Kuwait: Authorities crackdown on protesters demanding citizenship rights

2019/07/19 Leave a comment

Ongoing story:

The Kuwaiti authorities have arbitrarily arrested more than a dozen protesters in recent days, including prominent human rights defender Abdulhakim al-Fadhli and other activists, in a crackdown on peaceful protestors demanding greater rights for the stateless group known as Bidun [short for “without citizenship”]. Twelve protesters remained in custody, Amnesty International said.

The arrests took place between 11 and 14 July following demonstrations held last week by members of the Bidun group, who had gathered in Freedom Square in Tayma, in the Governorate of Jahra, and Al Erada Square, in Kuwait City, after Ayed Hamad Moudath, 20, committed suicide after reportedly being unable to obtain official documents and eventually losing his job.

“These arbitrary arrests primarily targeting peaceful protesters, activists and human rights defenders in Kuwait are not only unlawful, but are only set to exacerbate an already tense situation brought to the fore by the young man’s suicide. By continuing to deny the Bidun citizenship, the authorities are denying these long-term residents a range of basic rights, including their right to health, education and work, which in effect exclude them from being part and parcel of and contributing to a vibrant Kuwaiti society,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Middle East Director of Research.

“This has been a long-standing issue since Kuwait’s independence in 1961. It is high time the authorities address it in a meaningful and sustainable manner by ensuring that all Biduns have access to an independent, prompt and fair process when applying for citizenship.”

Two of the detained protesters Nawaf al-Badr and Mohamad al-Anzi, were referred to prosecutors on 14 July and charged with “national security offences”. Their detention has been extended for 21 days.

Abdulhakim al-Fadhli and nine others were referred to prosecutors on 15 July and face a range of charges including participation in unlicensed protests, misuse of communication equipment, spreading false news, and other national security offences. Others were summoned and questioned but not arrested.

“We call on the Kuwaiti authorities to immediately lift the unlawful restriction of the rights to freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression and to release the protesters or charge them with a recognizable criminal offence,” Lynn Maalouf said.

Background

More than 100,000 Bidun people are long-term residents of Kuwait, with most of them born there and belonging to families who have lived there for generations.

Despite government reforms announced in 2015, the Bidun community face severe restrictions on their ability to access documentation, employment, health care, education and state support enjoyed by Kuwaiti citizens.

In 2018, the minister of education rejected a parliamentary proposal to register children of Bidun in public schools. In the past, when Bidun people have protested to demand their rights, they have often faced repression.

Source: Kuwait: Authorities crackdown on protesters demanding citizenship rights

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China relaxes rules to attract more skilled overseas talent

2019/07/19 Leave a comment

Interesting shift:

China’s Ministry of Public Security is to relax its immigration rules, opening the door to more highly skilled overseas workers and allowing a greater number of foreigners the opportunity to become permanent residents.

The rule changes, which will take effect from August, will also allow top talents from abroad to apply for long-term visas and make it easier for budding overseas entrepreneurs to start a business in China, the ministry announced on Wednesday.

Previously, only foreign talents who made “major and extraordinary contributions” while in China or who filled a skills gap were allowed to apply for permanent residence. From next month, those with in-demand skills and those whose annual income or taxes reached a specified threshold can apply for permanent residence, as can their spouses and underage children.

Those who have held a job in China for four years in a row and have been resident for at least six months each year, whose annual income is higher than six times the annual average worker’s wage in their city of residence, and who pay at least 20 per cent of their income in taxes, are eligible for permanent residence under the new rules.

In Beijing, the average salary last year was 94,258 yuan (US$13,706), setting the threshold for overseas candidates at 565,548 yuan (US$82,236) per annum.

The revised policy will also make it easier for people of Chinese ethnicity from overseas to apply for permanent residence. Those with a doctoral degree, or who have worked in what the ministry called “key development areas” for four years with a stay of at least six months each year are also eligible for permanent residence.

Source: China relaxes rules to attract more skilled overseas talent

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Zelensky initiates dual citizenship for Ukrainians living abroad

2019/07/19 Leave a comment

Given the large number of Ukrainian Canadians (1.4 million), significant:

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine to develop the procedures of the provision of the second Ukrainian citizenship to the Ukrainians, who live abroad. He also ordered to simplify the procedure of the provision of the Ukrainian citizenship to people, whose rights and freedoms are violated as President’s Office reported.“From his side, President of Ukraine orders the MFA to develop the mechanism of the provision of Ukrainian citizenship as the second one to the ethnic Ukrainians from friendly states, to those, who want to join the development of their historical homeland. Besides, Volodymyr Zelensky orders to develop the mechanism of the simplified provision of Ukrainian citizenship to people who suffer from the violation of rights and freedoms in their countries,” the message said.

Such decision was made within the news on the extension of the arrest of Ukrainian POW sailors and signing of the order on the simplified procedure of the provision of the Russian citizenship to the Ukrainians by Russia’s president. Zelensky’s office believes that such steps create the obstacles for the weakening of the conflict in Donbas.

On July 17, 2019, Lefortovo Moscow Court extended arrest of all 24 Ukrainian POW sailors until the end of October.

The same day President of Russia Vladimir Putin distributed the effect of the order on facilitated issuance of Russian citizenship on all the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Source: Zelensky initiates dual citizenship for Ukrainians living abroad

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Trump’s ‘blatantly illegal’ immigration rules end asylum protections

2019/07/19 Leave a comment

One of the better summaries:

The Trump administration has announced new immigration rules ending asylum protections for almost all migrants who arrive at the US-Mexico border, in violation of both US and international law.

According to the new rules, any asylum seekers who pass through another country before arriving at the southern border – including children traveling on their own – will not be eligible for asylum if they failed to apply first in their country of transit. They would only be eligible for US asylum if their application was turned down elsewhere.

The change would affect the vast majority of migrants arriving through Mexico. Most of those currently come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but an increasing number are from Haiti, Cuba and countries further afield in Africa and Asia.

The new rules were placed on the federal register on Monday and due to take effect on Tuesday, though they will be immediately challenged in court for contraventions of the US refugee act and the UN refugee convention guaranteeing the right to seek asylum to those fleeing persecution from around the world.

Source: Trump’s ‘blatantly illegal’ immigration rules end asylum protections

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Opinion: Report On Racism, But Ditch The Labels

2019/07/18 Leave a comment

Thoughtful commentary:

Editor’s note: NPR this week has described the language in President Trump’s tweets about a group of Democratic congresswomen as “racist.”

Keith Woods, NPR’s vice president for newsroom training and diversity, argues that journalists should not be using the term “racist” to describe the president’s tweets. He explains why below.

Once again, the president of the United States has used the sniper tower of Twitter to take aim at immigration, race relations and common decency. And once again, journalists are daring their profession to boldly call bigotry what it is: bigotry. Enough of the vacuous “racially charged,” “racially loaded,” “racially insensitive” evasions, they say. It’s racist, and we should just call it that.

I understand the moral outrage behind wanting to slap this particular label on this particular president and his many incendiary utterances, but I disagree. Journalism may not have come honorably to the conclusion that dispassionate distance is a virtue. But that’s the fragile line that separates the profession from the rancid, institution-debasing cesspool that is today’s politics.

It is precisely because journalism is given to warm-spit phrases like “racially insensitive” and “racially charged” that we should not be in the business of moral labeling in the first place. Who decides where the line is that the president crossed? The headline writer working today who thinks it’s “insensitive” or the one tomorrow who thinks it’s “racist?” Were we to use my moral standards, the line for calling people and words racist in this country would have been crossed decades ago. But that’s not what journalists do. We report and interview and attribute.

I am not a journalism purist. I came into the profession 40 years ago to tear down the spurious notion of objectivity used to protects a legacy of sexism, xenophobia and white supremacy. The better ideals of truth telling, accountability, fairness, etc., are what give journalism its power, while the notion of “objectivity” has been used to obscure and excuse the insidious biases we do battle with today.

I’ve been an informed consumer of the media since my days as a paperboy. I read the Times-Picayune as I delivered it, and the distorted view it offered of black and poor New Orleans told me all I needed to know about “objectivity.” We have come miles since then as a profession. But why should I trust that we’re all on the same page with our labels now? Weren’t last week’s tweets racist? Or last year’s? Weren’t some misogynistic? Vulgar? Homophobic? Sexist? The language of my judgment is generous, and they are my opinion, and they belong in the space reserved for opinions.

What’s at stake is journalism’s embattled claim to be the source of credible news grounded in the kind of deep, fair reporting that exposes injustice and holds powerful people to account. It may be satisfying to call the president’s words, or the president himself, racist, given the attacks tweeted from his bully app and so often aimed at our profession. But at what cost?

It’s already nearly impossible to separate actual journalism from the argumentative noise on the cable networks that dominate so much of public perception. There are already too many journalists dancing day and night on the line that once separated fact and judgment. When that line is finally obliterated and we sink into the cesspool beckoning us to its depths, this historically flawed, imperfect tool for revealing and routing racism will look and sound indistinguishable from the noise and become just as irrelevant.

On Sunday, the president wrote this:

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

His words mirror those of avowed racists and xenophobes that date back to the birth of this country. Was that moral judgement, my last sentence? I would argue no. I’d call it context, and it doesn’t require my opinion, just a basic understanding of history. That’s an alternative to labels: Report. Quote people. Cite sources. Add context. Leave the moral labeling to the people affected; to the opinion writers, the editorial writers, the preachers and philosophers and to the public we serve.

We just have to do journalism.

Source: Opinion: Report On Racism, But Ditch The Labels

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Worried UK employers call for changes to proposed immigration reform

2019/07/18 Leave a comment

Echoes earlier concerns by the business community:

A coalition of British industry groups and education bodies, worried by the prospect of Brexit worsening skills and labour shortages, has called for the next prime minister to relax proposed reforms of the immigration system.

The #FullStrength campaign said on Wednesday it had written to both Boris Johnson, frontrunner to be the next leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister, and his rival, foreign minister Jeremy Hunt, calling for the government they would lead to lower the salary threshold proposed in draft immigration legislation from 30,000 pounds to 20,000.

In December, Britain set out in a policy paper the biggest overhaul of its immigration policy in decades, ending special treatment for European Union nationals.

Concern about the social and economic impact of immigration helped drive Britain’s 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU.

#FullStrength brings together bodies including London First, techUK, the British Retail Consortium, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, UKHospitality, the Federation of Master Builders and Universities UK. Collectively they represent tens of thousands of businesses and employ millions of workers across all sectors and regions of Britain.

Their joint letter said more than 60% of all jobs in the UK currently fall under the proposed 30,000-pound salary threshold, highlighting the risk in setting the future level too high for vital services such as health and social care.

The coalition also wants the government to extend the temporary work route for overseas workers from one year to two years, revise the sponsorship model to make it easier for firms of all sizes to bring in the overseas talent they need, and reinstate the two-year, post-study visa for international students to work in Britain post-graduation.

“Without the ability to access international talent, many of our world-class sectors are at significant risk,” the joint letter said.

“As the UK prepares to leave the EU in the near future, it is imperative that the government puts in place measures that will avoid employers facing a cliff-edge in recruitment, and works towards building a successful economy that is open and attractive.”

Johnson has pledged that Britain will leave the EU with or without a transition deal on Oct. 31 if he becomes prime minister, while Hunt has said that he would, if absolutely necessary, go for a no-deal Brexit.

Source: Worried UK employers call for changes to proposed immigration reform

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Bill introduced to allow dual citizenship for Indians

2019/07/18 Leave a comment

Given the large number of Indian expatriates, significant if passed and implemented:

Draft legislation brought before the Indian parliament seeks to allow dual citizenship for millions of foreign nationals of Indian origin who currently have to renounce Indian citizenship once they become citizens of another country.

Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor introduced a Bill last week to amend Article 9 of the Constitution of India that provides for automatic termination of the Indian citizenship upon acquiring citizenship of another country.

“We have the largest diaspora in the world, many of whom have migrated abroad for better opportunities. Taking a foreign passport for convenience does not make them any less Indian,” said Mr Tharoor.

According to the UN World Migration Report 2018, over 15.6 million Indians are living in other countries, making it the largest diaspora in the world, followed by the Mexicans and the Russians.

A large section of India’s global diaspora has been calling for India to allow dual citizenship. The government of India, in order to cater to some of the demands of Indians living overseas, introduced the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card. The OCI has been further streamlined and extensively promoted under the BJP government.

India has emerged as the top source of Australian citizenship, overtaking the United Kingdom, with over 118,000 Indian-born migrants pledging allegiance to Australia since 2013-14. [Note: India has surprised China as the largest immigrant source country in Canada, about 52,000 in 2017, India and Philippines are roughly tied in the number of new Canadian citizens in 2018]

While the OCI allows foreign nationals of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely, they can’t vote or contest an election and don’t have the right to own agricultural land in India.

Mr Tharoor argues that the people of Indian origin, many of whom have been highly successful tech-entrepreneurs and quite a few also rose to high public offices overseas, have an important stake in India.

“In the era of globalisation, more people from India will search for opportunities abroad.

“By automatically terminating their Indian citizenship when they seek citizenship of countries of residence, the law effectively cuts them off their roots and makes them feel like they do not have a real stake in their country of origin,” he told the legislators.

Dubai-based policy consultant and writer Mohamed Zeeshan argues that while many Indians acquire citizenship of countries of their residence, they remain strongly committed to their country of origin and spread India’s global influence worldwide.

“The landmark India-US nuclear deal, for instance, was aided in Washington by strong political lobbying from the Indian-American community. In 2011, Indians in Australia helped convince the then Australian government to lift a ban on uranium exports to India,” he writes.

Australian citizenship approvals plunge to 15-year low
While Australian citizenship approvals have fallen to the lowest level since 2002-03, the number of citizenship applications awaiting processing is at a record high with migrants waiting longer than ever before to pledge their allegiance to Australia.

The UAE, the United States and Saudi Arabia are the top three countries of residence for people of Indian origin outside India, together home to about 7.5 million Indians.

According to the 2016 Census, the size of the Indian diaspora in Australia was 619,164. During the five years, from 2013 to 2017, over 118,000 Indian nationals acquired Australian citizenship.

Since then, migration from India to Australia has been on the rise.

Ritesh Chugh, a senior lecturer at the Central Queensland University in Melbourne says it will “open the doors” for many possibilities for Indians and India.

“Indians living abroad are already contributing immensely to India and there’s such an enormous wealth of experience that India can benefit from further. But many see this (not having Indian citizenship) as a big hurdle in making that contribution to the full extent possible,” he told SBS Punjabi.

“For example, at the moment, the research pathways are restricted to citizens alone. If this deterrent is removed, a lot of people would like to go back and work in India as opportunities grow in India,” Mr Chugh said.

According to the Indian Passport Act, it’s an offence not to surrender the Indian passport and formally renounce Indian citizenship after acquiring foreign citizenship, which may attract penalties of up to $1,050.

Source: Bill introduced to allow dual citizenship for Indians

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Nomination process for federal election candidates ‘uncompetitive’ and ‘biased’: report

2019/07/18 Leave a comment

Another interesting and relevant report by Samara. Found the observation that appointed candidates less likely to be visible minority or Indigenous than contested nominations, but this may reflect in part whether or not the riding was deemed competitive or not:

Just a small portion of federal candidates go through competitive nomination contests, according to a new report from the Samara Centre for Democracy which describes the nomination process as “a weak point in our democratic infrastructure.”

Wednesday’s report — entitled ‘Party Favours: How federal election candidates are chosen’ — looked at the more than 6,600 candidates who ran to represent one of Canada’s five major political parties during the last five federal elections.

It found that just 17 per cent of those candidates competed in nomination races.

Parties directly appointed more than 2,700 candidates — and out of the 3,900 nomination contests monitored by the centre, more than 70 per cent saw just one person run.

“Nomination contests remain too short, uncompetitive, unpredictable, untransparent and exclusionary,” concludes the report.

Michael Morden, the centre’s research director, said he was stunned by the results.

“It’s kind of crazy … some of those competitive races are themselves skewed to favour one candidate. So it’s an even smaller number than that, likely,” he said.

“The fact that so few are real contests suggests fairly shallow democracy in these parties.”

Nomination contests remain too short, uncompetitive, unpredictable, untransparent and exclusionary– Samara Centre for Democracy

While in theory nearly any adult Canadian can run for office, few make it to the House of Commons without the backing of a party. Less than half of one per cent of those elected to Parliament since 1993 won as independents, notes the report.

“In recent decades, these contests have increasingly come under the control of the central party, and many cases have emerged where nomination meetings appeared to be biased in favour of one candidate or another,” the report says.

Push for more transparency

The two largest parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, held more nomination contestants than the NDP, Bloc Québécois or Greens, according to the data.

Just over a quarter of nomination contestants are women, says the report; the Conservative Party had the lowest percentage of women contestants, while the NDP recorded the most.

The report also suggests appointed candidates were less likely to come from a visible minority or Indigenous background than those chosen through nominations.

“Parliament can only ever be as diverse as the pool of candidates that run for it. Nominations designed primarily for insiders, those already plugged into the party and political system, are a major obstacle to achieving a more diverse political class,” said the report.

The report recommends that the parties establish new standards for their nomination processes by setting opening and closing dates for nomination contests, reporting how many members cast ballots in each contest and how many votes each contestant received, and releasing the total number of people the parties “vet out” — or prevent from running — in each election cycle.

“The public has stakes in how parties choose who ends up on the ballot,” said Morden.

“It’s the first link in a chain of democratic processes that lead to how we elect a Parliament. I think the general public should care about how parties are approaching these processes and whether or not parties are meeting Canadians’ expectations of what a good democratic process looks like.”

The Samara Centre said it compiled nomination meeting reports filed with Elections Canada between 2003 and September 2015 and combined them with existing datasets on federal election candidates and candidate ethnicity.

It also said it asked the major parties to report the number of contestants they rejected during the run-up to the 2015 election.

“Only the Green Party replied to our request, indicating that they vetted out seven per cent of the applicants they received in 2015, and five per cent of those received so far in the run-up to the 2019 election,” said the centre.

Source: Nomination process for federal election candidates ‘uncompetitive’ and ‘biased’: report

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When Islamic State came, the monks had just finished hiding the manuscripts

2019/07/18 Leave a comment

Noteworthy and good that the manuscripts were saved:

The first time a band of Islamic State militants “visited” the monks, they presented the monks with a kind of suggestion, in a nonthreatening manner: “Why don’t you become a Muslim?”

Already, the four monks at the ancient Syriac Catholic Mar Behnam Monastery in Khidr, Iraq, had felt they were under siege. Ten days earlier, on June 10, 2014, five carloads of militants roared through the peaceful road leading to Mar Behnam, announcing through megaphones that the Islamic State was in control. Not long before that, the Iraqi army had withdrawn from a checkpoint near the monastery, located southeast of Mosul.

“Visits” from the terrorists the next few weeks intensified: banging on the monastery doors and accusations of the monks being infidels.

“Quite frankly, we were more than frightened,” said Syriac Catholic Father Youssef Sakat, who had served as Mar Behnam’s superior.

The monks kept up with their regular daily routine of prayer and Mass in the monastery, which dates back to the fourth century. They prayed for protection through the intercession of St. Behnam, a martyr, with faith that “we were in a blessed place,” mindful that generations of Syriac Catholic Christians had also faced persecution, and still the faith had endured, Father Sakat told Catholic News Service.

The monastery “was built by local people, stone by stone,” he said of Mar Behnam. “I’m sure they put their hearts into their work. I feel it was made with love.”

Under Father Sakat’s direction since 2012, Mar Behnam had flourished, welcoming up to 250 visitors on weekends — even from around the world — for retreats and lodging with the goal of helping people to better understand the monastic life. The monks would engage the children in lively faith-based activities.

“We wanted to show them that Mar Behnam is their home, too,” Father Sakat said.

A Muslim friend the monks trusted was keeping them abreast of the worsening situation, but even he was becoming fearful.

“I’m sorry, Father, I can’t come to the monastery anymore,” he told the priest. “Even I’m being watched. It’s becoming very dangerous. They want to kill you.”

All the while, Father Sakat was deeply concerned about how to safeguard the chalices and other sacramentals and the monastery’s extensive collection of religious manuscripts from inevitable destruction by the militants.

The 630 manuscripts, dating from the 12th to 18th centuries, were written in a range of languages, including Syriac, Greek, French and Latin.

Twice, Father Sakat tried to leave by car, with the intention of taking manuscripts to Qaraqosh, nine miles away. Each time, the militants at the Islamic State checkpoint near Mar Behnam told the priest that he was not allowed to take anything from the monastery.

“It doesn’t belong to you,” they said. On his third attempt, he was ordered to return to the monastery: “If we see you outside, we will kill you.”

On their own, the monks could not come up with a solution, Father Sakat said.

He recalled that on July 19, late in the afternoon, “I felt in my heart: I have to hide them now.” He chose a long, narrow closet under a stairwell that was used to store cleaning supplies.

“It was the Lord who directed us,” Father Sakat said.

Beginning at 8 p.m., the monks worked together, carefully placing the sacramentals and manuscripts into nine steel barrels used for storing grain. With cinderblocks from a monastery renovation project, they built a false wall in the closet, hiding the barrels behind it. With a cement mixture, they painted all the walls to give them the same appearance. Cleaning supplies were put back in place in the closet. The monks even left the closet door ajar, so as not to rouse suspicions of any Islamist intruder.

They finished their work at 3 a.m.

At 1:30 p.m., four Islamic State militants barged through the Mar Behnam door with a sheikh. The monks were given three choices: either become Muslim, pay the jizya tax or leave.

“We prefer to leave,” Father Sakat told the Islamists. They were allowed 15 minutes to vacate. Father Sakat was ordered to turn over all the keys to the monastery and vehicles.

Banished from his beloved monastery, as he walked out the door, “I looked back and told Mar (St.) Behnam, ‘I did what I had to do. Now I entrust them under your intercession, by the power of God. Keep them safe. They are under your protection,’” Father Sakat recounted of his plea to safeguard the sacramentals and manuscripts.

The monks were ordered into one of the militants’ vehicles. Two miles from the monastery, the militants left the monks on the road, warning: “Whoever looks back, we will shoot him.”

The monks walked several hours to Qaraqosh. Their reprieve from terrorism was not for long. Soon that city and other Christian villages in the Ninevah Plain also fell to Islamic State.

In June 2015, the Syriac Catholic patriarch called Father Sakat to Lebanon for his new mission, helping Iraqi Christian refugees who had come to Lebanon from Kurdistan, in northern Iraq.

Now the priest heads the Syriac Catholic Holy Family center in an area of Beirut where many Iraqi Christians settled, with the hope of being resettled in Western countries. Initially, there were 1,200 Syriac Catholic families, totaling 6,700 people. Many are now scattered all over the world; 600 families remain in Lebanon, waiting.

In March 2015, the Islamic State blew up part of Mar Behnam, and the monastery remained under the militants’ control until the area was liberated in October 2017.

When Father Sakat visited the monastery that December, he said he was shocked at the destruction.

Graffiti covered the walls. The pillars of the altar were incinerated. One by one, all religious phrases, crosses and symbols inscribed into the monastery’s stones were drilled out and defaced, including the names of priests inscribed on tombs. Religious statues were smashed, a statue of Mary beheaded.

“It’s like they want to erase all the history of Christianity,” Father Sakat said.

Father Sakat stood with anticipation as the wall concealing the manuscripts was chiseled away with a jackhammer, to reveal, intact, the nine steel barrels containing the sacramentals and manuscripts.

The manuscripts were individually packed, this time into car trunks to transport them to the Queen of Peace Syriac Catholic Church in Irbil for safekeeping.

Restoration of the monastery is currently in progress, but “it needs some time,” Father Sakat said.

“I’m waiting for the Lord’s will, to go back (to Mar Behnam),” he added.

Source: When Islamic State came, the monks had just finished hiding the manuscripts

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , ,

You Can’t Force People to Assimilate. So Why Is China at It Again?

2019/07/17 Leave a comment

Good overview and analysis. Holding the 2020 International Metropolis Conference in Beijing hard to justify, particularly given the spin given by the Centre for China and Globalization (see Fri Jun 28 CCG to host International Metropolis Conference in Beijing in June 2020):

The Chinese government’s campaign of internment in the northwestern region of Xinjiang is extraordinary, by dint of its scale — but also, its contradictions.

Up to 1.5 million people from predominantly Muslim Turkic minorities — Uighurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz — have been arbitrarily detained in political re-education camps designed in part to make them renounce their religious beliefs.

At times, the Chinese authorities have portrayed this mass detention campaign as a “strict preventative measure” against violent extremist ideologies. At others, they have called it a benign “vocational training” initiative, comparing detainees to “boarding school students.”

But eyewitnesses — as well as the government’s own documents — reveal that these facilities are prisonlike internment camps that rely on intensive brainwashing procedures and forms of psychological torture. (There also have been reports of physical torture and rape.) Beyond the camps, the state’s social re-engineering efforts involve systematically separating childrenfrom their parents and enlisting more and more adults in forms of forced labor.

Although China has occasionally faced violent resistance from some Uighur groups, notably terrorist attacks in Beijing in 2013and Kunming in 2014, the re-education campaign in Xinjiang isn’t really about combating extremism. (The United States’ antiterrorism czar, Nathan Sales, said as much earlier this month.) Those detained aren’t just young men — the group most vulnerable to radicalization, it is thought — but also the elderly and pregnant women, as well as atheists and converts to Christianity. One can be interned for putting too much gas in one’s car, refusing to smoke in public (abstention is taken to be a sign of piety) or receiving phone calls from relatives overseas. Members of ethnic minorities who said that they had tried everything to become “model Chinese citizens” have reported that those efforts didn’t save them from internment.

Why not? And why is the Chinese government repressing entire ethnic groups when such heavy-handed tactics are likely to only promote resistance and radicalization? And why is it willing to risk alienating Muslim governments in Central Asia and beyond even as President Xi Jinping has made the grand Belt and Road Initiative his flagship international project?

Because the Chinese Communist Party cannot not try to coerce assimilation. Its ultimate goal in Xinjiang — as elsewhere in China — is to exercise complete ideological supremacy, and that also entails trying to transform the very identity of the country’s minorities. The C.C.P. lives in perennial fear that, short of having a complete grip on Chinese society, its long-term survival is in danger.

And so the C.C.P. is doubling down today on a campaign of forced assimilation in Xinjiang that has failed elsewhere in the past.

The party’s current re-education drive is an upgraded version of the Cultural Revolution. This campaign, too, seeks to achieve ideological control by eradicating alternative ideological and belief systems. But it does so in a much more sophisticated and high-tech way. In Xinjiang, reams of personal information about Uighurs and other minorities are entered into police databases after being collected at checkpoints, through feeds from surveillance systems or during house visits.

Only this effort seems to ignore that one effect of the Cultural Revolution was to create a spiritual vacuum and that in the decades since China has experienced various spiritual revivals. Many Uighurs and Tibetans, as well as members of the Han majority, have ardently embraced both traditional and new beliefs.

The number of Christians in China is thought to have increased from 3.4 million in 1950 to about 100 million today — or more than the C.C.P.’s entire membership. Even C.C.P. members have either openly embraced a major religion or have anonymously admittedthat they attend religious services, seek divination, burn incense or keep idols in their homes. Many of the devout see no contradiction between their faith and their patriotism or respect for the party.

Still, the C.C.P.’s campaign of assimilation today continues to target religion, because, in the party’s eyes, religion, which tends to represent a person’s deepest allegiance, competes with loyalty to the state and undercuts the party’s ideological foundation: materialism.

China’s spiritual revival has thoroughly confounded the core Marxist assumption that economic development would naturally extinguish religious beliefs; in fact, it has occurred even as the country has been lifted out of poverty. Increasing wealth also seems to have fueled corruption, including within the C.C.P. — undermining the party’s legitimacy and moral standing. The C.C.P. is now doubly on the ideological defensive.

The government, beyond targeting religion, has also tried to promote ethno-linguistic assimilation — again, through material incentives. Some minorities have pursued a Chinese language education in order to achieve upward social mobility. But many more have only become more entrenched in their distinct ethnic and religious identity.

Earlier this year, Tibetan nomads were told they could obtain state subsidies only if they replaced their altars devoted to Buddhist deities with images of Chinese political leaders. Likewise, Christian villagers in southeast China had previously been told to replace depictions of Jesus with portraits of President Xi if they wanted to continue to receive poverty-alleviation subsidies. Local officials then reportedly claimed, according to social media, that the initiative had successfully “melted the hard ice” in Christians’ “hearts” and “transformed them from believing in religion to believing in the party.”

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