Fred Hiatt

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MundoAsia,

China’s Communist leaders, innovative in so many ways, appear to be perfecting a 21st-century approach to genocide.

With the Beijing Olympics less than three months away, will Coca-Cola and other sponsors of the Games celebrate with China while this is taking place? While, a few hours’ flight due west of the stadiums and ice rinks, an entire people is being slowly, deliberately erased?

We have learned to think of genocide as industrial-scale slaughter: gas chambers, killing fields, mass graves. A report published last week by the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, “To Make Us Slowly Disappear,” suggests that China may have found a different way, more insidious if no less monstrous.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Chinese flag flutters near the Olympic rings on the Olympic Tower in Beijing on Nov. 11. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

MundoAsia, ,

China’s Communist leaders, innovative in so many ways, appear to be perfecting a 21st-century approach to genocide.

With the Beijing Olympics less than three months away, will Coca-Cola and other sponsors of the Games celebrate with China while this is taking place? While, a few hours’ flight due west of the stadiums and ice rinks, an entire people is being slowly, deliberately erased?

We have learned to think of genocide as industrial-scale slaughter: gas chambers, killing fields, mass graves. A report published last week by the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, “To Make Us Slowly Disappear,” suggests that China may have found a different way, more insidious if no less monstrous.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Chinese government blocks most foreign journalists from reporting from Xinjiang. This photo from 2018 shows a fortress-like middle school in Kashgar. (Ng Han Guan/AP)

MundoAsia,

At first, when a few brave journalists at Radio Free Asia began alerting the world to the terrible events unfolding in western China, China’s Communist rulers denied that anything at all was taking place.

Then, when satellite photos and survivor testimony became too overwhelming, the regime admitted that, yes, there are camps. But not concentration camps! Those are … vocational schools! Pay no attention to the barbed wire and guard towers.

Now, even as it maintains its increasingly threadbare lies, the regime is intensifying the third phase of genocide denial: attacking the truth-tellers.

More than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are being held in China’s brutal camps.…  Seguir leyendo »

Uyghur protesters hold signs during a demonstration against China in Istanbul on Thursday. (Tolga Bozoglu/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

MundoAsia, , ,

Coca-Cola chairman James Quincey recently slammed the state of Georgia for its new election law. “We all have a duty to protect everyone’s right to vote, and we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the U.S.”, he said.

Across the U.S. — and no further?

As Western businesses prepare to salute China at the Beijing Winter Olympics next February, the chairman of the China-Britain Business Council offered an all-purpose explanation of why it’s okay to do business with the Communists who are committing genocide 1,600 miles west of the ski slopes and skating rinks.…  Seguir leyendo »

The site of the Grand Mosque in Wusu, Xinjiang, in 2017 and 2019

MundoAsia,

In China, every day is Kristallnacht.

Eighty-one years ago this week, in what is also known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” hundreds of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in Nazi Germany were damaged or destroyed, along with thousands of Jewish-owned businesses. It was in a sense the starting gun for the genocide that culminated in the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka.

In western China, the demolition of mosques and bulldozing of cemeteries is a continuing, relentless process.

In a cultural genocide with few parallels since World War II, thousands of Muslim religious sites have been destroyed. At least 1 million Muslims have been confined to camps, where aging imams are shackled and young men are forced to renounce their faith.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt interviewed President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul on April 7. A translation and transcript of President Lee's remarks were provided by his staff:

Q: What do you hope to accomplish on your trip to Washington?

A: I think President Obama convening the very first nuclear summit meeting in Washington, D.C., is very significant. . . . I believe it's going to contribute a lot to bringing about global security and safety, especially [as] we are all concerned about the development of, let's say, small, suitcase-sized nuclear weapons, because the threat is very real that these materials or weapons can proliferate to terrorist organizations or rogue states, so to speak.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

Tanya Lokshina did not set out to put her life in danger as a human rights campaigner in Russia.

A decade ago she was earning an advanced degree in comparative literature at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., comparing Bulgakov and Molière. To make some extra cash, and taking advantage of her fluency in Russian and English, she took a job helping to catalog the Andrei Sakharov archives, then housed at Brandeis.

One thing led to another, and Lokshina, 35, found herself back in her native Moscow as deputy director for Human Rights Watch. What started as a sidelight has become, though Lokshina is not so presumptuous as to say so, a vocation.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Chee Soon Juan spent much of Friday in court. Nothing unusual in that. An opposition leader in Singapore, Chee spends quite a few days in prison and, when he's not in prison, quite a few more in court, as a defendant.

Singapore's ruling party has been in charge for a half-century -- since self-rule began in 1959 -- and the opposition Singapore Democratic Party has never mustered more than three seats in Parliament.

This may be because everyone in Singapore is happy with life. It might also have something to do with the fact that few people would want to live the life of Chee Soon Juan, the SDP's secretary general.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Almost a year ago, a Buddhist monk on the run from authorities published an op-ed in The Post advocating democracy for his Southeast Asian nation of Burma.

"It matters little if my life or the lives of colleagues should be sacrificed on this journey," U Gambira wrote, describing the nonviolent campaign for freedom. "Others will fill our sandals, and more will join and follow."

As he wrote, the regime already had arrested his father and brother, holding them as hostages to flush him out. It found and arrested him on the same day -- Nov. 4 -- that his article appeared.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

As Russian forces loot and occupy a neighboring state, conscripting Georgian civilians at gunpoint to sweep their city streets, it's not uncommon, in Moscow or in Washington, to find America at fault.

Russia has gone over to the dark side -- or, in the Moscow version, has finally stood up for itself -- in understandable reaction to U.S. disrespect, according to this view. And the next president should learn a lesson from this: that there are limits to how far Russia can or should be pushed.

This narrative of American provocation cites a long list of grievances, but the principal and original sin is NATO expansion.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

A smart idea to shake up U.S. policy and reach out to the Iranian people is being debated in Washington, but the debate isn't taking place within or between the presidential campaigns. It's going on inside the Bush administration.

Senior officials at the State Department and beyond are mulling a proposal to open an interest section in Tehran, similar to the one the United States has operated in Havana since 1977. This would fall short of full diplomatic recognition, but it would open a channel to the Iranian people and, maybe, eventually, to the regime as well.

The idea has been under discussion for close to two years and could be adopted within weeks -- though officials continue to worry about how to package such a proposal without having it appear, one said, "as a sign of weakness."…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

When a parent abuses or neglects a child, government steps in to offer protection. But who steps in when government abuses or neglects its people?

Nearly three years ago, the United Nations announced an answer to that question: It would. At a summit celebrating the organization's 60th birthday, 171 nations agreed that they would intervene, forcefully if necessary, if a state failed to protect its own people. The action was seen as both a sign of remorse for the failure to stop genocide in Rwanda and a rebuke to the United States and its unilateral ways.

"I'm delighted that the responsibility to protect, a Canadian idea, now belongs to the world," said Canada's prime minister at the time, Paul Martin.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

On a recent visit to Italy, President Vladimir Putin was asked about a Russian newspaper report that he was divorcing his wife of many years to marry a 24-year-old rhythmic gymnast famous in Russia for her lithe beauty.

Putin denied the report in his usual charming way, scolding the media "with their snotty noses and their erotic fantasies." Then the newspaper that published the rumor was shut down.

Or, to be more precise, the newspaper that published the rumor, in a paroxysm of self-loathing and czar-love, shut itself down. And a few days later, just to make sure, the lower house of parliament, or Duma, approved a law, by a vote of 339 to 1, allowing authorities to shutter any other newspaper that dared to print such reports again.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalOrden Mundial

The official White House photo caption revealed the administration's wishful thinking.

"President George W. Bush meets with seven leaders of pro-democracy political parties and NGOs from Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe," the caption declared, "during their visit Thursday, Dec. 6, 2007, to the Oval Office."

Such a meeting did indeed take place. But "the last dictatorship in Europe"? With Vladimir Putin having mocked democracy in a sham election in Russia just five days earlier, the well-worn phrase sounded almost antique. The relatively inconsequential nation of Belarus may have appeared, not so long ago, as an outlier, ruled by a buffoonish former collective-farm chairman who failed to understand that freedom's tide soon would wash him away.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Last Thursday, U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari looked sure to be slinking out of Burma in humiliating failure. The secretive general who runs that Southeast Asian nation had kept Gambari cooling his heels for six days, finally refusing to talk to him. Any semblance of a U.N.-sponsored diplomatic process seemed about to sputter to an undignified close.

Then Gambari, and the diplomatic process, too, found an unlikely rescuer: Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the democratic forces in Burma and daughter of Burma's independence hero. Having been escorted under police guard to a meeting with Gambari from the house arrest where she has spent the past 4 1/2 years -- and most of the past two decades -- she gave Gambari a statement to read on her behalf once he reached Singapore.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso

Imagine what the Armenian diaspora might have accomplished had it worked as hard for democracy in Armenia as it did for congressional recognition of the genocide Armenians suffered nearly a century ago. It's even possible that modern Armenia would be as democratic as modern Turkey.

The Armenian American community notched a political victory last week when the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27 to 21 for a resolution demanding that the U.S. government officially acknowledge that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenian people early in the 20th century. The Turkish government insists that, while terrible things happened, there was no genocide.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

An upheaval like the pro-democracy uprising taking place in Burma over the past month tends to shake up certainties that had seemed self-evident. Certainties such as the primacy of justice. Or the sanctity of the Olympic Games.

Despite an academic industry devoted to the subject, no one can predict when an oppressed people will find that precise combination of hopelessness and hope, impatience and solidarity, and recklessness and anger that leads it to rebel. Nor can anyone answer the most important question facing Burma now: When will the boys and men who prop up a corrupt regime with their guns and prison cells decide that they have had enough -- that they no longer want to shoot unarmed Buddhist monks or round up young girls for possession of cellphones with cameras?…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

If Russia is back, why does the Kremlin still seem so insecure?

The economy has steadily grown. President Vladimir Putin remains immensely popular, we are told, and the nation's influence abroad has been restored.

Yet Putin and his minions do not radiate anything like self-confidence. At home, anyone with an independent perspective is treated as an enemy. Abroad, slights are suspected in every encounter, and every interaction is a competition that Russia must win.

Kremlin adviser Igor Shuvalov was in Washington last week speaking to a friendly crowd at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He began with his assessment of the recent Group of Eight summit in Germany: "At the end, I would say that my president would appear as a winner."…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

Who lost Russia? As the world's biggest country backslides ever more quickly into authoritarianism, the answer you hear increasingly is: the United States.

Curiously, you hear it both from Russians, who simultaneously deny that anything bad has happened and blame America for it; and from Americans, who assume that a few tweaks of policy could have made everything come out differently in Moscow.

One version blames America for backing Boris Yeltsin, who presided imperfectly over Russian democracy in the 1990s and so, the story goes, soured Russians on the very idea of freedom. Another blames America for allowing former Soviet satellites to join NATO, hurting Russians' feelings and promoting a nationalist backlash.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Japan has embarked on a path no developed nation has ever followed -- of sustained and inexorable population decline.

Japan won't be alone, of course. Italy, Russia, South Korea and many others also will get smaller. The United States is the exception among advanced nations, and not only thanks to immigration; its overall birth rate is higher, too.

But Japan, which shrank by about 21,000 last year, is in the forefront, and so everyone else will be watching. Does population decline inevitably sap vitality and doom a country to genteel poverty? Or is there some way out?

"Japan is the leader, so it's important for Japan to show success," says Hitoshi Suzuki, a cheerful senior researcher at Daiwa Institute of Research, who pronounces himself "not so worried" -- so not worried, in fact, that last year he wrote "Population Decline is Not Something We Need to Fear."…  Seguir leyendo »