I've been compiling pubicity material for St Gallicus for much of the day and had resolved to have a night off blogging. Then I got an email from ChinaAid to the effect that Gulinuer, wife of imprisoned Uyghur Christian Alimujiang Yimiti from Xinjiang Province, has made a request.
Yimiti was jailed for revealing state secrets. Former British diplomat Tim Collard, who has worked in China, put this in context last year:
"revealing State secrets"...that’s pretty serious. It’s hardly a sign of tyranny – you get prosecuted for that over here. The problem is that, under Chinese law, any information which has not been specifically released by the government’s information office is a state secret. The great dissident Wei Jingsheng got 15 years in 1979 for revealing that China was fighting a war with Vietnam, although many Chinese families had already found this out the hard way.
Gulinuer's request is simple: pray. Click her photo to see a video of her request, or click here to read the text of her petition for prayer. (And click on the photo of Alimujiang at the bottom to read about governmental persecution of Chinese house churches in general.)
Nothing's ever simple - for example, Collard suggests that one of the reasons Yimiti was put on trial was to stave of Al Qaeda sabre rattling; he had converted to Christianity from Islam in 1995. Prayer might not always bring injustice to an end in and of itself, but its always a good place to start from. Let's start something.
Where is the medical research that says that being bi-polar impairs your judgement as to what is right and what is wrong? Do you think that if I decided to go out now on the streets and start dealing drugs when I end up in court I could say to the judge; "Oh please your honour, I didn't know what I was doing- as I have bi-polar!" It is a pathetic excuse and can never be used in a court of law to excuse a crime.
This was, curiously, posted on a football website, about the execution on 29 December of Akmal Shaikh in China for bringing 4kg of heroin into the country, having been allegedly "duped" by a chap in Poland. I don't personally have a problem with believing that: a friend's son was offered a wad of money to take a package from A to B and, having been stopped by the police, found that the "easy money" had been payment for his being stupid enough to transport a class-A drug. So he served his time in prison: paid the price, you might say, according to the law of the land he was arrested in.
What the fellow says in the quote at the top of the page isn't all that far off-target, but where I take issue is with the phrase "pathetic excuse" as part of a description of a serious mental illness, one that I have myself. I prefer the more measured reasoning of the Telegraph's Richard Edwards:
The episodes [of extreme mood swings] can last several weeks or months and at worst can include psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions that one has special powers or abilities...There is debate in legal circles as to whether those affected can claim it as a defence to their actions because bipolar [disorder] affects mood rather than cognition, and therefore does not necessarily affect a person’s ability to know right from wrong.
Shaikh's supporters pointed to the lyrics of a song for world peace inviting a rabbit to pray with him as proof of his mental illness, and even Reprieve, the prisoners' human rights charity, called the song "bizarre" and "terrible". But if insipid songs voiced by grandiose personalities indicated serious mental illness, there'd be still more pop stars on medication than there presently are - even among the hubris-scarred Live Aid veterans, whose pomposity was outdone only by the scale of the hair and shoulderpads. (Actually, Syd Barrett produced some rather brilliant stuff in the florid phase of his illness.)
While I was in hospital and in the grip of a delusion that was urging me to break the law, a psychiatrist advised me that should I do so then my treatment would continue in prison, and that was enough to keep me on the right side of the law. The same principle has applied here in reverse: Shaikh broke the law not just in China but in its Xinjian Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the treatment of Christians such as Alimujiang Yimiti, bravely exposed by ChinaAid, show that compassion there is especially a stranger in a strange land.
All of this is no comfort to the Shaikh family who, presumably through no fault of their own, have lost their loved one. It might be worth noting, though, that in the UK, the 4kg of heroin he was carrying would be worth £40,000 ($63,700) at current prices before it was cut with potentially lethal contaminants to make it go further and earn up to ten times as much.
So should China have executed Akmal Shaikh? You could say that what he was carrying in his suitcase, knowingly or not, was as life-destroying as a bus ploughing through a crowd; like a suicide-bomb in slow motion. I cannot find myself condemning China for the move, but that doesn't mean we can become less suspicious towards the murderous tiger, whose colonial claws are already gripping swathes of Africa, nor can we pretend not to see the abuses towards its own citizens who may be members of house-churches that don't officially exist, or perhaps aren't even born yet. SPUC director John Smeaton highlights our own complicity in this:
The UNFPA's participation in China's forced abortion one-child policy is well-documented. Furthermore, when Colin Powell (a supporter of abortion) was US Secretary of State, the State Department verified the pro-life Population Research Institute’s allegations that the UNFPA was cooperating with China's coercive abortion programme...The UK government gave over 40 million US dollars to the "regular funds contributions" of UNFPA in 2007 (the latest report available), about 10% of the total income China received in regular donations from over 180 countries worldwide.
Presumably the diplomatic and political row over the execution of Akmal Shaikh will lumber on as China saves face while Gordon Brown searches for a figleaf to cover the intellectual, moral and political paucity of his position; and meanwhile, the products of the Afghan opium fields alone kill 100,000 people a year - the equivalent of over 1900 executions daily. Where are the wailing politicians?
Uighurs (sometimes spelt "Uyghurs" in Latin script, and pronounced "wee-ghurs") don't seem to have their problems to seek right now. Having rioted against the Han Chinese in Urumqi, capital of Xinjian Uighur Autonomous Region - whose numbers, explains Malcolm Moore, the Telegraph's Shanghai correspondent, have risen from 6% of the region's population when Mao set up the People's Republic in 1949 to 40% now - they were prevented from attending Mosque on Friday, and will not be allowed to mourn their dead according to the Chinese custom, a week after death.
The Chinese constitution contains a guarantee of freedom of religion for ethnic minorities. However, the Chinese Communist Party, aware of the role that the Catholic Church played in undermining Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, is suspicious of organized religious activity.
Although I'm unable to get details of how the Roman Catholic Church in Xinjiang is getting on right now, there has been evidence for some time of oppression of Chistians generally in the region, who have to worship in house churches.
Most recently, according to ChinaAid, Beitun House Church, in the A'Ler Tai area of Xinjiang, was raided resulting in the arrest of eight Christians, including two Chinese-American missionaries. Two were released, the missionaries are missing, and four are being held in an undisclosed location. Alimujiang Yimiti, who I repored last year to have been arrested for being a Christian, is sill in prison, despite the local Public Security Bureau having declared "insufficient evidence" to prove that he was "endangering national security, namely instigating separatism and stealing, penetrating, purchasing and illegally providing state secrets or intelligence for overseas organisations and individuals".
Alimujiang's crime is in fact twofold. Firstly, he converted some years ago from Islam to Chritanity, in a region where, in the trial of Christian Lou Yuanqi last December (accused of "utilizing superstition to undermine the law"), the judge acknowledged that Christians were persecuted in the region,but added: "If the Christians have more religious freedom in areas outside Xinjiang, they should consider leaving Xinjiang because Xinjiang is special".
Secondly, Alimujiang belongs to one of many house churches, whereas an undated statement on the PRC's embassy in the US states that "there are no house churches in China".
Last November, when Muslim Uighur Arzigul Turzun was abducted by the state for being pregnant with her third child and was going to be subjected to a forced abortion, two US Congressmen, Chris Smith and Joe Pitts, came forward to organise an international campaign. She was released. Days ago, in response to the riots, The Progressive published an article called Xinjiang Riots Crucial Test for Chinese Regime, in which it bemoaned
the painfully measured U.S. response to the Xinjiang violence, in which it says it is 'deeply concerned,' is 'trying to sort out . . . the facts' and calls 'on all sides to exercise restraint.'
That is, at least, a response; while Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is said to have spoken with his Chinese counterpart for an hour on the riots, the British Government has been quiet as a churchmouse.
The Russian foreign ministy, on the other hand, has averred that the riots are an internal matter for the Chinese. And well they might: just as a central matter in the Urumqi riots are Han colonisaton of a region that is Chinese in name only, ethnic Russians, before and during the long, arid day of the USSR, pushed Westward, Eastward and Southward through the empire to give it more of a Russian character.
Over here in the UK, we are seeing the fruits of the Plantation of Ulster with Scottish protestants as the Orange marching season, celebrating the later Battle of the Boyne - whose religious and national boundaries were much more porous than many modern Catholics and Protestants wish to believe - erupts in violence again.
Northern Ireland still has some way to go, but is much improved because of the efforts of Irish, American and British statesmen concerned to preserve its Christian character. The Turks are following the fates of the Uighurs closely because of their shared ethnic and religious roots; Iran is watching because of the latter.
There are an estimated 184 dead and 1800 injured in the Urumqi riots, which would be difficult to minimise, much as China will try. While this may seem to overshadow the ever-present persecution of the region's Christians in the headlines, isn't it time to draw attention to the plight of our suffering brethren?
You can find out more about Alimujiang Yimiti and the many persecuted Christians in China at ChinaAid.
Retaining an interest anabolic steroids as a former drugs-worker, I felt an alarm ringing in my noggin as I read a First Post report on things that could go wrong with the Beijing Olympics. It concludes:
Last year a caterer working for the United States Olympic Committee visited China and was shocked to discover why portions of chicken being sold in supermarkets were so huge: "We had it tested and it was so full of steroids that we never could have given it to athletes," he said. "They all would have tested positive."
This could create some confusion should Olympians fail "dope" tests by testing positive for anabolic steroids, which are all artificial - and strong - versions of testosterone. Add concerns that testing for banned substances is tainted by the "prosecutor's fallacy" (which is an assumption that - in this context - producing a false positive for a dope test is unlikely, therefore innocence is unlikely), and it looks like the process of moving an investigation forward from a failed banned substance test could be fraught with counter-accusations and even litigation.
There are, of course, many other considerations surrounding the Olympics which arise merely from the fact that they are being held in China. It's a famously polluted city, even by the standards of China's measurement of clean air being up to an Air Pollution Index of 100 - twice World Health Organisation's measurement. The API has been pushed down to 95 by the closure of 100 factories and 56 power-plants in the city, the capital of a country whose average hourly wage is $0.57 (29 pence). I don't know if the workers will be paid for their enforced holiday - perhaps one of the 600-plus British public servants who will be attending at a cost of £7m to the taxpayer will think to pose the question. One lives in hope. Sometimes.
The thorny issue of human rights is a thistle that seems not to be getting grasped with any alacrity by any the major TV stations covering the Olympics despitethe demonstrations that greeted the Olympic Torch - first carried in Adolph Hitler's 1936 Olympics in another totalitarian nation - as it was carried, surrounded by Chinese élite police, through the nation's capitals. In our own capital, the Chinese officers clashed at points with British bobbies. Take, for just one of many examples, the case of Alimujiang Yimiti, who is currently detained for the crime of being a Christian. Not that visiting journalists in Beijing are guaranteed to find it easy to get details about Yamiti or others on the internet - despite promises to the contrary, which helped Beijing secure the games, the Chinese are now cracking down on freedom to access international websites reporting human rights abuses there by reinstating the great firewall of China. (As it happens, access to Amnesty International has at present been restored to China, but using the verification tool at the bottom of this post confirms that many Falun Gong sites are still banned. I should note, however, that another site has stopped verifiying sites as the increasing complexity of censorship measures make it difficult to give a definite result.)
Possibly the most egregious abuse of human rights in China is their government's throwaway - literally - attittude to children. The one child rule doesn't just lead to enforced abortions and infanticide in maternity hospitals, but an undesirable child - often so for merely being a girl - will often end up in an orphanage so that the parents can try for a boy and still be within the one-child rule. One report states:
Child-care workers reportedly selected unwanted infants and children for death by intentional deprivation of food and water a process known among the workers as the “summary resolution” of childrens’ alleged medical problems. When an orphan chosen in this manner was visibly on the point of death from starvation or medical neglect, orphanage doctors were then asked to perform medical “consultations” which served as a ritual marking the child for subsequent termination of care, nutrition, and other life-saving intervention. Deaths from acute malnutrition were then, in many cases, falsely recorded as having resulted from other causes, often entirely spurious or irrelevant conditions such as “mental deficiency” and “cleft palate.”
I remember at school I was once a member of a chess club. One boy, known for cheating, tried to get onto the "game ladder" without much success until one day somebody felt sorry for him. The teacher supervising watched the game closely but was inevitably called away, at which point the boy "accidentally" knocked over a piece and replaced it in a more advantageous position. He won the game and got onto the match ladder, which gave him the right to demand a game with anybody three places or less above him. he never lost, and soon the chess club had fallen apart.
If China decides that objective necessity dictate a good showing on the gold medal front to show the superiority of the Chinese way, then it will have a good showing on the gold medal front, and the Olympic games will slowly fade into irrelevance because any use of banned substances discovered will be justified by "it didn't stop the Chinese athlete so and so..." Unless the International Olympic Committee stands up for itself, China will use it as a doormat. And the resulting humble pie won't taste like chicken, with or without added steroids.
In two days' time there will be a trial, where the accused will be found guilty and given six years' imprisonment.
That, at least, is the information which I found in my inbox from a trusted source recently. The trial is to take place in the People's Republic of China, and the accused is called Alimujiang Yimiti. Ethnically, he is an Uyghur from the region of Xinjiang, which borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.
Mr Yimiti is an employee of Xinjiang Jiaerhao Foodstuff Company, which is known in the UK as Jirehouse. He was arrested in a swoop by Kashi Municipal Bureau for Ethnic Religious Affairs in September 2007, and charged with "illegal religious infiltration activities". He has also been accused of "endangering national security, namely instigating separatism and stealing, penetrating, purchasing and illegaly providing state secrets or intelligence for overseas organisations and individuals".
The latter crime carries the death sentence - presumably the family are meant to breathe a sigh of relief when the 6-year tarriff was announced. Like many around the world, I await with interest evidence regarding the charge of endangering national security; while the "illegal religious infiltration activities" appears to refer to Mr Yimiti's conversion from Islam to Christianity.
Although China is officially atheist, the situation seems to be that it tolerates some religions - but not others; and some ethnicities - but not others. It appears that Christians in Xinjiang who are of the Han ethnicity - which comprises almost 92% of Chinese - are released relatively quickly, as opposed to Uyghur Christians; whereas the ethnicities website of The National Office for teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language does not recognise the presence of Christians at any time in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region; Christians are neither recognised as being in Xinjiang in the statement on the website of the Chinese Embassy in the US dealing with US charges on religious freedom.
It's not for me to cast aspersions on the Chinese justice system, I merely hope that the justices take into account concerns of the international community that Christians are being heavily leant on at the moment in the run-up to this year's Olympic Games, in the fear that Chinese people may succumb to proselytisation. I don't know what they're concerned about - after a typical Friday night out in Glasgow, I would be accosted by various evangelists, Mormons and Hari-Krishnas: I'd have a few words with them, politely refuse their books, and go home.
I hope that this trial ends well for Mr Yimiti so that the many people throughout the world who wish to enjoy the Olympics can rest assured that their countries can send athletes of whatever religious or political persuasion to the Games to be judged by their performance and not by their thoughts.
If anybody who is unsettled by Mr Yimiti's story wishes to respectfully contact Chinese representatives after having investigated further, I supply the following information based on feedback I have received on this blog's readership.
UK:
Her Excellency Ms Fu Ying Ambassador Embassy to the People's Republic of China to the UK 49-51 Portland Place London W1N 1JL
If you speak Chinese and wish to register your concern, you could contact Committee Chief Director and CCP Secretary Wang Chun Fu of Kashi Region Nationality and Religious Affairs on:
+86 998-2823681
also Kashi People's Municipal Court, on +86 998-2822604.
Whatever language you speak, I'm sure that you are, in this Olympic year, free to write to:
Minister of Justice Ms Wu Aiying Ministry of Justice 10 Nan Da Jie Chaoyangmen Beijing City 100020 People's Republic of China
As a non-sporty person whose sports intake consists of watching the Olympics every four years, I hope this can be resolved before the Games start, so that I can feel able to watch the proceedings, and catch a glimpse of modern China.
The Draughty Old Fen, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
An incurable old cyber-grumpy, I like good music, cats, bacon sarnies and anything to do with Terry Wogan. Raining on ideological parades is the cream in the coffee.
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r click here to read the text of her petition for prayer. (And click on the photo of Alimujiang at the bottom to read about governmental persecution of Chinese house churches in general.)
transport a class-A drug. So he served his time in prison: paid the price, you might say, according to the law of the land he was arrested in.
