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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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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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Internal newsletter of 'The Hindu' circulated to millions of readers on 21 May
Early today morning, millions of folks who read today's (May 21) edition of 'The Hindu' starting from the backpage like I do (National Readership Survey 2006 - Over 4 million people read 'The Hindu') would immediately tried to contact their newspaper vendor asking him why he had delivered an internal newsletter rather than the daily edition they were expecting. The newspaper vendor would obviously protest and ask everyone not to shoot the messenger.
The news item that would have confused a lot of people is "Vidya Ram tops class at Columbia University's journalism school". The news item was not attributed to any source/agency.
While I congratulate Ms. Vidya Ram's achievement at The Journalism School, Columbia University, I don't see why it should feature prominently in a newspaper, especially my favourite newspaper.
From what I've seen, other achievements by Indian students at various universities across the world are typically reported in 2-3 sentences on some page that people seldom get to. I'd love to see 'The Hindu' prominently report such achievements for children or relatives of people other than the owners, proprietors, editors, etc.
Labels: hindu, newspaper, the hindu
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'The Hindu' has been my favourite/preferred newspaper for more than 15 years now, to the extent that I was subscribed to the newspaper's international edition when I was studying in Singapore. I've stuck with it despite its overly pro-communist stand, primarily because of the quality of the content rather than the stand taken.
Yet, the newspaper's editorial on January 1, 2007 was shocking, to say the least. I know every newspaper/editor has a right to present its point of view, without it necessarily reflecting the views of its vast readership. But this is quite ridiculous. In the context of Mamata Banerjee ending her fast over the proposed Tata Motors factory at Singur, the editorial said (emphasis mine):
Singur is all about context and verifiable fact. There has been a bottled-up demand for industry and consequently industrial land in West Bengal — and the Tata Motors project at Singur is a test case for whether this demand can be met. Under the circumstances, the permanent government of the State has made it clear that it will consolidate and strengthen its agrarian base but will diversify into industry as well.A newspaper has no business to assert that an elected (assuming that Communist governments are indeed elected) state government is a permanent one, despite being in power for nearly 30 years now.
Surely the newspaper has gone overboard in its support of the government in Bengal. The newspaper needs to publish an apology immediately, for insulting the intelligence of the voters of West Bengal. There's a vast difference between kowtowing and providing an objective editorial slant.
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