Category Archives: Security

Celebrating Independence In Al Anbar, Iraq

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

Al Anbar Province, Iraq, in Summer 2007. Photo: Heath Hansen.

Heath Hansen
U.S. Army

Even though it was only 0500, the heat was already approaching the high 90’s and I could feel my sticky uniform only too well, sandwiched between skin and body armor. The Humvee engines were idling and the smell of JP-8 fuel stung my nostrils. “Hansen, 2nd platoon’s electronic warfare vehicle is down. We’ll need you in the lead element for the mission. You’re truck commander.”

“Roger, sir,” I replied to my platoon leader, “My truck’s ready, I’ll let the crew know.” More than four years had passed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and we were still trying to secure independence for this country. It was the summer of 2007, in Anbar Province, and my company was headed out for another assignment in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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Brainwashing, Police Guards and Coercive Internment: Evidence from Chinese Government Documents about the Nature and Extent of Xinjiang’s “Vocational Training Internment Camps”

Posted on by Adrian Zenz

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

The women were kept in their classroom behind a gated metal fence. From Figure 6, below. Source: anonymous informant.

Adrian Zenz
Independent Researcher

Introduction

In the wake of growing international criticism, the Chinese government has sought to counter human rights accusations over its re-education and internment campaign in Xinjiang through an elaborate propaganda campaign. This campaign portrays the region’s network of so-called “Vocational Skills Education Training Centers” (zhiye jineng jiaoyu peixun zhongxin 职业技能教育培训中心) as benign training institutions that offer persons who committed minor offenses a gracious and beneficial alternative to formal prosecution. Since late 2018, the state has invited media and official representatives from other nations and even from the western media to participate in official and closely-chaperoned tours of a select number of “showcase” centers.[1]

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Geopolitics and the Western Pacific: An Interview with Leszek Buszynski

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The book cover of Geopolitics and the Western Pacific: China, Japan and the US, by Dr. Leszek Buszynski. Routledge, 2019.

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2019

This interview with Dr. Leszek Buszynski, author of Geopolitics and the Western Pacific: China, Japan and the U.S. (Routledge, 2019), took place by email with Dr. Anders Corr between May 31 and June 12.

Anders: What are some of your recommendations in the book?

Leszek: The recommendations are in the final chapter and have been written from the perspective of Australia as a a middle power and ally of the US.  Basically, the U.S. relies excessively on military power to counter China but this is creating the fear of a US-China clash in the region from which China benefits, particularly within ASEAN.  Scuttling the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was a mistake because it is a way of bringing together the states of the region into cooperation with the U.S., Japan and Australia in a way which would offset Chinese influence.

Anders: Don’t you think that China is also creating fear with its military buildup? Wouldn’t countries like Japan and South Korea be even more fearful if they did not have the U.S. military there to protect them?

Leszek: This is not the issue, the answer is of course. But without a broader US presence in the region, one that is not just military based, regional countries such as those in ASEAN would feel the pressure to gravitate to China.  China has a way of undermining the U.S. presence and its alliance system by playing on regional fears of conflict and instability, the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte is a case in point. America has to counteract that. Continue reading →

China’s Concentration Camps Are A Test For The International Community

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 5, May 2019 

Barbed wire sky. Source: Darigold Bokeh via Flickr.

Nijat Turghun
Stockholm University

It’s now no secret that in East Turkistan, the oppression has reached a the boiling point.  Since China’s occupation in 1949, an entire people are going through an unimaginably cruel process, in which Uyghurs and other groups are being pared from their original identity. Their culture, language, values, tradition and religion have been regarded as a poisonous barrier for China’s new project: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). To fulfill the final mission China set up of concentration camps in East Turkistan, where people are being tortured, indoctrinated, abused and brainwashed again and  again because they barely belong to what Beijing considers risky groups, including simple communities of faith or people with family abroad. People outside the camps are not free, and every 100 meters people must be checked by Chinese policemen. Video cameras on the street continuously report one’s movement and at home people are obliged to welcome Han Chinese guests who have been sent by the Chinese government for ‘’good intention’’. They impose themselves into Uyghur homes, where they eat and live together with Uyghur families. If any religious or other “risky” things or behaviors are discovered they will be placed in concentration camps.

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Block China With An Independent East Turkistan

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 5, May 2019 

Uyghur protest Berlin, July 2009. Source: Claudia Himmelreich via Wikimedia Commons.

Rukiye Turdush
Uyghur Research Institute

People of East Turkistan, called Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party, have endured the long and oppressive colonisation of China for many years. Although China did not round up people of East Turkistan and shoot them with machine guns in front of the world, they have locked them up and are eliminating them one by one in concentration camps. [1]

Every Uyghur living outside China is searching and asking for the location of their disappeared family members.  Uyghur girls are forced to marry Han Chinese as a part of their gene washing policy. Uyghur children are forcibly removed from their families as Chinese officials with genocidal intention proclaim, “cut the lineage, cut the roots, cut the connection.” [2]

Around three million Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslims are currently locked up in concentration camps and are being subjected to torture and death.[3] The religion, culture and identity of Muslims in East Turkistan are now entirely banned. The world has remained silent in its moral obligation to do something about this tragedy.

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