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- Thread starter Tigers of Old
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Australia to acquire long-range missiles as PM warns of dangerous post-Covid-19 world
Scott Morrison will outline a more muscular defence posture in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region
We will probably keep selling cattle stations and dairies etc to China thoughAustralia to acquire long-range missiles as PM warns of dangerous post-Covid-19 world
Scott Morrison will outline a more muscular defence posture in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific regionwww.theguardian.com
Im feeling a touch tender lately,
but I feel like the dystopian future is here
www.theguardian.com
hopefully the feeling passes
but I feel like the dystopian future is here
Australia to acquire long-range missiles as PM warns of dangerous post-Covid-19 world
Scott Morrison will outline a more muscular defence posture in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region
hopefully the feeling passes
^^ Not going to make a rat's arse of difference in any conflict with China. But if we want to be able to count on US support, we need to make an effort.
The Aus military used to run it's exercises defending against an invasion from fictitious country, which for all intents and purposes was Indonesia. I wonder if our exercises have now changed and we're trying to defend against a far bigger country with a lot more firepower, but further away, but with possible field operators already embedded in Aus.
I wouldn't count on it. They'll be in civil war soon.
Don't wonder, that's what's happening.
China the unspoken threat at centre of new defence strategy
Australia now realises it lacks the tools for holding hostile forces of a major adversary at bay.
About time. Although, as Lee says:
The American century is over and the Chinese century is underway. Trump is only accelerating the process of US withdrawal from the Pacific and Asia, maybe a new leader will slow that somewhat, but it's an ongoing process.
Indonesia was never a military threat to Australia - their military is internally focussed on controlling the regions and maintaining stability. That may change as they become wealthier, but Indonesia like other countries in SE Asia are increasingly concerned about Chinese soft power and hard aggression. It's time Australia woke up to where we are in the world and started building stronger relationships with our neighbours.
We are still allied to the US and need to maintain that but we can't continue to assume we can rely on them in the coming decades. Leaders like Trump will dump us just like he did to the Kurds.
Indonesia was never a military threat to Australia - their military is internally focussed on controlling the regions and maintaining stability. That may change as they become wealthier, but Indonesia like other countries in SE Asia are increasingly concerned about Chinese soft power and hard aggression. It's time Australia woke up to where we are in the world and started building stronger relationships with our neighbours.
We are still allied to the US and need to maintain that but we can't continue to assume we can rely on them in the coming decades. Leaders like Trump will dump us just like he did to the Kurds.
Well, we do have a Coalition government, but given that would cost them any chance of governing ever again, I can't see even those ratfink cowards reviving that. Maybe they could stop selling off the country to a hostile superpower though.
Exactamundo.
Uighurs seek genocide charges against Beijing (paywalled)
Catherine Philp
The Times
July 8, 2020
Exiled members of China’s Uighur minority have submitted hundreds of pages of evidence to the International Criminal Court alleging genocide and crimes against humanity — the first attempt to use international law to hold President Xi Jinping accountable for atrocities in the Xinjiang region.
They are seeking an investigation into the alleged involvement of more than 30 Chinese Communist Party officials in the repression of Muslim minorities in western China. The complaint speaks of “widespread and systemic” crimes that “have taken placed on a mass scale”.
Their legal team, led by London-based silk Rodney Dixon QC, asked the ICC to draw on a precedent set in The Hague in 2018 which allowed the court to investigate Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
Like China, Myanmar is not a member of the court but the ICC claimed jurisdiction over the campaign against the Rohingya because they were deported to Bangladesh, a member state.
The exile groups have focused their complaint on cases in which Uighurs were abducted by Chinese agents from Tajikistan and Cambodia, ICC members, and spirited back to Xinjiang. Once there they were sent to “political re-education” programs in which torture, starvation, rape and sterilisation are used to strip them of their cultural identity.
The allegations are broadly confirmed by the UN, western governments and human rights groups, who estimate one million Uighurs are incarcerated.
China’s alleged abduction of Uighur exiles abroad is evidence of its effort “to control all Uighur persons so they are not outside and arranging opposition from abroad. The aim is to bring them back under Chinese control to dilute and destroy them as an ethnic group,” Mr Dixon said.
An investigation could bring not only greater international scrutiny of the situation in Xinjiang, which China keeps tightly controlled, but of its power to extend its will beyond its borders.
China faces mounting global pressure over its crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, where pro-democracy activists also claim Beijing is trying to wipe out opposition overseas with a new security law claiming extraterritorial jurisdiction over anyone anywhere in the world dissenting from Chinese rule over the territory.
Testimony was read out at a press conference at The Hague on Tuesday night from Zumrat Dawut, a survivor of the camps, telling of her alleged ordeal after being incarcerated when she returned to Xinjiang from abroad in March 2018. Ms Dawut says she was summoned to a police station in the regional capital, Urumqi, then led to a freezing basement where she was shackled to a chair and interrogated for 24 hours about bank transactions and phone calls abroad.
She claims to have been held for 62 days before her husband, a Pakistani national, succeeded in pressuring diplomats to secure her release. When she left she says that she was forced to sign documents promising she would not practise her Muslim faith or reveal what happened in the camp.
She further claims that she was forced to pay a fine of $US2500 for violating state family planning policies by having three children, not two. She was allegedly then taken to hospital and forced to undergo sterilisation, along with hundreds of other Uighur women.
“I genuinely believe the Chinese government is trying to eradicate us,” she said. “I call on the world to help us to take action and save our people from being wiped out.”
Ms Dawut’s story of forced sterilisation is backed up by a study released last week by German researcher Adrian Zenz, who wrote that there was a state campaign to suppress Uighur birthrates through forced abortions, sterilisation and contraception. In Xinjiang’s two largest prefectures, the birthrate among Uighur Muslims fell 84 per cent over four years.
Omar Bekali, who travelled to The Hague, spoke of how he and five of his eight family members were incarcerated. “I had chains on my arms and legs,” he claimed. “Newcomers were brought to be tortured every day.”
After he escaped to Kazakhstan and spoke out about his experiences, his father was arrested.
“My father was killed in a concentration camp,” he alleged. “He was murdered because I exposed the Chinese crimes.”
Beijing denies allegations of maltreatment, saying it is conducting a campaign against Islamic terrorists responsible for violence in Xinjiang.
Catherine Philp
The Times
July 8, 2020
Exiled members of China’s Uighur minority have submitted hundreds of pages of evidence to the International Criminal Court alleging genocide and crimes against humanity — the first attempt to use international law to hold President Xi Jinping accountable for atrocities in the Xinjiang region.
They are seeking an investigation into the alleged involvement of more than 30 Chinese Communist Party officials in the repression of Muslim minorities in western China. The complaint speaks of “widespread and systemic” crimes that “have taken placed on a mass scale”.
Their legal team, led by London-based silk Rodney Dixon QC, asked the ICC to draw on a precedent set in The Hague in 2018 which allowed the court to investigate Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
Like China, Myanmar is not a member of the court but the ICC claimed jurisdiction over the campaign against the Rohingya because they were deported to Bangladesh, a member state.
The exile groups have focused their complaint on cases in which Uighurs were abducted by Chinese agents from Tajikistan and Cambodia, ICC members, and spirited back to Xinjiang. Once there they were sent to “political re-education” programs in which torture, starvation, rape and sterilisation are used to strip them of their cultural identity.
The allegations are broadly confirmed by the UN, western governments and human rights groups, who estimate one million Uighurs are incarcerated.
China’s alleged abduction of Uighur exiles abroad is evidence of its effort “to control all Uighur persons so they are not outside and arranging opposition from abroad. The aim is to bring them back under Chinese control to dilute and destroy them as an ethnic group,” Mr Dixon said.
An investigation could bring not only greater international scrutiny of the situation in Xinjiang, which China keeps tightly controlled, but of its power to extend its will beyond its borders.
China faces mounting global pressure over its crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, where pro-democracy activists also claim Beijing is trying to wipe out opposition overseas with a new security law claiming extraterritorial jurisdiction over anyone anywhere in the world dissenting from Chinese rule over the territory.
Testimony was read out at a press conference at The Hague on Tuesday night from Zumrat Dawut, a survivor of the camps, telling of her alleged ordeal after being incarcerated when she returned to Xinjiang from abroad in March 2018. Ms Dawut says she was summoned to a police station in the regional capital, Urumqi, then led to a freezing basement where she was shackled to a chair and interrogated for 24 hours about bank transactions and phone calls abroad.
She claims to have been held for 62 days before her husband, a Pakistani national, succeeded in pressuring diplomats to secure her release. When she left she says that she was forced to sign documents promising she would not practise her Muslim faith or reveal what happened in the camp.
She further claims that she was forced to pay a fine of $US2500 for violating state family planning policies by having three children, not two. She was allegedly then taken to hospital and forced to undergo sterilisation, along with hundreds of other Uighur women.
“I genuinely believe the Chinese government is trying to eradicate us,” she said. “I call on the world to help us to take action and save our people from being wiped out.”
Ms Dawut’s story of forced sterilisation is backed up by a study released last week by German researcher Adrian Zenz, who wrote that there was a state campaign to suppress Uighur birthrates through forced abortions, sterilisation and contraception. In Xinjiang’s two largest prefectures, the birthrate among Uighur Muslims fell 84 per cent over four years.
Omar Bekali, who travelled to The Hague, spoke of how he and five of his eight family members were incarcerated. “I had chains on my arms and legs,” he claimed. “Newcomers were brought to be tortured every day.”
After he escaped to Kazakhstan and spoke out about his experiences, his father was arrested.
“My father was killed in a concentration camp,” he alleged. “He was murdered because I exposed the Chinese crimes.”
Beijing denies allegations of maltreatment, saying it is conducting a campaign against Islamic terrorists responsible for violence in Xinjiang.
I was involved in East Timor activism for many years, constantly told it was a lost cause. I remember asking Ramos Horta about this, his reply was that it took them 400 years to get rid of the Portuguese.
It might look bad now, but things change.
DS
