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China's national newspaper took a while, didn't it?
A week ago, fierce riots erupted in Urumqi (or Urumchi or however you want to pronounce it), forcing Hu Jintao to return home from the G8 summit in Italy. Perhaps the President wasn't too sure if the various administrative, governance, police & riot control mechanisms would work. Or maybe he just wanted to send a strong message across ...
In any case, I kept monitoring "The Hindu"'s editorial section for any mention of the rioting, including the events that led to the rioting involving Uighurs and Han Chinese, the Chinese government's response, etc. But of course, there was no word. Maybe the text of the editorial had been sent to the Chinese government for approval and they were too busy dealing with the problem on hand - just as it happened in March 2008 when there was rioting in Tibet.
Then again, I really didn't expect a mouthpiece to do much better than publish [perhaps verbatim] what the Chinese Embassy's Press Officer had to say.
Interestingly enough, there is a Pakistani angle to this as well. The Xinjiang province (of which Urumqi is the capital) borders Afghanistan & Pakistan. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Pakistan-based terror organizations have provided training to Uyghur organizations which have been opposing the Chinese government's policies in Xinjiang, including the mass influx of Han Chinese in the area. Further, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that in 2001, thousands of Uighurs were trained and recruited by the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in order to fight in Kashmir.
China has, for a while now, been stepping up pressure on Pakistan to do something about the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement and Eastern Turkestan Liberation Organization and had in fact sent Pakistan a list of terrorists from those organizations that it wanted to be investigated & prosecuted.
Perhaps some Pakistani government officer, who saw the words 'list', 'investigate', 'prosecute' & 'terrorism', thought that this was in fact India's list of 20, and immediately forwarded it to the department head with the note 'Most urgent' where it sat collecting dust until Asif Ali Zardari got a polite call from Hu Jintao last week.
Labels: china, pakistan, riots, terrorism, the hindu, uighurs, urumqi, xinjiang
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Can North Korea withdraw from the United Nations?
Over the weekend, North Korea launched missile tests with the aim of sending out a message to the USA, Japan and South Korea. The United Nations Security Council promptly condemned the tests but there hasn't yet been any threat of sanctions, etc.
In 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in 2006, announced that it had conducted a nuclear test.
It is quite well known that China comes to North Korea's aid everytime Pyongyang shoots itself in the foot. There probably are economic sanctions imposed against North Korea under UN rules. So if North Korea withdraws from the United Nations, would the sanctions apply any longer? If North Korea had been receiving aid under some UN programme, that aid would be cancelled. But again, surely China would help out in some way or the other.
But the larger question is "Does a country have the right to withdraw from the UN treaty?" According to the entry on Wikipedia, there is no such provision.
But really what stops any country from doing so? Articles 3 and 4 of Chapter II of the UN charter only reference the original member states and how membership of the UN is open to "all other peace-loving states" which accept the obligations etc. etc. So if North Korea declared that it was not a peace-loving state, is that reason enough to withdraw from the UN?
Labels: china, missile test, north korea, united nations
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Mouthpiece Mouthpiece Mouthpiece
Read what the mouthpiece (N Ram) of the mouthpiece (The Hindu) of the mouthpiece (Xinhua) of China has to say about Tibet.
Labels: china, the hindu, tibet
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In November 2006, China's Ambassador to India confirmed what everyone knew: China still laid claim to Arunachal Pradesh. That he did it a few days before Hu Jintao's visit to India made his claim even more brazenly un-diplomatic.
If we thought the last couple of years has seen some improvement in relations over the border dispute, it is time think again. Going by news reports, earlier this month, Chinese troops intruded 1 km inside of Indian territory across the China-Sikkim border.
The Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha had called for an indefinite bandh in the Darjeeling area to up the ante over their demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland. The bandh resulted in a blockade on a national highway which is pretty much Sikkim's only road link with the rest of the country.
While it is not clear how long ago China's incursion happened and indeed if it is related to Sikkim being cut-off, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it recurring especially of the blockade of the highway continues. In fact, External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, was in China in early June. If at all China had intruded into Sikkim then, they're basically asking India to go take a hike on the border dispute.
In this context, it is impossible to agree to Subramanian Swamy's plea in his article in 'The Hindu' yesterday that the two sides must look beyond the border issue. The maxim, with China, must always be "Don't trust, verify". In addition, I think India lost a golden opportunity to arm-twist China when there was large-scale rioting in Tibet. Earlier this year, when the monks wanted to go across the border on the anniversary of the uprising against the Chinese government, India should have let them go. The argument should have been that if China considered Tibet to be part of China, there should be nothing wrong in letting Chinese citizens go back to their homeland! That would have potentially given India a lot of leverage.
But, India ended up sucking-up bigtime with China, possibly in the hope that this would result in better relations and progress on the border dispute. Obviously China saw it differently!
On a side note, I really wonder why 'The Hindu' gives so much space to non-entities like Subramaniam Swamy or Veerappa Moily. Almost on a daily basis quotes, articles & comments from them end up in this newspaper. The other person is Deve Gowda, but at least he is a former PM and is still a major power centre in Karnataka. I don't even know when was the last time Swamy or Moily won a Lok Sabha or Legislative Assembly election!
Labels: arunachal pradesh, border, china, dispute, india, sikkim, the hindu
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'The Hindu' looks the other way, as usual
I've been tracking the 'Letters to the editor' section of "The Hindu" for a week now, and to the best of my knowledge there has not been a single letter published on the rioting in Tibet.
See the 'Letters to the Editor' on 13 March, 14 March, 15 March, 17 March, 18 March, 19 March and 20 March.
Is it a case of censorship, due to the China angle, or did none of the newspaper's readers write a letter?
Labels: china, newspaper, riots, the hindu, tibet
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China's ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, emphatically told CNN-IBN a couple of days ago that China still considered Arunachal Pradesh to be part of China.
In our position the whole of what you call the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory and Tawang (district) is only one place in it and we are claiming all of that-that's our position.President Hu Jintao (yes, him!) is visiting India shortly. "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai" part II is being played out on TV, in newspapers, etc. So, it seems a very odd time for that sort of comment to emerge. The ambassador was obviously stating his government's opinion on the issue, and would have had the go-ahead from his bosses to make that statement.
The new Defence Minister was quick to rubbish the ambassador's statement.
Ronald Reagan may have perhaps used the phrase "Trust, but verify" while dealing with Mikhail Gorbachev and the USSR. For India, that phrase should read "Don't trust, verify" when it comes to dealing with China.
I find it very hard to trust China, whether it was on the SARS outbreak or the sudden formation of an artificial lake near the Indo-China border in Himachal.
Updates:
B Raman outlines why he's remained wary of China all these years.
Actually, come to think of it, Sandeep is bang on target: Sun Yuxi should be thrown out!
Labels: china
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