Bloody China: Crackdown on Muslim Protests

The situation is relatively calm in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang region, days after bloody violence there left more than 150 people dead. For many people in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, life is slowly returning to normal. Alison Klayman is a reporter there.

"The scene today was definitely people getting back to regular life," Klayman told VOA. "There were many shopkeepers who were opening their stores and people going back to work, for the first time since Sunday." A demonstration in Urumqi on Sunday turned violent and deadly, after mostly minority Uighur Muslim protesters clashed with Chinese security forces.

Chinese authorities have rounded up more than 1,400 people on suspicion of involvement in what they are calling an organized, premeditated and severe criminal act of violence. Authorities say they will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law - including capital punishment for the most serious perpetrators.

The Chinese government also has blamed foreign forces for organizing the violence from afar and calls Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, who lives in exile in the United States, the top "mastermind." In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang rejected Turkey's concerns that the issue should be discussed in the United Nations Security Council. Qin says there is no reason for the Security Council to discuss events in Xinjiang because they are entirely China's internal affair.

Instead, he urged the international community to support the Chinese government's efforts to safeguard national unity, ethnic solidarity and social stability. Klayman says Chinese troops are out in force in Urumqi, to help restore calm. "There's still a very large military presence, especially in Uighur areas, like the bazaar area, in the south of the city," Klayman said. "Buses and trucks with troops surround that whole area, groups of troops running around, making their presence very conspicuous. They are shouting slogans, 'Protect the people. Protect the country. Save the society.'"

The clashes in Xinjiang have largely been between the Han Chinese majority and the Uighur minority, a Turkic group that shares similarities with peoples in Central Asia. The Uighurs make up nearly half of Xinjiang's 20 million people. They accuse the Chinese of discrimination and repression. The Chinese government accuses them of seeking an independence for Xinjiang.

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Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-09-voa11.cfm

Tags: Turkey, UN Security Council, Rebiya Kadeer, Xinjiang, Uighur, Muslim peoples, Turkic peoples, Chinese Foreign Ministry, Global Development News, Violent protests, Chinese Military, Alison Klayman, Han Chinese, VOA,

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China, US Hold Defense Talks, More Planned

Chinese and U.S. officials say the two countries share a common concern over a nuclear-weapons armed North Korea and both countries say they want to avoid confrontations at sea. These were among the issues discussed in two days of high level defense talks that ended in Beijing. Under Secretary for Defense Michele Flournoy headed the U.S. delegation.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, she said both countries share concern about what she described as North Korea's recent "provocative actions," and discussed the North Korean nuclear issue in general.

She said the two sides did not specifically discuss a North Korean ship off the coast of China that is allegedly carrying small arms to Burma. If verified, this would be in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution that was recently imposed on Pyongyang after it conducted its second nuclear test at the end of May.

"This was not the appropriate forum to have detailed operational level discussions about how enforcement of this U.N. Security Council resolution was going to go," Flournoy said.

Serious concerns about North Korea

The head of the Chinese side, Lieutenant-General Ma Xiaotian, said his country has "serious concerns" about a nuclear North Korea. But he urged all parties to keep negotiating. Ma says he is confident the U.S.-China military relationship will continue to strengthen in the future. Ma says he believes military ties will continue to make progress despite all the difficulties.

One recent issue has been a series of encounters between U.S. and Chinese ships in waters off China's coast that Beijing claims are within its so-called exclusive economic zone. The Pentagon has said the U.S. ships involved were operating in accordance with international law.

U.S. and Chinese military officials will hold special consultations in July, to address the sea confrontation issue.

Tension over Taiwan arms sale

The two sides also discussed shared interests in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, and with international anti-piracy efforts off the coast of Somalia. The just-concluded defense talks resumed after an 18-month hiatus. China suspended the meetings last year, after the Bush administration announced a multi-billion-dollar arms deal with Taiwan, a separately governed island that Beijing considers a renegade province.

Under Secretary Flournoy said the Obama administration "inherited" the arms-sale to Taiwan and is in the process of deciding how it plans to proceed.

Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-06-24-voa19.cfm

Tags: China, USA, Defense, Military, Ma Xiaotian, Taiwan arms sale, Somalia, The Pentagon, Under Secretary Michelle Flournoy, North Korea, UN Security Council, Global Development News,

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N Korea Defiant After New Sanctions

North Korea has warned that it will increase its nuclear activities and could launch military action against the US and allies after the UN Security Council announced new sanctions over last month's atomic test. North Korea's foreign ministry said it will regard any attempts to impose a blockade against it as an "act of war", the state-run KCNA news agency reported on Saturday.

"We'll take firm military action if the United States and its allies try to isolate us," the unnamed foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying. The UN resolution, passed on Friday, banned all weapons exports from North Korea and authorised member states to inspect sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy goods that violate the sanctions. The UN resolution was passed as media reports suggested that North Korea could be planning a third nuclear test.

Enrichment Programme

But North Korea remained defiant, pledging to start a uranium enrichment programme for a light-water nuclear reactor. The foreign ministry spokesman also warned that the North would "weaponise all plutonium [in its possession]" and had "reprocessed more than one-third of our spent nuclear fuel rods."

Alexander Neill, the head of the Asia security programme at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in the UK, told Al Jazeera that while the warning is "bluster", it is also a serious threat. "This [threat of enrichment] is not a new phenomenon," Neill said. "It would take a long time and sophisticated technology to convert plutonium to missile-grade material, but it is a gesture with a lot of teeth behind it. "When it comes to the international reaction, the only option is for the UN Security Council resolution. "It is almost certain that the US and Japan will enforce a blockade which will put a pincer movement around any of the sea trade going in and out of North Korea.

"The question is whether it will have any result inside North Korea. The regime has proved resilient to sanctions in the past," he said. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Saturday: "The North Koreans' continuing provocative actions are deeply regrettable'. "They have now been denounced by everyone, they have become further isolated, and it is not in the interest of the people of North Korea for that kind of isolation to be continued."

'Firm Opposition'

North Korea's nuclear test in May defied a previous Security Council resolution adopted after the North's first underground nuclear test in October 2006. Zhang Yesui, China's UN ambassador, said the resolution showed the "firm opposition" of the international community to North Korea's nuclear ambitions. The backing of China, one of North Korea's key trading partners and regional allies, and Russia for the resolution gave greater weight to the new sanctions as they have been reluctant to act in the past.

"To a certain extent, China has been happy to leave North Korea to its own devices," Al Jazeera's Tony Cheng, reporting from Beijing, said. "Now China is profoundly concerned about the regime in Pyongyang, which seems increasingly unstable and seems increasingly not to follow Beijing's lead." Japan is expected to impose its own sanctions on North Korea, including suspending all trade, in a largely symbolic demonstration of its opposition to the test, the Kyodo news agency reported.

'Tightening Sanctions'

Al Jazeera's Cheng said that it was difficult to judge what effect the new sanctions would have on the already impoverished state. "This is really just tightening sanctions that already exist on North Korea, but they do target it in specific areas," he said.

"I think that one area that will hurt quite a lot will be the ban on conventional weapons arms sales and the possibility of stopping ships going to and from North Korea ... that is a business that could earn Pyongyang as much as $100m." Jamie Metzl, the executive vice-president of the Asia Society, said North Korea had exported arms to about 20 countries in the past, including Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan.

"Their finances are in big trouble. They have almost nothing that anybody else wants to buy but these arms," Metzl said. The UN vote comes amid continuing tensions on the Korean peninsula after North Korea on Thursday demanded a 3,000 per cent increase in rent and a 400 per cent increase in wages for 40,000 workers employed by South Korean companies at an industrial park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong.

North Korean state media issued a statement on Thursday saying that relations between the two countries had reached the "phase of catastrophe" and that the Kaesong complex had been "thrown into a serious crisis".

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/06/200961361534368421.html

Tags: Kim jong il, Kim jong un, USA, China, Russia, UK, France, UN Security Council, Sanctions, Nucelar reactors, Nuclear Weapons, Global Development News, Hillary Clinton, Kaesong industrial Park, South Korea, Japan, Kyodo,

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Obama Warns N Korea of Further Nuclear Tests

The US president has said that North Korea's leaders will not receive preferential treatment following recent missile tests. Barack Obama made the comments before a ceremony on Saturday in France to mark the D-Day landings, a turning point in the second world war.

 

Obama said moves by the North Korean government, which included nuclear tests, had been "extraordinarily provocative", pushing diplomacy to its limits. He said that his preferred use of diplomacy to solve tensions may not continue, particularly if North Korea does not respond in "a serious way".

 

'No rewards'

 

"We are going to take a very hard look at how we move forward on these issues," Obama said after a meeting Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, the city of Caen in Normandy, northern France.

 

"I don't think that there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilising the region and we just react in the same ways.

 

"They have made no bones about the fact that they are testing nuclear weapons, testing missiles that would potentially have intercontinental capacity.

 

"We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation."

 

North Korea last launched a long-range missile in April. It has since carried out a nuclear test and several short-range missile tests. North Korea is believed to be preparing for a further long-range missile test.

 

Obama said that the UN security council was preparing a new resolution on North Korea. He asserted that China and Russia - the two major powers closest to Pyongyang - were also taking a stricter stance.

 

"They understand how destabilising North Korea's actions are," he said. Obama was talking ahead of a ceremony to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a key date for the allies' victory in the second world war.

 

Tags: obama, north korea, d day, nuclear tests, missiles, sarkozy, france, kim jong il, kim jong un, china, un, un security council, global development news

 

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/06/200966124659929919.html

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