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	Desmond Tutu condemns Government denying Dalai Lama visa to attend Nobel summit by Agence France-Presse, agencies South Africa   2 Oct 2014   South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu has lashed out at his government for "kowtowing" to China by barring the Dalai Lama from attending a global summit of fellow prize winners in Cape Town.   Breaking his silence as the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates appeared to be on the point of collapse, Mr Tutu said he was "ashamed to call this bunch my government".   South Africa denied Tibet"s exiled spiritual leader permission to attend the summit to avoid angering China, which regards the Buddhist monk as a campaigner for Tibetan independence.   The summit, to be held in mid-October, was meant to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid and the legacy of the late president and Nobel peace prize winner, Nelson Mandela.   Mr Tutu said the move sullies the memory of Mr Mandela, who would not bend to the will of powerful states in his time as president.   "When the Americans told Mandela he couldn"t continue his friendship with president Fidel Castro, he told them to go and jump in the lake," Mr Tutu said.   Mr Mandela"s heirs in the ruling African National Congress party under president Jacob Zuma had now "spat in Mandela"s face", Mr Tutu said in a statement.   He spoke out after fellow laureate, American Jody Williams, said the summit had been cancelled because of the Dalai Lama row.   "The summit has been cancelled the Nobel laureates refused to go," Williams said in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama is based.   Mr Tutu"s daughter, Mpho, said her father had remained silent over the visa issue because after a previous unsuccessful run-in with the government over the same issue, he believed others might have more success.   "When His Holiness was prevented by our government from attending my 80th birthday [in 2011] I condemned that kowtowing to the Chinese roundly and reminded the ANC government that it did not represent me," Mr Tutu said.   "I warned them then that just as we had prayed for the downfall of the apartheid government so we would pray for the demise of a government that could be so spineless.   "The Nobel Summit in Cape Town, the first to be held on our continent, was meant to celebrate Madiba. His own comrades have dishonored him, by their actions."   http://www.nobelforpeace-summits.org/dalai-lama-14-nobel-peace-laureates-write-strongly-worded-letter-to-president-jacob-zuma-urging-him-to-guarantee-his-holiness-a-visa-to-enter-south-africa/ http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/research/hidden-hunger-south-africa Visit the related web page
	China''s hotbed: who created the violence? by Stephen McDonell Australian Broadcasting Corporation China   Sep 2014   In China last week, a prominent scholar was sent to jail for life after he criticised government policy in the country"s far west.   Beijing ignored the pleas of Australia, the United States and others who urged a lenient approach towards Ilham Tohti.   As well as losing his liberty forever, the ethnic Uighur economist had his property confiscated, leaving his wife and children without a means to survive.   Xi Jinping"s government has been instigating an increasingly hardline approach right across China in terms of smashing any form of dissent creeping in. The Muslim region of Xinjiang is at the extreme edge of this.   Nearly every month there is fresh report of deadly clashes coming out of China"s Xinjiang province. In the latest story from China"s state media just days ago, 40 so-called rioters died in the town of Luntai.   Sometimes these incidents have been planned attacks from jihadists targeting ordinary people and using bombing and stabbing as a preferred method of murder. At other times they appear to have been more along the lines of a dispute involving a crowd that gets out of hand.   Either way, over the past year, hundreds have been killed in this vast Sunni Muslim region, the traditional home of Turkic-speaking Uighurs.   The Chinese government blames the bloodshed on foreign jihadist groups drumming up unrest and, according to Beijing, there can be no other view. It wants to control the way the world sees Xinjiang to the point where no reasoned analysis of why Uighurs might be unhappy with their lives is to be permitted.   We"ve just come across this first hand on a filming trip driving across Xinjiang for Foreign Correspondent. We faced unrelenting pressure from China"s state security apparatus trying to prevent us from interviewing ordinary Uighurs about their grievances.   It appears to be the same reason for Ilham Tohti"s life imprisonment. He was able to deliver a well thought out critique of China"s Xinjiang policy so the government in Beijing felt it had to shut him down altogether. Again - it wants the only Uighur unrest to be so-called "terrorist unrest". There is no room for any understanding of why the Uighurs might feel discontent in the land of their forefathers.   Make no mistake, innocent people have been killed by religious extremists in Xinjiang in what are clearly orchestrated attacks, but there are also a fair proportion of these incidents that seem to be clashes triggered by bubbling resentment. The point is the Chinese authorities doesn"t want journalists (or anyone) to drill down into the details of these clashes in order to find out what"s really going on.   In recent decades, Han Chinese have gone from about 7 per cent of the population in Xinjiang to nearly half. Government policy appears to be assimilation at all costs. Teaching in Uighur language is being phased out. There"s a trial program, rewarding inter-ethnic marriage with cash handouts. Beards and veils are discouraged. Uighurs are, on the other hand, encouraged to live elsewhere in China.   On that last point, it can be hard, when they face considerable police scrutiny if they ever leave their home town.   Human rights groups and governments around the world, including Canberra and Washington DC, have described Ilham Tohti"s case as a politically motivated move to silence his voice.   The ABC asked Professor Bruce Jacobs from Monash University for his reading of why this man had been given life imprisonment for doing nothing more than criticise Beijing"s strategies. He said:   Well they see anything which challenges their rule there as a threat. China, in places like Xinjiang and Tibet, is a colonial state. The Chinese are running a colonial regime. When we talk about a colonial regime, we mean a regime that"s run by outsiders for the benefit of the outsiders. That"s exactly what"s happening in Tibet today and its what"s happening in Xinjiang. And its what happened when the Europeans ran colonies around the world as well.   So is is there room for any reasonable airing of concerns inside Xinjiang? According to Professor Jacobs:   No. The Uighurs have no options. By throwing Tohti into jail for the rest of his life - or even just sentencing him - they"re showing that moderate action has no future. The only actions which have the option, or the potential for success, are the radical actions, because the Chinese colonial state is so violent and very vigorous in pushing down any sort of Uighur self consciousness.   Many China analysts now share the view that the Chinese government is driving the Uighurs into the hands of extremists.   Theirs traditionally has been a moderate form of Islam that is coming under threat from all sides.   The government says it needs to respond with an iron first to emerging terrorist violence but many have questioned whether the crackdown actually preceded the violence. By turning the screws on the Uighurs tighter every day is China creating a hotbed of discontent?   http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/china-and-the-uighur-people/5786808   * Below is a link to Communities @ Risk: Targeted Digital Threats Against Civil Society, a report by the Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary research laboratory based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. The report sheds light on an often overlooked digital risk environment, 8 of the 10 Civil Society Agencies examined focus on Tibet and the many challenges they have encountered. Visit the related web page
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