China’s police state goes global, leaving refugees in fear

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This recent undated screen grab taken from video from AFPTV on July 22, 2019 shows 33-year-old ethnic Uighur cameraman Shawudun Abdughupur during an interview with AFP in Auckland. (AFP / AFPTV / Diego Opatowski)
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This photo taken on July 6, 2019 shows 32-year-old Melbourne-based Uighur refugee Shir Muhammad Hasan displaying messages on his phone at his Melbourne home. (AFP / William West)
Updated 23 July 2019
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China’s police state goes global, leaving refugees in fear

  • An estimated one million ethnic Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang province have been swept into “vocational education centers”

SYDNEY: Muslims who escaped China’s crackdown in Xinjiang still live in fear, saying new homes abroad and even Western passports afford them no protection against a state-driven global campaign of intimidation.
With menacing text and voice messages, and explicit threats to relatives still living in Xinjiang, China’s powerful state security apparatus has extended its reach to Uighurs living in liberal democracies as far away as New Zealand and the United States, in a bid to silence activists and recruit informants.
The Communist Party’s dragnet in Xinjiang has swept an estimated one million ethnic Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities into “vocational education centers” that numerous studies and reports have exposed as harsh internment camps.
For those who managed to get out and settle overseas, the search for a true safe haven has remained elusive as they complain they and their families have been remotely harried and harassed to the point of desperation.
Guly Mahsut, who fled to Canada, says she became suicidal and was hospitalized after being bombarded with messages from Xinjiang police threatening her family in the troubled province.
“You should have been more cooperative. Don’t become the source of misfortune for your relatives and family in Toksun. You should be more considerate of your family,” read one message, allegedly from an official named “Kaysar.”
The 37-year-old believes she was targeted because she spoke out against authorities online, and has helped stateless Uighurs seek help abroad.
She received messages from relatives — including her younger sister — pleading with her to “cooperate” with authorities.
Mahsut is one of more than a dozen Uighur exiles AFP interviewed across four continents that gave access to scores of text and voice messages — purportedly from Chinese security operatives — demanding their silence or cooperation.
Together they point to a systemic effort to infiltrate diaspora communities, recruit informants, sow mistrust and stifle criticism of the regime.

Followed by sinister messages
Shir Muhammad Hasan managed to get to Australia in 2017. Having secured refugee status, he thought he was safe.
Little more than a year later, the sinister messages began to arrive.
“I suppose your family already told you that I have been searching for you?” read the first.
More texts followed, in turn demanding the 32-year-old turn over dossiers about his life, and then came persistent requests to arrange a time to “get to know each other better.”
“I told you to send me a brief introduction of yourself, but you didn’t,” the sender said in a local Uighur dialect, punctuated with a smattering of Mandarin Chinese, adding: “We should sit down and have a chat.”
The barrage lasted six months and then abruptly stopped, leaving Hasan in turmoil — unsure if and when the torment will begin again.
AFP has no way of independently verifying who sent these or similar messages. They were sent using encrypted WhatsApp accounts and linked to inactive Hong Kong cell numbers or in some cases “ID spoofed” numbers that mask the source.
The Chinese foreign ministry and the Xinjiang government did not respond to request for comment.
But many Uighurs abroad offer strikingly similar testimony: Their families in Xinjiang are approached, they then begin to send unusual questions or demands, before ultimately direct contact is made from suspected security officials via secure messaging services.
One Uighur man now living with his wife in the US said his family in Xinjiang were asked to “provide information about my school, status, how I was able to go overseas.”
“When I asked them ‘why do you need this information?’ they told me that they need to fill some kind of form,” he explained.
Other families in Xinjiang were asked for phone numbers of overseas relatives that allowed the assault of texts and phone messages to begin.

Sowing mistrust and friction
The harassment has had a devastating impact for many as they are shackled by fears for the fate of loved ones left behind if they do not comply.
Arslan Hidayat lives in Istanbul, which had opened its doors to fellow Turkic-speaking Muslims. He was not targeted directly, but nationalist trolls have bombarded his Facebook blog.
Australian-born, he wants to speak out, but older family members — including his mother-in-law, whose husband is in detention — believe silence will limit the authorities’ wrath.
China’s bid to create a network of informants has also sown mistrust and friction within Uighur communities abroad.
For much of the last decade, Uighur students who received a scholarship to study overseas were asked for a raft of sensitive information, and some believe they were effectively asked to become spies.
“When applying for the scholarship, the applicant has to fill in very detailed information about their family back in China, but also need to provide extensive information about their studies, life, and activities in the corresponding country,” said one PhD student now living in Australia.
“One condition of the scholarship is that the recipient has to keep close contact with the Chinese Embassy and a contact person from the Xinjiang Education Bureau.”
The student added: “It could be used to collect information about the applicants and their close friends in foreign soil, or even worse it’s the salary of spies disguised as scholarship.”

Methodical intimidation
According to James Leibold, an expert on ethnic relations in China and a professor at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, the intimidation is systematic and methodical.
“The reach of the Chinese party-state now is far more extensive, and it has, in some regards, violated the sovereignty of countries across the globe, by interfering in the affairs of citizens of different countries,” he warned.
Leibold added Uighurs with overseas connections are seen as a potential security risk: “The best way to deal with that was to send them back to Xinjiang where they could be monitored or ‘re-educated’.”
As for those who have moved overseas permanently, he said Beijing wants them “to stay quiet about this issue, not lobby politicians, not to speak with the media, not to cause trouble for the Chinese Embassy and consulates.”
Similar actions overseas have been reported against Tibetans, political dissidents, Taiwanese activists, adherents of the spiritual group Falun Gong as well as Chinese students overseas.
The assault has led some Uighurs — even those with foreign nationality or permanent residency abroad — to believe nowhere is safe from China’s police state.
In the past five years, Thailand and Egypt have rounded up Uighurs and sent them back to China. But even in open democracies such as New Zealand and Finland, the picture is bleak.
Shawudun Abdughupur fled to Auckland after witnessing inter-ethnic riots in July 2009 that left hundreds dead.
Despite now being a New Zealand citizen, he remains reluctant to speak publicly, fearing for himself and for his 78-year-old mother, who he believes is in a camp.
“I can’t say too much,” he told AFP, fighting back the tears in his first on-camera interview.
The 43-year-old added: “I don’t know if the New Zealand government can protect me. How can they protect me?“
After he refused to give details of his meetings with other Uighurs, he received this chilling message: “We can find you. We are in New Zealand.”

Call for democracies to ‘close ranks’
When Abdughupur reported the incident to the New Zealand police they treated it like any other nuisance call, referring him to the non-profit online safety organization Netsafe, who then referred him back to law enforcement.
New Zealand police, like several of their counterparts worldwide, said they could not discuss the cases for privacy reasons.
Halmurat Uyghur, a 35-year-old who lives north of Helsinki, said he reported threatening messages to the Finnish police on several occasions but nothing changed.
“I don’t feel safe, who knows what will happen next,” he said.
One former senior US national security official confirmed the issue of China pursuing so-called “fugitives” abroad had been raised with Beijing “through law enforcement channels and also at the top level.”
Current US officials acknowledged reports of Uighur intimidation in America but declined requests to comment on the record.
Ben Rhodes, who spent eight years as a senior national security aide during Barack Obama’s presidency said democracies could mitigate some of China’s actions but allies would need to “close ranks.”
Beijing was “usually intransigent about things that they felt dealt with internal matters,” he said.
He added: “The way to really deal with it would be for the United States to rally other countries to collectively stand up to the Chinese on this.”
 


Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

Updated 6 sec ago
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Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

  • Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed

WASHINGTON: A judge on Monday granted a request by prosecutors to dismiss the election subversion case against Donald Trump because of a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to the request by Special Counsel Jack Smith to dismiss the case against the president-elect “without prejudice,” meaning it could potentially be revived after Trump leaves the White House four years from now.
“Dismissal without prejudice is appropriate here,” Chutkan said, adding in the ruling that “the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office.”
Trump, 78, was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but the cases never came to trial.
Smith also moved on Monday to drop his appeal of the dismissal of the documents case filed against the former president in Florida. That case was tossed out earlier this year by a Trump-appointed judge on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
The special counsel paused the election interference case and the documents case this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed.
“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed,” Smith said in the filing with Chutkan. “But the circumstances have.”
“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith said.
“As a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
In a separate filing, Smith said he was withdrawing his appeal of the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump but pursuing the case against his two co-defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said the cases were “empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”
“Over $100 Million Dollars of Taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before.”
Trump was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — the session of Congress called to certify Biden’s win, which was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a mob of the then-president’s supporters.
Trump was also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
However, Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.

 


No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

Updated 10 min 23 sec ago
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No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

  • Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs

BERLIN: Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel gives a spirited defense of her 16 years at the helm of Europe’s top economy in her memoir “Freedom,” released in 30 languages on Tuesday.
Since she stepped down in 2021, Merkel has been accused of having been too soft on Russia, leaving Germany dangerously reliant on cheap Russian gas and sparking turmoil and the rise of the far right with her open-door migrant policy.
Her autobiography is released as wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump is headed back to the White House and Germany faces snap elections after its ruling coalition collapsed this month.
Merkel, 70, remembered for her calm and unflappable leadership style, rejects blame for any of the current turmoil, in the 736-page autobiography co-written with longtime adviser Beate Baumann.
After years out of the public eye, she has given multiple media interviews, reflecting on her childhood under East German communism and tense encounters with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, who she felt “was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial tendencies.”
In the full memoir, she gives further insights into her thoughts and actions — including during the 2015 mass refugee influx, which came to define the final years of her leadership.

Critics have charged that Merkel’s refusal to push back large numbers of asylum-seekers at the Austrian border led to more than one million arrivals and fueled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Merkel, who at the time posed for a selfie with one Syrian refugee, says she “still does not understand ... how anyone could have assumed that a friendly face in a photo would be enough to encourage entire legions to flee their homeland.”
While affirming that “Europe must always protect its external borders,” she stresses that “prosperity and the rule of law will always make Germany and Europe ... places where people want to go.”
In addition, she writes in the French edition of the book, fast-aging Germany’s “lack of manpower makes legal migration essential.”
Her bold declaration at the time — “wir schaffen das” in German or “we can do this” — was a “banal” statement with the message that “where there are obstacles, we must work to overcome them,” she argues.
And on the AfD, she cautions Germany’s mainstream parties against adopting their rhetoric “without proposing concrete solutions to existing problems,” warning that with such an approach mainstream movements “will fail.”

Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs.
She describes the Russian leader as “a man perpetually on the lookout, afraid of being mistreated and always ready to strike, including by playing at exercising his power with a dog and making others wait.”
Nevertheless, she says that “despite all the difficulties” she was right “not to let contacts with Russia be broken off ... and to also preserve ties through trade relations.”
The reality is, she argues, that “Russia is, with the United States, one of the two main nuclear powers in the world.”
She also defends her opposition to Ukraine joining NATO at a 2008 Bucharest summit, considering it illusory to think that candidate status would have protected it from Putin’s aggression.
After the summit, she remembers flying home with the feeling that “we in NATO had no common strategy for dealing with Russia.”

Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, cut Germany off from cheap Russian gas, with the taps’ closure a key driver of its ongoing economic malaise.
But Merkel rejects criticism for having allowed the Baltic Sea pipelines in the first place, pointing out that Nord Stream 1 was signed off on by her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, long a friend of Putin.
On Nord Stream 2, which she approved after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, she argues that at the time it would have been “difficult to get companies and gas users in Germany and in many EU member states to accept” having to import more expensive liquefied natural gas from other sources.
Merkel says the gas was needed as a transitional energy source as Germany was pursuing both a switch to renewable energy and the phase-out of nuclear power following Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster.
On nuclear power itself, she argues that “we do not need it to meet our climate goals” and that the German phase-out can “inspire courage in other countries” to follow suit.

 


Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

Updated 26 November 2024
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Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

  • Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar

KABUL: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu visited Afghan government officials on Monday, assuring them Moscow will soon remove the Taliban from its list of banned organizations, Kabul said.
Since the Taliban surged back to power in 2021 visits by foreign officials have been infrequent because no nation has yet formally recognized the government of the former insurgent group.
Taliban government curbs on women have made them pariahs in many Western nations but Kabul is making increasing diplomatic overtures to its regional neighbors, emphasising economic and security cooperation.
Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar.
He “expressed Russia’s interest in increasing the level of bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan,” Baradar’s office said in a statement released on social media site X.
“He also announced that, to expand political and economic relations between the two countries, the Islamic Emirate’s name would soon be removed from Russia’s blacklist.”
The Islamic Emirate is the name the Taliban government uses to refer to itself.
Russian news agencies quoted Shoigu as saying he wanted “constructive” ties with Kabul, without saying if he had floated Moscow removing the Taliban from its list of banned groups.
“I confirm the readiness to build a constructive political dialogue between our countries, including in order to give momentum to the process of the internal Afghan settlement,” Shoigu said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
He also said Russian companies plan to take part in projects in Afghanistan on extracting natural resources.
Analysts say Moscow may be eying cooperation with Kabul to counter the threat from Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) — the Afghan-based branch of the Sunni militant group.
In March, more than 140 people were killed when IS-K gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall.
Taliban authorities have repeatedly said security is their top domestic priority and have pledged militants staging foreign attacks will be ousted from Afghanistan.
“The Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July.
“They are working to eradicate terrorist cells.”


Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

Updated 26 November 2024
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Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

  • President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it

WASHINGTON: A Republican senator has blocked the promotion of US Army Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who commanded the military’s 82nd Airborne Division during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and was the last American soldier to leave the country in 2021.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hold had been placed by Senator Markwayne Mullin, who did not respond to a request for comment on why he blocked the promotion.
The Pentagon on Monday said it was aware of the hold on Donahue, who had been nominated for a fourth star by President Joe Biden to lead the US Army in Europe and Africa.
“We are aware that there is a hold on Lt. Gen. Donahue,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it. In August, Trump said he would ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
“You have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody,” Trump has said.
Reuters has reported that Trump’s transition team is drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.
While the image of Donahue, carrying his rifle down by his side as he boarded the final C-17 transport flight out of Afghanistan on in August 2021, has become synonymous with the chaotic withdrawal, he is seen in the military as one of the most talented Army leaders.
“The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes. At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades, he is now a political pawn,” Tony Thomas, the former head of US Special Operations Command, posted on X.
Under Senate rules, one lawmaker can hold up nominations even if the other 99 all want them to move quickly.


US prosecutors seek to drop federal criminal cases against Trump

Updated 26 November 2024
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US prosecutors seek to drop federal criminal cases against Trump

  • Policy against prosecuting sitting presidents cited
  • Courts must approve the two dismissal requests

WASHINGTON: US prosecutors moved on Monday to drop the two federal criminal cases against Donald Trump involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his handling of classified documents, citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
The steps by prosecutors working with Special Counsel Jack Smith in the two cases represent a big legal victory for the Republican president-elect, who won the Nov. 5 US election and is set to return to office on Jan. 20.
The Justice Department policy that the prosecutors cited dates back to the 1970s. It holds that a criminal prosecution of a sitting president would violate the US Constitution by undermining the ability of the country’s chief executive to function. Courts will still have to approve both requests from prosecutors.
The prosecutors in a filing in the election subversion case said the department’s policy requires the case to be dismissed before Trump returns to the White House.
“This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Smith’s office similarly moved to end its attempt to revive the case accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents when he left office in 2021 after his first term as president. But the prosecutors signaled they will still ask a federal appeals court to bring back the case against two Trump associates who had been accused of obstructing that investigation.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung hailed what he called “a major victory for the rule of law.”
Trump had faced criminal charges in four cases — the two brought by Smith and two in state courts in New York and Georgia. He was convicted in the New York case while the Georgia case is in limbo.
In a post on social media, Trump railed on Monday against the legal cases as a “low point in the History of our Country.” The moves by Smith, who was appointed in 2022 by US Attorney General Merrick Garland, represents a remarkable shift from the special prosecutor who obtained indictments against Trump in two separate cases accusing him of crimes that threatened US election integrity and national security. Prosecutors acknowledged that the election of a president who faced ongoing criminal cases created an unprecedented predicament for the Justice Department.
It shows how Trump’s election victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris was not just a political triumph, but also a legal one. Trump pleaded not guilty in August 2023 to four federal charges accusing him of conspiring to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump, who as president will again oversee the Justice Department, was expected to order an end to the federal 2020 election case and to Smith’s appeal in the documents case.
Florida-based Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the federal bench, had dismissed the classified documents case in July, ruling that Smith was improperly appointed to his role as special counsel.
Smith’s office had been appealing that ruling and indicated on Monday that the appeal would continue as it relates to Trump personal aide Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a manager at his Mar-a-Lago resort, who had been previously charged alongside Trump in the case. Both Nauta and De Oliveria have pleaded not guilty, as did Trump.
In the 2020 election case, Trump’s lawyers had previously said they would seek to dismiss the charges based on a US Supreme Court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution over official actions taken while in the White House. Smith attempted to salvage the case following that ruling, dropping some allegations but arguing that the rest were not covered by presidential immunity and could proceed to trial.
Judge Tanya Chutkan had been due to decide whether the immunity decision required other portions of the case to be thrown out. A trial date originally set for March 2024 had not been rescheduled.
The case was brought following an investigation led by Smith into Trump’s attempts to retain power following his 2020 election defeat, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters following his inflammatory speech near the White House.
Trump denied wrongdoing and argued that the US legal system had been turned against him to damage his presidential campaign. He vowed during the campaign that he would fire Smith if he returned to the presidency.
Trump in May became the first former president to be convicted of a crime when a jury in New York found him guilty of felony charges relating to hush money paid to a porn star before the 2016 election. His sentencing in that case has been indefinitely postponed.
The criminal case against Trump in Georgia state court involving the 2020 election is stalled.