Uyghur Genocide, Documented

Those who advocate for a formal recognition of genocide against the Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang province have found their case notably strengthened this week.

Boycotting Cotton

As the mechanics of China’s genocidal repression of its Uighur minority has become more and more evident, the hunt has been on to find the link between the systematic suppression of a cultural minority and global commerce.

Burma’s Rohingya Genocide

When Ronan Lee heard that Myanmar’s military was in the process of overthrowing the civilian elements of the country’s government, including state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, he felt a particular disappointment and concern distinct from others’ worries about the state of Burmese democracy. He felt ‘concerned about what it meant for Myanmar and the aspirations of its young people, and for the Rohingya whose situation is always worse when the military have power.’

China’s Media Empire

It has become increasingly clear that communist China is a world-spanning empire-in-waiting. More than this, its leaders are increasingly unwilling to wait.

The Genocide Convention May Hinder Rather Than Help Victims

Each year we mark Holocaust Memorial Day, an anniversary that has increasingly become a rallying point against genocide in the abstract as well as in the specific. This year, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, and a number of other faith and interfaith organisations used the occasion to decry China’s ongoing genocide against the Uighur minority, who have been confined in their millions in re-education-cum-work camps, forcibly sterilised, and impressed into a system of slave labour for which we have increasingly incontrovertible evidence.

The Trump Administration’s Parting Blows

As you will likely have gleaned from other sources, Joe Biden is now the president of the United States. He has begun his time in office, as presidents are wont to do, by making a show of being busy and in charge. Biden spent the first few hours at his desk undoing all the work of his predecessor that could be undone by executive order.

Recognising the Inevitable

Political activism in Hong Kong has hardly been a carefree pursuit since the handover. But things have become rather less calm in recent months. A few days ago, the Chinese-imposed executive mounted a mass arrest of the same democratic politicians whose successes in recent elections so embarrassed Beijing. They were detained under the national security law that was finally enacted in June, which attracted great protest and condemnation due in no small part to the capacity it contained for actions just like this.

Captivity and Consequences

When the Islamic State group swept through Iraq and Syria, and the scale of its barbarism became apparent, the terror group became the most discussed story in the world.

All Politics Is Global

Donald Trump tweeted something strange last week. In itself, that’s nothing unusual. The President certainly has form when it comes to outlandish and whacky pronouncements.

But amid his calling the Mueller investigation ‘a rigged witch hunt’ and attacking his former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump said something else. He revealed he had instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ‘to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers’.

The Iraq War: Not Illegal, Not Immoral, and Not Over

Today sees the publication of an entirely excellent article in The Times by Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford. In it, the good professor takes apart a number of myths which have been allowed to coagulate about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, one of the most evil men in recent history whose autocratic (and kleptocratic) rule led to the foundation not just of ISIS – as if it was not enough – but the creation of much of Iraq’s current sectarian turmoil.