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China Diary 15/9/2014 with Paul White

Beijing: British calls for Hong Kong democracy ironic/ Jilin man acquitted of murder after legal debacle/ Xinjiang authorities offer reward for anti-terrorist information

Beijing has responded strongly to a statement by Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office asserting that Britain has a “special responsibility for Hong Kong” and calling on China to implement what it calls democracy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. 

Unofficial Chinese sources have pointed out more than once that in the more than 150 years of its colonial rule of Hong Kong, Britain never allowed any form of democracy or even the existence of political parties. 

The London-appointed governors were Crown servants, that is, not even answerable to the House of Commons, never mind the people of Hong Kong. 

In 1967-68 Hong Kong people calling for democracy were shot dead in the streets by colonial police snipers. The present leaders of the “democracy” movement in Hong Kong — Martin Lee and Emily Lau — never uttered a peep about democracy when they held comfortable posts as civil servants under the old colonial system.

The present unrest is not about democracy, but it is about politics. It is being stirred up by people who want to goad Beijing into intervening. Then they can say to Taiwan: “Look, you see! Don’t fall for their ‘one country, two systems’ offer — it’s only a ploy to take away your freedoms!”

 

 

A man in Jilin province, Nian Bin, has been acquitted of murder after China’s top court overturned his death sentence, only to have the original court reinstate it.

The case caused a furore in legal circles in China, and a team of 30 lawyers gave its services free to get to the bottom of this seeming miscarriage of justice, alleging political interference and torture.  

“Non-legal elements may have interfered with the case, because a court won’t keep a problematic verdict if the prosecutors’ evidence had flaws,” one of the lawyers said. “Torture can be said to be the root cause of wrongful verdicts,” she added.

Nian Bin’s sister commented: “What we need most is to find the real murderer. Otherwise, my brother can’t really free himself from the shame, the hatred from the victims’ family can’t be eliminated and our life won't be peaceful.”

 

 

Authorities in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, are offering rewards for information related to terrorism and religious extremism.

Police said rewards will be given to people who report the illegal production and sale of face-covering gowns and other clothing that represent religious extremism, as well as for information on eight types of illegal activities related to terrorism and extremism.

A number of terrorist attacks have struck Xinjiang this year. On May 22 an attack at a market in Urumqi killed 39 people and injured 94, the deadliest terrorist attack in China since 2009, when a knife-wielding mob murdered 160 people in one day in Urumqi. 

On April 30 this year a bomb attack killed two passengers at a railway station there. Last year a car bomb linked to Xinjiang separatists killed a dozen people in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and a knife attack by a terrorist gang on passengers at the railway station in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, left over 30 dead. 

Meanwhile, the United States, which refuses to hand over to China Uighur terrorists it captured in Taliban training camps in Afghanistan on the grounds that they are not a threat to the US, has called on China to assist it in battling Isis. 

China has estimated that up to 100 nationals, mostly from Xinjiang, could be fighting with Isis. One was captured by the Iraqi army earlier this month.

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