Comments on: Al Qaeda to Fight China

By: jay

jay — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:55:37 +0000

all your accusations against china is absurd trash from the media..

ive personally being living and working in china for 11 years and have being to urumqi city 2 times so i know whats going on.

The uighurs are not mistreated!!i repeat that! The goverment gives them priority healthcare, education and they have the right to have as many children as they want and pay no tax.The city has transformed from a few mud huts in the desert to a modern metropolis with a skyline better than miami in less than 20 years. So its like giving them food and home and then them taking your house and killing you.
Uighurs have a bad reputation in all the cities around china because stereotypically their main occupations are selling kebabs and forming gangs roaming the streets attacking people. A bit like the disadvantaged african americans (no offense to anyone). And NO!! the goverment doesnt opress them like the media claims, but they are disadvantaged because there mandarin skill is poor and their cultural beliefs are totally different to the mainstream.

I believe that people who have not being there should not make judgement on something they only seen on fox news or tv.

Like everything else in china they will take care of al qeuda with no delay.

By: ermintrude

ermintrude — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:11:52 +0000

Al-Q will not know what hit them (repeatedly and with great and savage force) should they start targeting citizens of the PRC. Expect no mercy, jihadi.

By: Comstock

Comstock — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:04:19 +0000

This is interesting if true. Muslims are generally weird and they have always tread warily around China. Lefty, Russky, bolshies have translocated huge numbers of muslims in the past. Putin supposedly threatened to flush islam down the toilet of history yet the muslims still invited him to a standing ovation in Tehran a few years back.
Who says our trendy internationale lawyers, in rural Sussex, have it all their own way!

By: Left-Liberal Hawk

Left-Liberal Hawk — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:36:19 +0000

William – I wasnt trying to say that whatever Locke says is true but just that the right to self-determination is widely accepted as self-evident amongst liberal-democratic discourse – like the right to free speech. I thought that would be enough without me needing to go back to basics to try to justify the basis for that right. On the basis that you support the democratic principle the onus is on you, not me, to justify why if a clear majority in province/sub-state region X, want self-government for X they are not entitled to it. Denial of such a right is prima facie undemocratic.

It is hard to give an exhaustive definition of a “nation” or a “people” who are entitled to self-determination or statehood and I’m not going to try but definitional issues and difficulties in fixing boundaries do not negate the basid principle. By analogy, most people agree that there are limits to freedom of speech (around defamation and incitement) but the difficulty in presicely identifiying such limits does not render then invalid.

Your point that there is no “right” to self-determination is at best (for you) highly contested and contentious and at worst plain wrong and inconsistent with your own (presumed) belief in democracy. Why should the citizens of an arbitrary nation-state have the right to self-governance but the citizens of a clear region within it not.

By: William

William — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:08:54 +0000

So a group has a right to self government (because Locke says so). Now, how big does a group have to be to have that right? Yorkshire? Maybe. My street? Well, why not. Me & a friend? Sure. Me? No, I’m not a group.

That’s the problem with giving rights to “groups” – you haven’t defined a group in any meaningful way, and probably can’t. So the issue of self-determination isn’t one of rights, but of practicalities. Now, the Uighurs may be – as a practical matter – better off as a separate nation (though probably not); but the pressure for this comes from the Chinese having no respect for their rights as individuals.

So my point is that the “right” to self-determination doesn’t exist; but that was all.

By: Left-Liberal Hawk

Left-Liberal Hawk — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:41:01 +0000

“Let’s say the people of Yorkshire wanted to break away and form their own state” Somehow I dont think the rest of the country would object.

By: Clap Hammer

Clap Hammer — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:18:23 +0000

Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network has taken up the cause of China’s Muslim Uighur minority with a pledge to attack Chinese workers in northwestern Africa in retaliation for mistreatment by Beijing of its largest Muslim minority.

Oh dear.

I hope that they don’t. (snigger).

By: Technology Slice

Technology Slice — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:41:25 +0000

As usual they are just chiming in with useless rhetoric.

By: andy newman

andy newman — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:06:02 +0000

“Regions and regional minorities have a right to self government.”

Has anyone told France?

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:40:38 +0000

Let’s say the people of Yorkshire wanted to break away and form their own state. To earn legitimacy from the left would depend on timing. If the claim arose during the Queen’s era, then Bennites, Gallowegians and Corbynites would flood Trafalgar Square demanding that all downtrodden Yorkies be freed from the imperial yoke. If the demand however arose during the era of The British People’ Republic, then the above mentioned forces would still be in what used to be called Trafalgar Square demanding that all Yorkies be severely punished for threatening to split the Motherland. Yorkies! If that’s what you want, get your demands in now.