Sunday, December 04, 2022

UPDATED


Scepticism over scrapping of Iran’s ‘morality police’

It has taken almost three months of protests and the deaths of more than 200 people – including 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested for allegedly failing to wear her hijab properly.

By Jane Bradley
An Iranian woman walks in the street on a rainy day in the capital Tehran, on the day Iran has said it has scrapped its morality police after more than two months of protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest for allegedly violating the country's strict female dress code.

However, Iranian reformists should now be rejoicing at the news that Iran has disbanded its morality police – a section of the police force responsible for ensuring modesty and propriety.

Yet, that is not the case. Protesters and campaigners, who have been fighting against Iran’s strict hijab laws since Ms Amini’s death in September, claim that the apparent reforms taking place in Iran are bogus. They say that the public announcement is timed to prevent a mass call for a nationwide protest in mid-December.

Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, who has been Attorney General since 2016, announced in response to a direct question on Sunday morning that the morality police had been been “shut down from where they were set up”. His comments come just days after he said he was reviewing the law that requires women to cover their heads, describing it as a “phenomenon that hurts everyone's heart”.

People – mainly women – who broke the code could be arrested by the morality police and taken to “re-education centres” – the first of which was set up in 2019 – where they are usually given classes about Islam and the importance of the hijab, and then forced to sign a pledge to abide by the state’s clothing regulations before being released.

Iranian broadcaster Sima Sabet took to social media to express her scepticism.

"Morality police hasn’t been abolished in Iran,” she wrote. “This is a lie to deceive protester and to divide them just before nationwide calls for protests in the next coming days.”

Indeed, Mr Montazeri’s sudden quest for reform is somewhat unexpected.

The lawyer played a key role in detaining and prosecuting protesters and overseeing provincial prosecutors during the nationwide protests in November 2019. He was quoted as saying accused the protesters of being led by “America, Saudi Arabia and Israel” – a sentiment that has been echoed by the authorities in relation to the current round of protests.

Whether or not the reforms are properly implemented will undoubtedly become more clear over the course of the next month.

Activity of ‘morality police’ in Iran terminated


Elnur Baghishov
Read more
Society Materials 4 December 2022 
BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 4. The activity of the ‘morality police’ in Iran has been terminated due to not belonging to the country’s judicial system, Attorney-General of Iran Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said, Trend reports referring to Iranian Media.
Montazeri emphasized that of course, Iran's Judicial System will continue to control the behavior in the country.
The protests in Iranian cities are ongoing, prompted by the death of a 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, allegedly after being beaten by Iran's morality police while in custody for violating the strict hijab-wearing rules. Amini's death on September 16 triggered mass protests in Iran several days later.
Hijab was made mandatory for women in Iran shortly after the country’s 1979 revolution. Women who break the strict dress code risk being arrested by Iran’s morality police. Based on the dress code, women are required to fully cover their hair in public and wear long, loose-fitting clothes.
After the mentioned incident, a wave of protests has taken place in Iran, and the protests now cover various fields, economy, social inequality, ethnic inequality, etc.

Iran abolishes morality police after months-long anti-hijab protests

Iran's Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri announced that the country's morality police has been abolished following months of protests triggered by Mahsa Amini's death.

Agence France-Presse
Tehran,UPDATED: Dec 4, 2022 
Anti-hijab protests swept Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini who died after being in detention by morality police.

By Agence France-Presse: Iran has scrapped its morality police after more than two months of protests triggered by the arrest of Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating the country's strict female dress code, local media said Sunday.

Women-led protests, labelled "riots" by the authorities, have swept Iran since the 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin died on September 16, three days after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran.


"Morality police have nothing to do with the judiciary" and have been abolished, Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

His comment came at a religious conference where he responded to a participant who asked "why the morality police were being shut down", the report said.

The morality police -- known formally as the Gasht-e Ershad or "Guidance Patrol" -- were established under hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to "spread the culture of modesty and hijab", the mandatory female head covering.

The unit began patrols in 2006.

The announcement of their abolition came a day after Montazeri said that "both parliament and the judiciary are working (on the issue)" of whether the law requiring women to cover their heads needs to be changed.

President Ebrahim Raisi said in televised comments Saturday that Iran's republican and Islamic foundations were constitutionally entrenched "but there are methods of implementing the constitution that can be flexible".

The hijab became mandatory four years after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed monarchy and established the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Morality police officers initially issued warnings before starting to crack down and arrest women 15 years ago.

The vice squads were usually made up of men in green uniforms and women clad in black chadors, garments that cover their heads and upper bodies.

The role of the units evolved, but has always been controversial even among candidates running for the presidency.

Clothing norms gradually changed, especially under former moderate president Hassan Rouhani, when it became commonplace to see women in tight jeans with loose, colourful headscarves.

ALSO READ | Iranian shot dead for celebrating country's football team exit from FIFA World Cup

But in July this year his successor, the ultra-conservative Raisi, called for the mobilisation of "all state institutions to enforce the headscarf law".

Raisi at the time charged that "the enemies of Iran and Islam have targeted the cultural and religious values of society by spreading corruption".

In spite of this, many women continued to bend the rules, letting their headscarves slip onto their shoulders or wearing tight-fitting pants, especially in major cities and towns.

Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia also employed morality police to enforce female dress codes and other rules of behaviour. Since 2016 the force there has been sidelined in a push by the Sunni Muslim kingdom to shake off its austere image.

ALSO READ | Iran bars filmmaker from attending India film festival over support to anti-hijab protests

Posted by at No comments:
Young Iranian Woman Detained for 46 Days Over Tweet

DECEMBER 4, 2022

Parisa Sohrabi was summoned to Tabriz Internet Police on October 1 after she criticized the Islamic Republic on her Twitter account. She was arrested immediately after her arrival at the police station.

A young Iranian woman has been in detention for the past 46 days in Iran for a single post on Twitter and has been deprived of life-saving medicine, IranWire can report.

Parisa Sohrabi was summoned to Tabriz Internet Police on October 1 after she criticized the Islamic Republic on her Twitter account. She was arrested immediately after her arrival at the police station.

Sohrabi was released after spending a night in a detention center but was summoned again to Tabriz General Prosecutor's Office on October 20. She was arrested once more and transferred to Tabriz Central Prison.

Sohrabi recently had surgery to treat a brain tumour and requires continuous medical attention.

She has been deprived of access to adequate and effective medical care during her detention and her health has worsened, her family has said. The Tabriz Public Prosecutor's Office authorities refused to agree to the family’s request to send Sohrabi to hospital.

Iran has been gripped by protests demanding more freedom and women's rights since the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Tehran’s morality police in September. Amini had been arrested for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress code.

Iranian security forces have responded to the current wave of protests by unleashing a brutal crackdown that has killed more than 440 people, including dozens of children, according to activists. Thousands of people have also been arrested.

Iranian officials have made baseless claims, blaming “foreign enemies” of the Islamic Republic’s for encouraging the protests.
Posted by at No comments:
BAHA’IS OF IRAN

Government Arrests More Baha'is, Again

DECEMBER 4, 2022



Iranian authorities arrested two members of Iran’s long persecuted Baha'i religious minority on Sunday amid an intensified crackdown on the faith group, IranWire can report.

Thirteen Kerman Intelligence Department agents raided the houses of Roha Imani and Firuzeh Sultan Mohammadi and, after searching the houses, arrested both of them and transferred them to an unknown location, sources told IranWire.

Agents also stormed the house of one of Imani’s relatives and confiscated their religious books.

Dozens of Baha'i citizens have been detained over the past few weeks in Iran. Among those arrested are Sapehr Ziyai, Payam Vali, Argwan Zabihi, Arash Zamani and Aida Rasti in Tehran, Sanaz Tafzoli in Mashhad, Saman Khadim and Leili Karmi in Shiraz.

The Iranian authorities’ crackdown on members of the Baha'i minority appears to have accelerated since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police in September, triggering anti-government protests across Iran.

Since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, Baha'is in Iran have faced systematic discrimination and harassment, including deportation, barriers to education, property confiscations, imprisonment, torture, and executions.

Even the dead haven’t been spared: All Baha'i cemeteries in Iranian cities and villages have been confiscated and destroyed. New buildings were built on the burial grounds in order to leave no traces of the remains.

There are some 300,000 Baha'is in Iran and an estimated five million believers worldwide.

Shia Islam is the state religion in Iran. The constitution recognizes several minority faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, but not the Baha'i faith.

The Islamic Republic's History of Massacring Kurdish Baha'is

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

The September 16 death of the 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of Islamic Republic forces, triggered Iran’s current and unprecedented nationwide protests

Slaughter has been the Iranian government’s only response to protest over the past 43 years. And even as the September 16 death of the 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, at the hands of Islamic Republic forces, triggered Iran’s current and unprecedented nationwide protest against more than four decades of tyranny, so too has the Iranian government again massacred men, women and children to hold on to power.

Ethnic minorities in Kurdish areas and in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan have borne the brunt of this savagery. According to the Kurdish human right organization Hengaw, by November 22 at least 42 Kurds had been butchered by direct fire from government forces.

The Islamic Republic has suppressed and killed Iranian Kurds on several occasions since it came to power. We often hear about the systematic targeting and killing of Kulbars, porters who haul goods on their backs across the borders of Iran and over long distances, mostly in the impoverished, mountainous Kurdish areas adjacent to Iraq. But there is another link in this chain of murders about which we have heard little: Baha’i Kurds.

Below, we look at a few cases of Baha’i Kurds who were murdered by the Islamic Republic in the early years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.


The murder of Baha’i Kurds is a link in the chain of the slaughter of Kurds by the Islamic Republic


Bahar Vojdani, 57: Executed in Mahabad

Bahar Vojdani was born in 1921 in the city of Miandoab in West Azerbaijan. After finishing high school, he moved to Mahabad and started a business, selling household goods. He lived in that city for four decades and was known as an honest and reputable businessman. IranWire obtained the below from a fellow Baha’i of Vojdani’s in Mahabad, named Abdollahi, to whom Vojdani told the story.

At 5pm on September 26, 1979, two Revolutionary Guards entered Vojdani’s shop and arrested him. He was first taken to the police headquarters and then before the revolutionary prosecutor at a military barracks. Vojdani was speaking with the prosecutor when Sadegh Khalkhali, chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, known as the “hanging judge”, entered the room.

The prosecutor told Khalkhali that Vojdani was a respectable member of the community. Khalkhali ignored him, however, and started to angrily go through files on the desk. Sounds of gunshot were heard from outside and Khalkhali became angrier and angrier.

Vojdani, who was still speaking with the prosecutor, at one point said: “I am a Baha’i and I don’t tell lies.” Khalkhali, who had not been following the conversation, turned suddenly and, throwing papers at Vojdani, said: “You are a Baha’i? ... Write down that you are not a Baha’i and we will let you go.” Vojdani refused, telling him: “You are a learned man and a scholar and you know that religion and heartfelt beliefs are not like clocks that you can change when you want.”

“Then you must pay a million tomans to the Mostazafan [“Downtrodden”] Foundation so I can release you,” said Khalkhali. “I don’t have that kind money,” Vojdani said. “Then give 500,000 tomans,” Khalkhali told him, but Vojdani repeated that he does not have such funds. Khalkhali agreed to let him go if he paid 80,000 tomans and left the room. Vojdani was then released and both sides agreed that he would return the next day with the money.

Vojdani put together the money and took the 80,000 tomans to the prosecutor that night. He went there at 10pm – and then never returned. The following day, when the family visited the barracks, they were told that Bahar Vojdani was convicted of “corruption on earth” and had been executed by firing squad at 4am on September 27, 1979.

In a note that Vojdani left for his family, he wrote: “For refusing to hide my beliefs and for conceding that I believe in the Baha’i faith, I have been sentenced to death. I do not know when the verdict will be carried out. Hereby I say farewell to everybody.”

Ali Sattarzadeh, 24: Shot Dead in Bukan


Ali Sattarzadeh was born in 1955 in the village of Egrighash near Mahabad. His father, Balal Sattarzadeh, had been killed by fanatics because of his Baha’i faith when he was a child. In 1978, he moved to the village of Amirabad, near the city of Bukan in West Azerbaijan. He was a plumber and every morning he went to Bukan to work and returned home at sunset.

On October 28, 1979, as he was returning from Bukan to Amirabad, he was shot. Government forces for the new Islamic Republic and Kurdish militants had been engaging in armed clashes across Kurdish areas. The first shot injured Sattarzadeh in his arm and, when he tried to escape, he was shot in the midriff. He was taken to the hospital but he died soon after arriving.

Hossein Shakouri Shishavani, 58: Shot Dead in Oshnavieh


Hossein Shakouri was born in 1921 to a Muslim family in the village of Shishavan in East Azerbaijan. His father passed away when he was five. Shakouri began working to support his family after finishing elementary school and was employed by a government-owned physician’s dispensary in Maragheh. After he was hired fulltime, he was transferred first to the city of Naghadeh in West Azerbaijan and then to Oshnavieh.

In 1951, he converted to the Baha’i faith. Seven years later, in 1958, during a series of attacks against the Baha’is instigated by several Islamic clerics, Shakouri was dismissed from his job for his beliefs. He later opened a small dispensary which was closed by the authorities and he spent time in prison. In 1964, his 14-year-old son was attacked and killed by other students for being a Baha’i.

On April 2, 1979, Hossein and his 6-year-old daughter, while on their way home from school, were both shot during an armed clash between Kurds and government forces. Shakouri did not survive the shooting although his daughter lived. His home was looted after the murder and Shakouri’s family were left penniless.

Azadollah (Aziz) Zaydi, 55: Shot Dead in Mahabad


Azadollah (Aziz) Zaydi was born in 1928 in Miandoab in West Azerbaijan. He worked as a farmer for most of his life. Early after the Revolution, the homes of Baha’is in Miandoab were set on fire and he had to move to Bukan, where he bought and sold fruits and herbs at the local market.

On April 1, 1982, Zaydi was on his way to Mahabad to buy vegetables when he was stopped and questioned by rural police officers. One of the policemen was from Miandoab and recognized him. Zaydi told his companions – who were Muslim – that they were going to shoot him.

Zaydi’s premonition was proven right. On his way back from Mahabad, he was killed in a hail of bullets fired by unknown assailants. He was with two other Baha’is at the time who were injured but not killed. His body was buried by his family in the Miandoab Baha’i cemetery.

Hassan Esmailzadeh, 84: Shot Dead in Sanandaj


Hassan Esmailzadeh was born in 1896 to a Muslim family in Sanandaj, capital of Kurdistan province, and he became a Baha’i as a young man. Esmailzadeh, his wife and nine children were living in Saqqez when in 1941, during a local upheaval, he lost his home to fire and his belongings to looters and locals. He was forced to move to Sanandaj where he ran a successful barber’s shop in the bazaar.

On June 6, 1980, while the city of Sanandaj was in the midst of a political uprising and under siege from Islamic Republic forces, he was shot by a gunman positioned in the spire of the Sharif-Abad mosque while crossing the street. He was 84 when he was killed. A local buried his body under a wall. When the upheaval was over, the authorities, along with a few of Esmailzadeh’s Muslim relatives, exhumed the remains and laid them to rest at a local cemetery without a Baha’i ceremony and without informing his family and friends. His wife passed away 50 days after his death.

Parviz Bayani, 35: Executed in Tehran


Parviz Bayani was born in 1945 to a Baha’i family in Miandoab in West Azerbaijan. As a young man he enlisted in the army and worked as a junior officer for 14 years at the province’s Piranshahr army barracks.

In early 1979, after the Revolution, Bayani was accused of teaching others the Baha’i faith and of plotting attacks for the capture of the barracks with some other Baha’is. He was sentenced to two months in prison. A few months later, in April 1980, during the visit of the Purge and Reconstruction Board to the barracks, Bayani was called to Urmia for interrogation.

Three days passed and he did not return. Bayani’s wife made enquiries and found that he had been imprisoned. He was transferred to Evin Prison in Tehran in July. No prison visits were allowed, nor was access to a layer, and Bayani’s family could only communicate with him through letters.

Bayani was executed at 3am on July 23, 1980, by firing squad, and there is nothing to suggest that he was ever formally tried.

The remains were sent from the coroner’s office to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran. His family were finally able to secure the remains for burial after three days of persistent effort and after promising to not bury him anywhere else: on his chest in large writing the authorities had written “Parviz Bayani, Baha’i”.

CARTOONS

Khamenei vs. Kurdistan

NOVEMBER 22, 2022
MANA NEYESTANI
 


People in the western Iranian province of Kurdistan have been resisting the Islamic Republic’s brutal crackdown on popular protests against the clerical regime.




Posted by at No comments:
Thousands of Congolese churchgoers join nationwide marches against eastern violence
 
Sun, December 4, 2022 
By Justin Makangara and Sonia Rolley

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Christians took to the streets across Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday to protest violence in eastern regions, as church leaders accused the international community of hypocrisy over Rwanda's alleged role in the fighting.

After Sunday services, churchgoers in the capital Kinshasa and other major cities heeded a call from the conference of Catholic bishops to march against the conflict with the M23 rebel group, which Congo accuses Rwanda of supporting.

Rwanda denies this.

"We say no to war, no to a divided Congo," said Blaise Emmanuel, vicar at St. Elizabeth's parish, who with other priests led a procession in Montgafula, one of the poorest communes in Kinshasa.


The mass protests were the most significant since an escalation in fighting in recent months between state forces and M23. The violence has displaced an estimated 390,000 people, according to U.N. agency OCHA.

Demonstrators in Kinshasa sang and carried banners reading: "No to balkanisation, no to the hypocrisy of the international community. The DRC is not for sale."

Many in Congo have for years accused the West of failing to hold Rwanda to account for its alleged role in stoking insecurity in the east.

The European parliament in late November called on Rwanda not to support the M23 rebels. But last week the European Commission was criticised in Congo for a decision to give 20 million euros ($21 million) to support Rwandan troops helping fight Islamist insurgents in Mozambique.

At the end of the march in Montgafula, protesters sang the national anthem and a priest holding a Congolese flag climbed on to a chair to address the crowd.

"It is the small country that is fighting us," said Father Theophile Landu in reference to Rwanda. "Behind it are the United States and the European Union. We tell them that they must stop the hypocrisy."

In August, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said reports by U.N. experts that Rwanda continued to support the M23 were "credible". Rwanda's government has disputed the findings.

Anti-Western sentiments were aired in other cities in protests where high-profile attendees included the head of the Senate, several ministers, and lawmakers from the ruling party and the opposition.

Congo and Rwanda took part in talks in late November aimed at finding solutions to the conflict. Other negotiations led by the seven-member East African Community (EAC) are ongoing.







Posted by at No comments:

 Demonstration in Marseille calls for “Freedom for Öcalan”

Demonstrators demanded freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and condemned the genocidal attacks of the Turkish state in various parts of the Kurdistan territory.

ANF
MARSEILLE
Sunday, 4 Dec 2022,

Thousands of people took to the streets in the French city of Marseille on Sunday to demand freedom for Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan.

The demonstration took place following the call of the Democratic Kurdish Community Center in Marseille. During their march from Canabiere Square to Vieux Port Square, demonstrators chanted slogans in favor of Öcalan and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and handed out leaflets containing information about the isolation regime imposed on the Kurdish leader.

Speaking at the rally that followed the march, the co-chair of the Democratic Kurdish Community Center in Marseille pointed out that any attack directed against Abdullah Öcalan was directed against the Kurdish people.

Demonstrators demanded freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and condemned the genocidal attacks of the Turkish state in various parts of the Kurdistan territory.




 
Posted by at No comments:
Nowhere to run: Greece pushes back victims of Erdoğan’s crackdown, Turkey arrests them

December 4, 2022
Bünyamin Tekin 

















Greek authorities on Friday forcibly pushed back five Turks after they fled across the border seeking asylum in Greece to escape a crackdown launched by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the aftermath of a coup attempt in 2016.

The asylum seekers were immediately apprehended by Turkish soldiers, who arrested four of them for entering a prohibited military zone and inexplicably released one.

The episode is the latest of many pushback incidents that have taken place at the border between Greece and Turkey, where Turks who are fleeing persecution try to reach safety and are met by armed, masked men who confiscate their belongings and force them back to their country, where authorities imprison them on bogus terrorism charges.

For years Greece has been accused of illegally pushing asylum-seekers back to Turkey, which it strongly denies.

But according to witness testimony and rights groups, summary deportations are taking place, and they are also hitting vulnerable victims of President Erdoğan’s crackdown on political dissent, which he launched using a failed 2016 coup as a pretext.

Thousands of post-coup crackdown victims had to leave the country illegally because the government had revoked their passports.

The people who wanted to flee the country to avoid the crackdown took dangerous journeys across the Evros River or the Aegean Sea. Some were arrested by Turkish security forces; some were pushed back to Turkey by Greek security; and others perished on their way to Greece.

In the latest incident, two women and three men fled Turkey to seek asylum in Greece early Friday morning but were met by Greek-speaking masked men who beat them up and took all their money and belongings, down to the medication of one of the victims who had diabetes, the husband of one of the women told TM. The man, who has taken shelter in an EU member country, said he wanted to remain anonymous due to security concerns.



Turkish authorities arrested four of the five and released his wife under judicial supervision, he said.

The man said his wife was a high school teacher who was summarily dismissed from her job by an emergency decree in 2016. She also tried to flee Turkey in June 2021 but was similarly pushed back at the time.

Crackdown victims fleeing Turkey comprise people accused of membership in the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, and Kurds who actively participate in the Kurdish struggle for recognition. They are branded as terrorists, a label frequently used by Turkish authorities to legitimize its targeting of critics, legal experts say.

According to a December 2021 report by Open Democracy, the number of Turkish asylum-seekers illegally sent back home by Greek border officials has risen dramatically amid a surge in migration that is fueled by Erdoğan’s crackdown.

“The other four I have little information about, but I know they either faced imprisonment or were fired like my wife. Once they were across the Evros River, they walked for hours on muddy terrain,” the man said.

“They were exhausted and hungry. One of them had diabetes. They ran out of food and water. They desperately called for help from Greek authorities,” he said.


In a video posted on Twitter, the asylum seekers can be seen pleading for help.

The man said after it got dark, masked men came and took the five of them to another place where they were put with a group of asylum seekers, most likely Syrians, and pushed back to a military zone in Turkey.

“Once there, Turkish soldiers detained them for violating the military zone,” he said. “Four of them ended up getting arrested and my wife was released. We don’t know why they released her. It is so arbitrary,” he added.

‘Tough, but fair’

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in 2021 denied accusations of abuse against migrants by the Greek authorities, calling his migration policy “tough, but fair.”

However, according to data from the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), a total of 6,230 pushbacks by Greece took place between January 2020 and May 2021.

Greek border forces forcibly and illegally detain groups of refugees before returning them to Turkey, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report released in 2021.

Among these asylum seekers are Turks and Kurds, who are at risk of persecution under the authoritarian rule of President Erdoğan. Pushing these people back to the countries they fled is illegal under the principle of non-refoulement, which forbids a country from forcing refugees or asylum seekers to return to a country in which they are liable to be subjected to persecution.

Interviews and documents received from lawyers in Greece and Turkey as well as from the family members of victims and the victims themselves allege that Greece carried out at least 233 illegal pushbacks of Turkish nationals between May and December 2021 alone, compared to 98 pushbacks tracked in 2019.

All those pushback victims fleeing persecution in Turkey made it to Greece by crossing the land or sea border. They shared their locations with lawyers or family members via messaging apps, or sent pictures and videos of themselves in Greece, in a bid to prove that they had arrived in Greek territory and to avoid being returned to Turkey.    


Greeks have a duty to give shelter to Turkish democrats fleeing Erdoğan: Varoufakis

Bünyamin Tekin “Democrats have a duty, whenever there is a dictatorial turn in any neighboring country, to give shelter and asylum to fellow democrats escaping the dictators, the authoritarians. The Greeks have a duty to give shelter to Turkish democrats fleeing Erdoğan or fleeing any regime, for that matter,” former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, … 




Posted by at No comments:
SPACE RACE 2.0
Chinese astronauts land back on Earth after six-month mission

Commander Chen Dong and astronauts Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe touched down in a capsule at a landing site in the Gobi Desert in northern China at around 12.10pm, according to China Central Television.


Sunday 4 December 2022
Astronaut Chen Dong waves as he sits at the Dongfeng landing site in northern China

Three Chinese astronauts have landed back on Earth after six months spent completing construction of the Tiangong station, state TV reported.

Commander Chen Dong and astronauts Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe touched down in a capsule at a landing site in the Gobi Desert in northern China at around 12.10pm, according to China Central Television.

Before departing, the astronauts overlapped their stay with three other colleagues who arrived on the Shenzhou-15 mission earlier this week for their own six-month stay.

It marked the first time China has had six astronauts in space at the same time.

Ground crew checks on the astronauts inside the re-entry capsule

Medical workers carried the astronauts out of the capsule around 40 minutes after landing, and they appeared in high spirits as they waved happily at workers at the landing site.

Mr Chen, who was first to exit the capsule, said: "I am very fortunate to have witnessed the completion of the basic structure of the Chinese space station after six busy and fulfilling months in space.

"Like meteors, we returned to the embrace of the motherland."

Another of the astronauts, Ms Liu, recalled how moved she was to see relatives and colleagues.

The three astronauts have been part of the Shenzhou-14 mission, which launched in June.

During their time at Tiangong, the astronauts oversaw five rendezvous and dockings with various spacecraft, including one carrying the third of the station's three modules.

They also conducted a range of experiments, as well as performing three spacewalks.

Astronaut Liu Yang is carried out of the capsule by medical workers

Tiangong is part of China's plans for a permanent human presence in orbit and represents a significant milestone in the country's three-decades-long manned space programme, first approved in 1992.

Weighing around 66 tonnes without attached spacecraft, it could one day be the only space station still up and running if the ISS retires by around the end of the decade as expected.

The astronauts returned to a country that has been gripped by protests in recent days, as patience runs out with the communist regime's strict COVID restrictions.

Lockdown rules have been eased in some cities as a result of the demonstrations.
Posted by at No comments:
SUNDAY SERMON


Faith And Hope For A Mahdi-Messianic Future – OpEd

 November 22, 2022
By Rabbi Allen S. Maller

In the last 16 years there have been 523 mass killings resulting in 2,727 deaths as of November 19, 2022 according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.

And firearms deaths killed 1.5 million Americans between 1968 and 2017, a higher number than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775.

A particularly deadly strain of avian flu — first reported in February on an Indiana turkey farm — has wiped out 49 million turkeys and other poultry in 46 states this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Massive economic losses due to sweltering temperatures brought on by human-caused climate change are not just a problem for the future. A study in the journal Science Advances has found that more severe heat waves resulting from global warming have already cost the world economy 16 trillion dollars since the early 1990s.

The UK faces its biggest drop in living standards on record as the surging cost of living eats into people’s wages. The government’s forecaster said household incomes – once rising prices were taken into account – would decline by 7% in the next few years, and the number of people who are unemployed will rise by more than 500,000.

Many Americans who come from fundamentalist Christian circles see the future’s major changes within human society that precedes the Messianic Age from the perspective of the Book of Revelation (The Apocalypse of John). This New Testament book emphasizes a cataclysmic Judgement Day, which can last for many years, that precedes the birth of the Messianic Age. The Qur’an is much less negative about the period between the the return of Jesus, and the Coming of the Mahdi-Messiah.

Jews, whose biblical prophets were the ones who first wrote about a future Messianic Age, recognize that the birth of a Messianic Age must be preceded by its birth-pangs, but emphasize mostly the glories of a world living in peace and prosperity with justice for all. Ancient Jewish prophecies did proclaim that there would be an end to the world as we know it but they did not prophesy that the world will come to an end.

Rather, the Jewish date cannot be fixed ahead of time because humans have free will and in part, what humans do influences what God decides to do. The pre-Messianic Age marks the beginning of a time of major transition from one World Age into another.

How we move through this transition, either with resistance or acceptance, will determine whether the transformation will happen through cataclysmic and violent changes or by a gradual religious reform of human society which will lead to a world filled with peace, prosperity and spiritual tranquility.

The Messianic Age is usually seen as the solution to all of humanity’s basic problems. This may be true in the long run but the vast changes the transition to the Messianic Age entails will provide challenges to society for many generations to come.

But even when the events are rapid and dramatic, people rarely connect them to their Messianic significance for very long. The amazing rescue of 14,235 Ethiopian Jews in a 1991 airlift to Israel, lasting less than 40 hours, stirred and inspired people for a few weeks. Subsequently, the difficult problems the newcomers faced (similar to those of the 900,000 Soviet immigrants) occupied the Jewish media. Now both are taken for granted. The miracle has become routine.

But if you had told the Jews of Ethiopia two generations ago that they would someday all fly to Israel in a giant silver bird, they could only conceive of this as a Messianic miracle. If you had told Soviet Jews a generation ago that the Communist regime would collapse, the Soviet Empire disintegrate, and hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews would emigrate to Israel, they would have conceived it only as a Messianic dream.

In our own generation therefore we have seen the dramatic fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “I will bring your offspring from the (Middle) East and gather you from the (European) West. To the North (Russia) I will say ‘give them up’ and to the South (Ethiopia) ‘do not hold them’. Bring my sons from far away, my daughters from the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 43:5-6) Isn’t it amazing how people adjust to living in a radically new world and forget how bad things were in the past.

Repentance produces changes in the future of both individuals and nations. Repentance enables some individuals and communities to escape the consequences of prior evil. On the other hand, God’s promise is that evil powers will never succeed in destroying Israel or in overcoming justice in the long run. Thus even without full repentance, God will act if the Divine promise of a Messianic Age is threatened.

As Isaiah states, “The Lord says: you were sold but no price was paid, and without payment you shall be redeemed.” (Isaiah 52:3) i.e. all your suffering in exile was not really fully deserved, and your redemption from exile will not really be fully earned. Both are part of God’s outline for human destiny and will occur sooner (through repentance) or later (in God’s own time).

Reciprocity and interactively are the fundamental basics of the covenant between God and the Jewish people, and make Judaism special, just as all kind and loving relationships and religions are special and unique.

God shines that light into the world, illuminating pitfalls and stumbling blocks along the way. Yet Torah remains merely a book, its instructions mere words, if we don’t translate them into living deeds. It is in our hands to take the teachings of the Torah and of later rabbinic insights and to let them shine through our example and by teaching others.

When humans shine a light back to God by living by God’s commandments and teaching others to do so then “In Your light we are bathed in light.” as the Book of Proverbs says, ” mitzvah is a lamp, and teaching is a light.”

By living our lives in accord with Mitsvot, we respond to God’s light by lighting a way for ourselves and those we teach, to avoid the precipice of egotism, hedonism, self-righteousness or materialism.

The Passover Haggadah (a book that’s been revised, reprinted, and republished over 6,000 times, mostly in the last 200 years) states: Passover is a journey “from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festivity, from darkness to light, and from bondage to redemption”.

And as the Qur’an states: “We certainly sent Moses with Our signs, [saying], “Bring out your people from darkness into light, and remind them of the days of Allah.” Indeed, there are signs for everyone, patient and grateful.” (14:5) and “Allah is an ally of those who believe. He brings them out from darkness into light.” (2:257)

Finally, if one believes that God inspired prophets are able to describe scenarios of various developments in the distant future then one has to accept that the understanding of these passages should change and improve as we come closer and closer to the times they describe. As an example, Jeremiah describes a radical future in which women surround men, “The Lord will create a new thing on earth-a woman will surround a man” (Jeremiah 31:22).

The great commentator Rashi understands ‘surround’ to mean encircle. The most radical thing Rashi can think of (and in 11th century France it was radical) is that a woman will propose marriage to a man (a wedding ring, or the encircling of the groom at a Jewish wedding ceremony) to a man. Now the proportion of Australian women in managerial occupations rose from around 18% in 1966 to nearly 40% in 2021. And the proportion in professional occupations grew from 35% to 56%.

In today’s feminist generation we can see women surrounding men in fields once almost exclusively male such as law, medical and rabbinical schools. Of course, this means that a few generations from now we might have even better understandings of some predictive passages in the prophets so humility should always be with us.

But the real lesson from all this is that humans should not look forward to a Judgement Day when all our enemies, and all evil, will suddenly disappear in a cataclysmic purge. Instead, we should have faith and trust in the ability of religiously inspired humans to transform our world into a Messianic Age of justice and peace.

In the words of a 15 year old Jewish girl who was soon to die: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because inspite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

“In the mean time, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the day will come when I shall be able to carry them out.” From the Diary of Anne Frank” whose words have been read by tens of millions of people throughout the world.

Indeed, there is a view, espoused by the well known Jewish writer, Franz Kafka, that the Messiah will come not at the beginning, but at the end of the Messianic Age; to congratulate humanity for achieving the vision of the Biblical prophets.

Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Allen Maller retired in 2006 after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akiba in Culver City, Calif. He is the author of an introduction to Jewish mysticism. God. Sex and Kabbalah and editor of the Tikun series of High Holy Day prayerbooks.
Posted by at No comments:
Taiwan Shouldn’t Be Used as a Geopolitical Pawn

During the Cold War, US officials saw Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and supported Chiang Kai-Shek’s dictatorship. Modern-day Taiwan has developed a democratic culture that shouldn’t be subordinated to confrontation between Washington and Beijing.

Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's president, speaks during the National Day celebration in Taipei, Taiwan, on Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. (I-Hwa Cheng / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
11.18.2022
 Jacobin

LONG READ 

On September 18, President Joe Biden was asked on 60 Minutes about the US commitment to defend Taiwan against a potential Chinese attack. His answer to the question “Would US forces defend the island?” was a blunt “yes.”

Since 1979, the official US policy has been to state that any change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait by non-peaceful means would be of “grave concern” to the United States. Yet the 60 Minutes interview was the fourth time since coming to office that Biden has publicly stated the United States would defend Taiwan. His recent comments appear to have upped the ante, outlining a clearer commitment than US presidents have made in past decades.

Biden’s comments ignited a firestorm of both criticism and support. Some pointed to the recklessness of revising a long-standing US policy in a way that could draw Washington into a dangerous conflict. Others argued that such a commitment would provide necessary deterrence to an aggressive Beijing.

What is the relationship of the United States to an island of twenty-three million people for which it is potentially risking a military confrontation with China? And how did US–Taiwan relations develop to this point?

Taiwan in the Global Periphery

For most of its history, Taiwan was home to Indigenous Taiwanese, part of the larger Austronesian peoples spanning the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. Beginning in the seventeenth century, with encouragement from the Dutch East India company that had colonized a corner of Taiwan, migrants from China began to settle the Taiwanese lowlands.

The Qing military conquered Taiwan in 1683 and administered the western lowlands. This was part of a drive by the Manchu-led Qing Empire to expand its influence and eliminate political rivals at its frontiers, resulting in the conquests of present-day Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet. Qing rule was not all-encompassing: Indigenous Taiwanese predominated in the rugged mountainous highlands, often resisting Qing and later Japanese rule.Japan took control of Taiwan in 1895 as a prize of the First Sino-Japanese War, then turned it into a ‘model colony’ to showcase Japanese imperialism.

Partly because of its perceived lack of importance to the Qing Empire and its unwelcoming, subtropical climate, the Kangxi Emperor referred to Taiwan as “a ball of mud.” Over time, however, the island’s natural resources and production of agricultural commodities — rice, camphor, and sugar — gave rise to a new perception.

Japan took control of Taiwan in 1895 as a prize of the First Sino-Japanese War, then turned it into a “model colony” to showcase Japanese imperialism, both to the metropole and to the rest of the world. In practice, however, Taiwanese were subjects of an imperial project that drafted them into a global war while denying movements for self-rule and political and economic rights enjoyed by their colonizers.

Apart from a minor naval incident in 1867, the island existed outside of the US sphere of concern until 1949. As part of the negotiations between the Allied powers in the 1943 Cairo Conference, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China (ROC) and the ruling Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT), secured a commitment from the United States to have control over Taiwan, then still a Japanese colony, transferred to the ROC government at the end of the war. In 1945, Chiang’s Nationalist forces marched into Taiwan, to be greeted with optimism by Taiwanese who believed the Nationalists were liberators.

But the KMT government met the Taiwanese people with violence and authoritarianism instead. US diplomat George Kerr described in his book Formosa Betrayed the slaughter that he witnessed in Taipei during the months after the so-called February 28 Incident in 1947. Nationalist soldiers violently put down island-wide protests that erupted when a policeman struck a woman selling black-market cigarettes.

The Kuomintang implemented martial law, which went on to last for almost forty years, curtailing political freedoms and stifling dissent. Despite Kerr’s horror at the humanitarian violations that he saw, such events in Taiwan attracted no interest in Washington.

Cold War Taiwan

The revolution of 1949 ended decades of civil war between the Chinese Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. It brought Taiwan into the framework of the global Cold War that was taking shape. When the Communists defeated Chiang’s military forces across the Chinese mainland, he sought to retreat somewhere he could regroup and counterattack.

The KMT leader considered a number of options but settled on Taiwan because of its favorable geography, separated from China by approximately a hundred miles of the Taiwan Strait. Communist leader Mao Zedong initially supported the idea of Taiwanese self-determination, including possible independence. However, Chiang’s withdrawal turned the island into a target for the newly established People’s Republic of China. Those hundred miles of water would protect Chiang and the KMT for decades.

Chiang ordered the majority of his Nationalist administration to move across the strait with him: around a million officials, soldiers, refugees, and their families. Once established on Taiwan, the KMT officially maintained that the Republic of China was the only legitimate government for all of China. The stay in Taiwan was only supposed to be a temporary one until the promised counterattack against Mao’s forces could begin.Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government in effect colonized Taiwan. A secret military police enforced martial law.

The Nationalist government in effect colonized Taiwan. A secret military police, the Garrison Command, enforced martial law. Anyone suspected of dissent could be deemed a traitor, resulting in detainment, trial, imprisonment, and execution of prisoners, all of which took place in secret.

Chiang’s administration implemented programs of Sinicization, teaching Taiwanese subjects that they were in fact Chinese. This entailed mandatory education in Mandarin Chinese, the ROC’s national language, and punishment for speaking other tongues, such as Taiwanese Hokkien (Minnan), Hakka, or Indigenous Taiwanese languages. This pedagogy was designed to discipline Taiwanese subjects into obedience to the Nationalist party-state so that they would become model citizens of the ROC’s imagined community.

Even though geography protected Chiang, the ROC on Taiwan was still a fragile state in 1949. Chiang desperately sought US support. US observers at the time were skeptical of Chiang’s abilities as a leader. Their negative views owed something to his intransigent personality and to previous conflicts with American representatives like “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell.

Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier

The Korean War was a turning point for Taiwan. For US policymakers, the advance of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into the Korean peninsula in 1950 raised the alarming prospect of a “domino effect” leading to the spread of communism throughout Asia. They responded with a containment policy to check communist advances.

Taiwan became integrated into US plans as part of an Asian anti-communist alliance. General Douglas MacArthur famously described the island as the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that the United States could not allow to fall into communist hands. Taiwan’s geography thus once again benefitted Chiang.Douglas MacArthur famously described Taiwan as the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ that the United States could not allow to fall into communist hands.

McCarthyism reinforced the support for his administration on Capitol Hill, as fearmongering senators accused State Department officials of “losing” China to the communists. In 1955, the United States and the ROC signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty that resulted in a decades-long Cold War alliance.

As part of that alliance, Taiwan received American aid and investment. US aid added up to a total of approximately $3 billion from 1949 until 1965, with $1.5 billion for military assistance and another $1.5 billion for economic development. During the postwar period, Taiwan began its economic transformation from a largely rural, agrarian economy into an industrial power.

One could find US symbols and signs throughout Taiwanese society, whether emblazoned on foodstuffs or street names, such as Roosevelt Rd. running through Taipei. US economic development agencies encouraged Taiwanese planners to introduce American-exported agricultural foods, like wheat bulgur, to Taiwanese diets. This was an attempt to shore up deficient calorie intakes among the island’s population while simultaneously finding an outlet for American surplus wheat. By 1965, Washington deemed Taiwan to be a successful “graduate” of US aid programs.
This image of “Sino-American Cooperation” was often displayed on foodstuffs given to Taiwan during the period of US aid until 1965.

This image of “Sino-American Cooperation” was often displayed on foodstuffs given to Taiwan during the period of US aid until 1965.
International Isolation

However, it was becoming increasingly difficult by the early 1970s for the KMT/ROC administration to maintain its self-image as China’s sole legitimate government. At the United Nations, a majority of member-states voted in 1971 to replace the ROC with the People’s Republic of China as the government representing China, with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. A number of countries began to sever diplomatic relations with the ROC and recognize the People’s Republic of China instead.

In 1972, Taiwan’s most ardent ally, the United States, made a move that fundamentally altered the US–Taiwan relationship. Henry Kissinger had secretly visited Beijing the previous year, meeting with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and laying the groundwork for President Richard Nixon to meet Mao Zedong. This opened a period of rapprochement between the United States and China.

The 1972 Nixon visit stemmed from a US desire to isolate the Soviet Union by building stronger ties with China, which had sought its own international path after the Sino-Soviet split of the previous decade. The cost to the ROC was devastating. The 1972 Shanghai Communiqué that followed Nixon’s visit, jointly issued by the United States and China, stated that Washington acknowledged (but did not recognize) Beijing’s position that there was only “one China.”The United States formally switched its diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 and ended the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty.

In effect, this set a precedent for Taiwan’s future exclusion from the international community on Beijing’s terms, even though the United States did not explicitly adopt Beijing’s line as its own. Kissinger and Nixon had decided that bargaining over Taiwan was a price worth paying for Beijing’s friendship.

Chiang, at heart a nationalist, always maintained that the ROC was the rightful government for all of China and that Taiwan was a part of it. But he died in 1975. In the decades that followed, the ROC was gradually forced out of international organizations.

The United States formally switched its diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 and ended the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty. Recognizing that this had weakened Taiwan’s status, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979. The act laid out a stern but ambiguous declaration of US interest in the preservation of peace across the Taiwan Strait while also guaranteeing arms sales to Taiwan.
Democratization and Taiwanese Identity

Beginning in the 1970s, and aided by the Taiwanese diaspora in the United States, Taiwanese activists made slow progress in pressuring the KMT to loosen its authoritarian grip. The Kaohsiung Incident of 1979, triggered by a government crackdown upon peaceful demonstrations in the city of Kaohsiung, brought the democracy movement into the public spotlight. In the aftermath, the Tangwai (“outside the Kuomintang”) movement called for democratization during the 1980s.

In 1987, bowing to political pressure, the KMT lifted martial law. A cascade of political reforms followed over the course of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including an end to press censorship and genuinely free legislative elections. This process culminated in Taiwan’s first free presidential elections in 1996.

An opposition party formed out of the Tangwai movement, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Taiwan’s current president, Tsai Ing-wen, is the DPP’s chair. The end of martial law thus finally allowed the Taiwanese people to determine how they would be governed.

Democratization in Taiwan proved to be a fortuitous turn of events for its relationship with the United States. For decades, the United States had referred to Taiwan as “Free China,” even though the country was not “free” in a democratic sense. Its political transformation allowed Washington to depict Taiwan as one of the success stories of US postwar assistance, while glossing over its decades-long support for the authoritarian KMT government.For decades, the United States had referred to Taiwan as ‘Free China,’ even though the country was not ‘free’ in a democratic sense.

The transition to democracy also ushered in change for Taiwanese political and social identities. Grappling with decades of abuses under authoritarian rule, Taiwanese sought to dismantle the colonial institutions established by the KMT government. Transitional justice brought to light the record of human rights violations, such as the February 28 Incident of 1947.

A Taiwan-centric identity grew to become a majority position within Taiwanese society. Younger Taiwanese who have been educated since democratization took place particularly associate the idea of being Chinese with the period of colonial rule imposed by an authoritarian government.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Taiwan often finds itself caught between the conflicts of larger powers. The US-Taiwan relationship since 1949 has often been an inversion of Washington’s relationship with China. During the 2000s and 2010s, when the United States was investing heavily in China and seeking access to the Chinese market, relations with Taiwan waned out of deference to Beijing. To complicate things further, Taiwan’s economy is deeply intertwined with that of China, after decades of Taiwanese investment that relies upon Chinese low-wage labor.

Today, with tensions between the United States and China at a high point, Taiwan has returned to center stage. An increasingly nationalistic Chinese leadership has ramped up a policy of coercion with gray zone warfare and military force. During the recent Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping reiterated a long-standing position on the importance of Taiwan to the PRC and sternly warned “external forces” against interference.

Chinese officials often argue that US interests are using Taiwan as a pawn. Figures in the US foreign policy field reinforce Beijing’s narrative when they view Taiwan only as a counterweight to China, a one-dimensional semiconductor factory, or as the battlefield for a war with China. Some in the Pentagon have fanned the flames by arguing that Beijing will invade Taiwan by 2027 (or perhaps even sooner) — an assessment that is based on the PLA’s military capabilities rather than intelligence about its plans.Taiwan often finds itself caught between the conflicts of larger powers.

The vast majority of Taiwanese simply want to exist peacefully and be a part of the international community like any other society. Yet the big powers have historically treated Taiwan more as an object than as a nation determining its own future.

Since few countries are willing to cross Beijing, Taiwan believes that it has few options beyond turning to the United States as it did in the past. Taiwanese politicians from both major parties largely welcomed Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August, as did many Taiwanese residents who showed up to greet Pelosi in person, although the trip sparked a threatening response from Beijing that consisted of economic sanctions and missile tests conducted recklessly close to inhabited areas of Taiwan.

Pelosi’s visit was purely symbolic and potentially inflammatory. Yet Taiwan has mostly been denied state visits, a basic routine for most countries in the world, over the last half century, and Taiwanese celebrated her arrival as a brief example of a US politician treating Taiwan as if it were a state. Biden’s comments are also likely to receive a positive reaction in Taiwan, where people see the United States as the only power willing to stand up to a belligerent Beijing.

Beijing’s escalation of military threats to a peaceful Taiwan needs to be addressed by the entire international community, but it is irresponsible to assume that war is inevitable. US policymakers should recognize that the desire of democratic Taiwan for self-determination must take priority over their own hawkishness, while Beijing ought to step back from an irredentism that needlessly focuses on Taiwan to fulfill a nationalist ideology.

CONTRIBUTOR
James Lin is a historian of Taiwan at the University of Washington.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)