."

He noted that after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Hamdan case, Congress passed a law that appeared to be designed to strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction to do so. The law "required defendants in military tribunals to undergo their trials before seeking judicial review, and prescribed the D.C. Circuit as the exclusive forum for such review," Cole said.

But in June 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutionally limited detainee's access to judicial review and that detainees have the right to challenge their detention in conventional civilian courts.

Salim Hamdan, the Yemeni-born driver for Osama bin Laden who was captured in Afghanistan, was charged at Guantanamo, tried last August before the first Military Tribunal, convicted of aiding terrorism but acquitted on a charge of conspiring to commit terrorist attacks including those on Sept. 11. Given credit for years already served, Hamdan could be eligible for release before the end of 2008.

"Uighurs are from Xinjiang -- an isolated region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations."

Ignorant, Xinjiang has never been an isolated region, not before, not now and probably not in future.

"What is the UN definition of 'Cultural Genocide'? What is the difference between cultural genocide and what some term Ethnocide? Difference please?"

Doesn't really matter. "Cultural genocide" has been going on for ever, voluntarily or not. Whatever the UN defination is will not really change the reality. Genocides or cultural genocides already happened a few times in Xinjiang if you know the true history there. Don't just keep talking Uyghurs and Hans. How are about quite a few other ethnic groups there? What do they want?

Why not just release those 17 uyghurs to where they were picked up if they were wrongly picked up?

American Dream was BROKEN into pieces.
China Dream was coming into Reality with PROSPERITY.
The ignorant mean man should learn it.
Singing out of tune song can not achieve anything.

Roebuck. you are so ignorant that its better for you to go back to kindergarden class.

@ joyce

thats an ineresting view.

I think genocides have happened acrsoss Central Asia throughout history as well. The definition of cultural genocide is important here as it doesn't neccessarily mean total destruction of a group. The issue at stake here though is not obviated by looking at the past. The real issue at hand IS between the UYGHUR ( and other smaller groups ) and the HAN - thats the present situation as we speak. So stating the past as precedent and justification on one hand pitches the present reality as normative while on the other could be used to affirm China's actions in the present, which, if a real definition could be provided, seems to be one along the lines of a concerted act of Cultural genocide if we follow the UNs definition. Ive done a little googling looking into this matter this morning, this site may be helpful toward a definition as it quotes the UN's ( http://www.cceia.org/resources/publications/dialogue/2_12/section_1/5139.html)

Your idea to drop the 17 back into Afghanistan is interesting and perhaps realist, but would leave them where they left of several years ago, alone, vulnerable and without a safe home in a region hostile to them no matter which direction they turn. There has to be a better solution.

@joyce

Sorry, the above link is not as clear in its definition as I had thought. If interested here is the UN's original:

Article 7 of the "United Nations draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples" defines "Cultural genocide":

Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for:

(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures;
(e) Any form of propaganda directed against them.

There are also other more academic definitions available. I think definitions of genocide are important as genocide is too often associated with 'holocaust' which in itself is an extreme form of genocide. The latter, by definition commences as an act long before it reaches extermination level."Genocide" perse is a complex of forces and actions aimed at a particular ethnic group or race. One strand in the twisted cord of this grim and dismal reality is that of cultural genocide.

SPEC,
JOYCE IDEA WAS RIGHT.

Why not just release those 17 uyghurs to where they were picked up if they were wrongly picked up?

SPEC. very good. under UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7. you finally learn something about A.B.C.D.E. so, the RED INDIAN was the true LANDOWNER of AMERICA call U.S.A. they should live anywhere in their own LAND. instead at the designated area you call RESERVATION.

@ arjun

2 RMB per person is my metaphoric deduction, an estimate based on empirical observation in XJ over many years of being witness to gov. propaganda hand-outs ( carrots). My problem is Arjun, I speak to people and hear what they say.

If the empirical based assumption is rejected, you by the way have no hard evidence of the breakdown of any gov. handout (carrot) programme in the past. Then, my estimate based on previous observation stands with far more credibility than your startling lacuna in terms of information in this respect. It may even be lower - it may be 1 yuan each- which the population is expected to ululate with gratitude over to the largesse of the gov. . As you say we dont yet know how big the carrot is, but my dubiousness is not ill - founded. Please enlighten us with any figures you may have if you wish to disprove and ridicule my metaphoric figure, which = sweet fuck all for the peasants in reality!

I will not address your absurdities and serpentine reasoning on the issue of race to ant depth. I can give you a thousand positive stories about good hearted, kind and helpful Han Chinese I have met over the years. There is a big difference between the average Han and Han controlled state policy and the more negative aspects of residual "Da Han Ju yi". Know what means of course you are fluent in Mandarin?

So on this mater, do you not dtect a strong racism in the posting of the more strident Han idiot trolls? When it comes to your accusations concerning the race issue aimed at me, like the idiot trolls we know so well here do I have to include you among them and have to tell you to shut the @#$% up?

@ chin
you belong in a reservation called a lunatic asylum, go away! Stop senselessly arguing the inarguable. Stop justifying genocide. Get a brain. Finis.

Spec. this is freedom of speech. i think your brain was boiling. ok. time to work now and earn some money.

Spec. by the way. thank you so much that you write and mention about the UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7 of A.B.C.D.E. i hope you will fight for the RED INDIAN RIGHTS to CLAIM back their BEAUTIFUL HOMELAND. so the RED INDIAN can LIVE anywhere in their own HOMELAND at WILL and NOT at the designated area you call RESERVATION. you will become their HERO. GOD KNOWS, right? Mr.SPECK. as for our HOMELAND CHINA. no need for you to CONCERN, CRITICISE or WORRY about. you Spec are only TROUBLE MAKERS. CHINESE ETHNIC GROUP WILL NEVER BE YOUR FRIENDS.
LIAR!!!!!!

chin darling

this blog is not about America,if you want any credibility at all try stop using tired and outdated CCP propaganda arguments about the American past of 100 years ago to justify present cultural Genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet.

Your intent and immature reasoning is evident t all. ahem, oh so boring and predictable; and oh yes and educational ( for the hundredth time ad nauseum)!

sweet SPEC. its you who have posted the...
UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7 A.B.C.D.E.
thank you very much. sweet SPEC. you have COOK your word and you must EAT your word.

but now you write....
"this blog is not about America,if you want any credibility at all try stop using tired and outdated CCP propaganda arguments about the American past of 100 years ago to justify present cultural Genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet".

oh my sweet SPEC. i must teach you another lesson. you should clean up your own home first and tell the WHOLE WORLD that RED INDIAN have the RIGHTS of FREEDOM, INDEPENDENCE, SELF DETERMINATION and SELF GOVERNMENT in U.S.A. why not say U.S.A belong to the RED INDIAN right now. and sing U.S.A. belong to the RED INDIAN.

now another lesson for you. you should study again about the PAST, PRESENT AND maybe FUTURE of the RED INDIAN HISTORY.

and be careful again in cooking your own word from your mouth that come from your unstable BRAIN. because.......

@ chin

on topic see

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=96bsSGoAzWM

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhGxE3NMWO0&feature=related

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=82KVSIIybN8

speaking of brains. i am not an American. there are other countries in the world apart from America and zHONg GUo.

Enjoy the videos in real time, start with number three. Yes, thats the one that comes after the number '2'.

SPEC.
there is nothing more or less to see.
thank you as long as you learn more lesson about you posted of the...
UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7 of A.B.C.D.E.
learn more on how to use CHOPSTICK and eat what you cook.
learn more and see more for yourself.

so, for what you posted about the U.N. ARTICLE 7 of A.B.C.D.E. you must sing a beautiful song for the RED INDIAN.

well, as people say......
ITS HARD TO TEACH AN OLD DOG TO PLAY NEW TRICK.

AND ITS YOU, MR.SPEC.

@ chin

fine. Thanks for the intelligent comments.

Hope you liked the videos about the present cultural genocide within ChInA ( but I spose you may not know what that word means, more than likely).

BTW, speaking of eating what you cook, and pets, how's Maria these days? Eating with chopsticks?

chin, i forgot, and have maybe misunderstood your sympathies for the endangered peoples of the world. Im sure your sympathies are for all persecuted peoples facing genocide, not just the American indians. They must be because you are fair minded and just and not partisan in your views.

So Im sure you will really be moved by this footage form the land od snows. So lets get together and condemn this genocide described below:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=9HUT9wflAmY&feature=related

Mr. SPECK.

remember what you have posted the...
UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7 of A.B.C.D.E.

are you shying away from what you are cooking and afraid to eat what you cook by saying you are not american?

are you a man or just a nobody?
show to all the writer here that you are a MAN.
show to all the writer here that you sincerely accepted what you posted about the...

UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7 of A.B.C.D.E.

sing a beautiful song now for the dedication to all the RED INDIAN.

if you are a MAN? THEN SING for the RED INDIAN> FREEDOM,INDEPENDENCE,SELF DETERMINATION and SELF GOVERNMENT. and tell the whole world that the land of U.S.A. belong to the RED INDIAN.

if you are an OLD DOG. GOD WILL FORGIVE YOU and ALL the CHINESE ETHNIC GROUP will forgive you as a MAD MAN without SENSES.

oh good im forgiven. whew i was worried by your stinging criticisms. now have you watched the videos and are we going to get together and deal with the cultural genocide in Tibet and dare i say it...eastern Turkestan.

Theres plenty of people in the states helping the indians chin, we need you to help those suffering genocide in China by the abcde of Article 7 you are so passionate about.

oh yes I agree with you, those American bastards, look what they did. I agree. but we, the people of the world who care , need you to help us with your passion, wisdom and intelligence. Please help us chin, with you on our side, success will come and the people of Tibet and Turkestan can be free of the genocidal actions that the American Indians have suffered under for so long. I know you are an important man, because you speak for all Chinese. 'We'. You have the power to make the chinese people forgive me. You are one important dude in the area of championing human rights for those suffering under genocidal conditions, yes, like the American indians.

So, lets do it brother. Perhaps we can start by viewing this video and hearing your long awaited for intelligent remarks concerning its contents.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=xdXgwOu6kjo&feature=related

Mr.SPECK

do not forget about the...
UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7 of A.B.C.D.E. you had posted.

all of us here are waiting for you to sing the most beautiful song, to dedicate that song for the... RED INDIAN.

FREEDOM for RED INDIAN.
INDEPENDENCE for RED INDIAN.
SELF DETERMINATION for RED INDIAN.
SELF GOVERNMENT for RED INDIAN.

U.S.A. is the MOTHERLAND of RED INDIAN.

comon now and sing if you are a MAN.
if you are a MAD DOG. then BARK.
comon now, many young lady are expecting you to be a MAN.

Mr SPECK

all the young lady say you are a 懦夫。afraid to sing that song.

chin perhaps i did not make it simple enough for you, and BTW, is this getting personal?

In my witching hour post last night I totally acknowledged that America contravened the a-e of Article 7. Now, xuesheng, go back over it, and read it carefully and slowly out loud and you will see and hear with your own ears, that i did acknowledge it. Go do that now...quick...be smart...and hurry and Ill get back to you...

anyway whats important here chin is that yes America did do those things. Right, i acknowledge that. And they deserve criticism for that. Right? are you following? This is not too complicated for you is it?

Yes, America should be criticized. But, and, very importantly, because America did these things and deserves criticism for them, does not mean China can now do them in the international sphere now as we speak and not be criticized. All powers that convene the act should be criticized both cHINA AND AMERICA. Can you follow that? It also does not mean that China can escape criticism for convening Article 7 even though America ( say roughly 1000 years ago) before the Article was writen did those genocidal things. It still needs criticism and if you went to America you would find there is a lot of criticism still in that country about the genocidal actions against American Indians. Criticism of America's actions towards its indigenous people i am fully supportive of.

Now back to our topic, these issues do not mean that China should not be criticized TODAY for current breaches of Article 7. You must help us, the Tibetans and Uyghurs who are suffering under China's abuse need your help. Lets join together and criticize America, Australia and China, yes China, chin, for their current abuse of Article 7. You must feel this way because you are so upset about America's abuse of Article 7.

I hope this is clear. If not read back slowly again and out loud so your ears hear it- because I will not respond again to your demands. This is clear here for all to read and see.

A final friendly note. Try and be more constructive and analytical rather than just straight aggressive and creating polemic. I know thats a big word but look it up in your cidian. Be more analytical and you may pass your exam in the class of being an intelligent and articulate human being rather than a loopy reactionary who nobody really pays attention to. You must realize that is what happens and that is how people perceive you. But I know there is more to you. So i will look forward to friendly, intelligent DISCUSSION from you my dear xue sheng.

error

above should read:

"It also does not mean that China can escape criticism for convening Article 7 even though America ( say roughly 100 years ago) before the Article was writen did those genocidal things."

Mr SPECK.

its you who was the one that posted the...
UNITED NATION ARTICLE 7 of A.B.C.D.E.

you must sing this beautiful song and dedicate this song for the RED INDIAN.

"FREEDOM for RED INDIAN.
INDEPENDENCE for RED INDIAN.
SELF DETERMINATION for RED INDIAN.
SELF GOVERNMENT for RED INDIAN.

U.S.A. is the MOTHERLAND of RED INDIAN"

Mr.SPECK.
many writer in this site even my friend have read and hear your UGLY song against our country CHINA compose by you Mr.SPECK.

Mr SPECK. now all the writer and all my friend was waiting for you to sing,

SING THIS BEAUTIFUL SONG FOR THE RED INDIAN. they the RED INDIAN in U.S.A. will surely give you a MILLIONS THANKS, and you will be their HERO in the future history of RED INDIAN.

are you a 懦夫. Mr Speck>

anti-Americanism and Chinese nationalism, an interview with Professor Minqi li - former political prisoner and China specialist

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=QFkkjAG1m9A&feature=related

Insane Chinese nationalism throughout the world 2008

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=tcEksc8S9b8&feature=related

Chinese Fascist threat to Muslim Uighur.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=UzmmB0qRkMY&feature=related