Pakistan secret delegation held talks with TTP, Haqqani network
The extension in ceasefire, which was to come to an end last night (Monday), indicates significant progress in talks between the two sides in the Afghan capital Kabul….reports Asian Lite News
The Pakistan government and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terror group have agreed on an indefinite ceasefire and continue negotiations to find an end to the nearly two decades of militancy in the tribal border region, the media reported citing informed sources.
The extension in ceasefire, which was to come to an end last night (Monday), indicates significant progress in talks between the two sides in the Afghan capital Kabul, the sources told Dawn news on Tuesday.
They said that the two sides had agreed to extend the ceasefire and continue peace talks following separate meetings with Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund, the Acting Prime Minister of the Taliban-led Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), at his office.
In his meetings with the two sides, Akhund expressed his desire that the talks and ceasefire should be allowed to continue without any cut-off date, the sources told Dawn.
In a subsequent joint meeting, the two sides agreed to extend the ceasefire indefinitely and pursue negotiations to end the conflict that has seen mass dislocation and killings of thousands of people in Pakistan’s tribal region and the country at large.
IEA spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid and the TTP’s Muhammad Khurasani had issued statements earlier this month, announcing extension of the ceasefire till May 30.
IEA’s Acting Minister for Interior Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is the central mediator, helped bring the talks back on track, the sources told Dawn news.
An official statement is yet to issued regarding the indefinite extension.
The Pakistan government, sources said, had demonstrated its seriousness by acceding to some of the TTP’s demands and after the IEA suggested it would be important for confidence-building to move from preliminaries to formal and structured negotiations, said the Dawn report.
The release of prisoners and presidential pardon to two key militant commanders, including TTP Swat spokesman Muslim Khan, was one such demand.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (Twitter@KremlinRussia_E)
Foreign Secretary Lizz Truss has been at odds with Russian media due to her unwillingness to compromise with Putin. Last month, Truss even told G7 and NATO leaders at a meeting in Germany that the Kremlin leader was “humiliating himself on the world stage”…reports Asian Lite News
Amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, Russian television personality Vladimir Solovyov recently suggested that Russia invade the United Kingdom next, saying he’d like to see Moscow take Stonehenge.
According to The Independent, Solovyov, who has close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and who is known as “Putin’s voice”, said that Russia could invade Britain and target UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Speaking on his Russia-1 program, Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, the anchorman claimed that Russia’s invasion could stretch as far as Stonehenge, the historic landmark in England that lies in Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.
When asked by the Ukrainian political analyst Vasil Vakarov how far Russia would be willing to go before stopping, Solovyov replied: “Well, when we have to, then we will.”
“Where will we stop? Well, as I was saying today, maybe Stonehenge. Liz Truss says she’s the one fighting the war,” Solovyov said as quoted by Independent. Moreover, Solovyov also reportedly claimed that the Kremlin leader should attack the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
Foreign Secretary Lizz Truss has been at odds with Russian media due to her unwillingness to compromise with Putin. Last month, Truss even told G7 and NATO leaders at a meeting in Germany that the Kremlin leader was “humiliating himself on the world stage”. “We must ensure he faces a defeat in Ukraine that denies him any benefit and ultimately constrains further aggression,” she said as per Newsweek.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time Russian state TV has threatened Britain or Europe in general. Back in April, Solovyov threatened the UK with the possibility of nuclear annihilation via the Sarmat – a Russian ballistic missile. As per Newsweek, he said on his show, “One Sarmat means minus one Great Britain because they’ve gotten totally boorish.”
Separately, former Russian MP Yuri Shvytkin also claimed that Moscow could wipe out “the whole of the UK in two minutes” with nuclear weapons.
As we have seen globally, Cryptos can attract significant institutional and foreign investments if regulations can enable innovations and provide the necessary guardrails. India can benefit similarly… Govind Soni speaks
Crypto is an emerging yet attractive asset class. It is a $1.25 trillion market globally. The India adoption story is no different with nearly 20 million unique users, over $6.6 billion in investments and more than a billion dollars in venture capital funding.
India is already the second-largest in terms of crypto adoption globally.
Crypto in India has come a long way but this is just the beginning — Crypto is a billion people industry in the making.
Govind Soni, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, CoinSwitch, India’s largest crypto investing app, said that their priority is to make it transparent, trustworthy and secure, and enable Indians to participate in this technology shift in a meaningful way.
Excerpts from the interview:
Why is Crypto important, and how can India benefit from it?
Crypto is the gateway to a decentralised internet. The computing power of the billions of devices around the world can be utilised and incentivised using Crypto to build a new internet, called Web3.
India has the opportunity to take the lead in this transformation. We have the talent, users and the startup ecosystem. And we are witnessing an upskilling and migration of India’s large pool of engineers and developers to the cutting-edge and advanced field of blockchain and crypto.
All this puts India in a sweet spot. With an enabling regulatory environment, India can get a headstart and steer the direction of Web3 while it is built.
Crypto has come a long way. Every day we hear news that even Wall Street giants are adopting Crypto. Why is that?
Institutional adoption is a sign that Crypto has well and truly grown beyond white papers to be a smart investment class. The origin of Crypto may have been based on an idea of a digital currency, but now it has evolved to become an attractive, emerging asset class.
There are several interesting use-cases being built on this technology. That is the intrinsic value of Crypto: The confidence and uptake of the underlying blockchain technology. Institutional investors understand this and have done their due diligence.
While retail investors continue to be the early adopters and torchbearers of Cryptos, growing institutional adoption underlines the fact that this is an asset class that is here to stay.
Even traditional markets are adopting and gaining exposure to Cryptos. All of this bodes well for the growth of the asset class.
What about India? There is regulatory uncertainty on Crypto here. Do you see this changing and Crypto becoming a mainstream asset class here?
Certainly. Cryptos are an emerging asset class that speak to India’s digital-savvy population.
With regulatory clarity, institutional investors too will find the confidence to invest in and benefit from Cryptos.
As we have seen globally, Cryptos can attract significant institutional and foreign investments if regulations can enable innovations and provide the necessary guardrails. India can benefit similarly.
Innovations such as decentralised finance, or DeFi, can be an effective and fast enabler of capital for small and medium-scale businesses in India. Crypto is also paving the way for interesting applications such as decentralized social media that Indians can greatly benefit from.
How is CoinSwitch protecting investors on its platform?
At CoinSwitch, investor protection is of utmost importance to us. While we have been using various digital platforms to inform, educate and engage with new crypto enthusiasts, we are continuously updating our app to help users make informed investing decisions.
And, numbers tell the story. The average time a user spends on our app reading, buying, selling, or trading has gone up to 27 minutes from 13 minutes in January 2021.
In line with our ongoing product feature upgrades to tighten platform security, we have launched Riskometer — our attempt to help users think twice before investing in a coin. The Riskometer provides a risk warning on coins that are highly volatile, or when the risk assessment suggests that users need to proceed with caution while investing.
We understand that ensuring compliance with relevant regulations is key to ensuring a safe, secure, and trustworthy user experience. Users on our platform can utilise their account balances (of Indian Rupees and crypto assets) to only transact on our platform or withdraw Indian Rupees. They can only deposit Indian Rupees from their verified bank account. Similarly, after selling crypto assets, users can withdraw Indian Rupees only to their verified bank account.
What does cloud technology enable you to do better?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows to scale up on infrastructure and services without having any dependencies, or minimum usage commitments. AWS continues to make incremental improvements to its solutions and services, allowing us to easily deliver value to our customers. If we had to build these capabilities on our own it would have taken us significantly longer. With the shared responsibility model, security of the cloud is addressed by AWS and this helps us considerably reduce our efforts towards security and compliance. AWS account team and Enterprise Support provides proactive guidance and support as we scale our platforms. AWS is the easy answer for any internet-based ecosystem that wants to scale faster.
CoinSwitch is trusted by over 18 million registered users, making it the largest crypto investing app in India. Ours is a built-to-scale platform developed on top of AWS. Among a host of things, AWS has improved our time to market, handle spikes in traffic, and manage risks more efficiently. All of these put together help us provide a simplified and secure user experience on the app.
With the proposed investments, it would establish an installed capacity of 300,000 units per annum, which would be scalable to more than 400,000 units, the filing said, adding it would take a few months time….reports Asian Lite News
Automobile maker Tata Motors’ subsidiary Tata Passenger Electric Mobility on Monday signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ford India and the government of Gujarat for takeover of Ford’s passenger vehicle manufacturing facility at Sanand.
The MoU included land and buildings; vehicle manufacturing plant; machinery and equipment; and besides transfer of all eligible employees of Ford India’s Sanand’s vehicle manufacturing operations, subject to the signing of definitive agreements and receipt of relevant approvals, the automaker said in a regulatory filing.
The Ford India vehicle manufacturing site at Sanand is a state-of-the-art site. Tata Motors’ arm would invest into new machinery and equipment which is necessary to commission and make the unit ready to produce its vehicles.
With the proposed investments, it would establish an installed capacity of 300,000 units per annum, which would be scalable to more than 400,000 units, the filing said, adding it would take a few months time.
Notably, the unit is adjacent to the existing manufacturing facility of Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles at Sanand, which it believes will help in a smooth transition.
“Tata Motors has had a strong presence in Gujarat for more than a decade with its own manufacturing facility at Sanand. This MoU further reinforces our commitment to the state by creating more employment and business opportunities. Rising customer preference for passenger and electric vehicles made by Tata Motors has led to a multi-fold growth for the company over the past few years,” said Shailesh Chandra, Managing Director, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility.
This potential transaction will support expansion of capacity, thus securing future growth and opportunity to further strengthen the company’s position in the passenger and electric vehicles space, Chandra said.
The MoU will be followed by signing of the definitive transaction agreements between Tata Motors’ arm and Ford India over the next few weeks, the filing added.
BYJU’S in March announced a new partnership with QIA, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, to launch a new edtech business and state-of-the-art research centre in Doha….reports Asian Lite News
Edtech leader BYJU’s is in for a big change with its Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran set to focus his energies on global operations, especially in the US, as the Indian online edtech market shrinks considerably with schools, colleges and tuition centres reopening.
Sources close to the development told IANS that Raveendran is all set to hand over India operations to Chief Operating Officer Mrinal Mohit.
BYJU’s, which was last valued at nearly $22 billion making it India’s most valued start-up, declined to comment on the development but according to reliable sources, an official confirmation about Raveendran taking a bigger global role would come soon as new designations for Raveendran and Mohit are currently being discussed.
Raveendran is already out of India, meeting investors in the US and the UAE.
BYJU’S in March announced a new partnership with QIA, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, to launch a new edtech business and state-of-the-art research centre in Doha.
The new entity in Doha will drive research and innovation to create cutting-edge learning solutions customised for students in the MENA region.
“We are excited to partner with QIA in this next phase of expansion, development and building new innovations in learning in the MENA region,” Raveendran had said in a statement.
BYJU’S has also been announced as an official sponsor of the ‘FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022’.
In March, the company raised $800 million in a pre-IPO round and in a rare gesture, Raveendran financed $400 million investment in the company through a debt he raised from multiple international banks, as the edtech giant planned for an IPO (which has now been delayed owing to global macro-economic factors and economic slowdown).
The company is also reportedly in talks to raise another $1 billion as it expands globally.
The latest development comes as edtech companies like BYJU’s-run WhiteHat Jr, Unacademy, Vedantu, and Lido Learning, are at the forefront of laying off employees, in the name of “restructuring” as funding winter grips the Indian startup ecosystem.
The situation is set to get worse with recession looming and funding drying up.
Overall, edtech platforms in India have laid off more than 3,000 employees and over 7,000 workers have lost jobs in the overall startup industry to date.
Several of Biden’s current policies are helpful to the PRC and a handicap to those seeking to keep the Indo-Pacific free of control by the rising hegemonic power, writes Prof. Madhav Nalapat
The hangover in US policy-making groups from the intoxicating days when their country was the sole superpower has persisted within that essential partner of India in ensuring a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. The effect of such a retro mindset in Beltway decisions about policy are evident even in some of the think-tanks that have not sufficiently adjusted to the reality of the 21st century Indo-Pacific world order. There are indeed excellent minds at both Brookings as well as the Heritage Foundation, and fewer and fewer of analysts there who remain in thrall to the Europeanist view that Moscow, and not Beijing, is the central threat to US interests.
Despite the diversion of attention that the Ukraine imbroglio has caused, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute too are becoming less tethered to still looking at the world from a Cold War 1.0 (USSR-US) lens. Unfortunately, even the younger crop of European politicians, such as Emmanuel Macron, who has twice been elected President of the French Republic, remain moored to the fantasy that Europe rather than Asia remains the centrepoint of geopolitical gravity. It is such a view that makes Macron talk about a Europe stretching from Paris to Vladivostok once a clone of Boris Yeltsin replaces Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
In reality, the prospect of a Euro-cetric Asia is a fantasy, despite being embraced by some of the senior hires in the Biden administration. Given the present flow of events and responses, what is more likely is for a swathe of first PRC influence and later primacy stretching from Beijing to Berlin. Already, in a few EU member states, the PRC has accumulated enough influence to almost certainly ensure a veto of any move by the EU that goes against the interests of the CCP. The war in Ukraine has been seized by chancelleries in Paris, London and Berlin as a catalyst for Washington to return to its traditional policy of looking on European rather than Asian countries as the country’s most significant strategic partners.
That the White House is sympathetic to such a change in direction became clear with the establishment of AUKUS. Merely an Australia-US (USA) pact on nuclear technology would have met the need for Canberra to equip itself with nuclear-powered submarines. Now that that the emphasis paid by Shinzo Abe while PM of Japan on national defence is being continued by Kishida, AUKUS from the start ought to have instead been JUSA (Japan-US-Australia), given that neither Japan nor Australia is a nuclear weapons state in the manner India is. President George W. Bush made UK Prime Minister Tony Blair his partner in the management of post-Saddam Iraq. This put anti-US sentiments in Iraq on steroids, as the US was seen as teaming up with the colonial power that had stripped Iraq (not to mention India and several other countries) of much of their resources in the past. Tony Blair, of course, was delighted to join in the bid to administer post-Saddam Iraq.
Incongrously, UK PM Boris Johnson has been invited by US President Joe Biden (courtesy Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken) to join what ought to have been an entirely Indo-Pacific grouping. Which is what JUSA or even USA (US-Australia) would have been. Biden bringing the UK into the mix has resulted in the creation of perception in Asia that President Biden needs to be listed among those who favour foreign and security policies that are designed on the assumption that the US is a slice of Europe separated only by the Atlantic Ocean.
The effort by some in Team Biden has is aimed at persuading some countries in Asia to accept NATO as their security guarantor, despite the disastrous record of that organisation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. The retreat by NATO from Afghanistan is resulting in the daily capture and worse of individuals who were unwise enough to assist that alliance against the Taliban. While Ukraine is given the benefit of a US Lend Lease program, India has not, despite being incalculably more important to Washington than Kiev. The transfer of less than a dozen naval platforms to the Indian Navy on the lines of USS Trenton, and access to weapons and platforms on the same terms given to Ukraine for the Air Force and the Army would ensure that the next time the PLA launches a conflict that affects Quad security, the PRC would pay a price too heavy for Xi Jinping to bear politically. No such luck. Instead, India is offered weapons systems at prices that are unaffordable.
Taiwan has met the same fate, being sold weapons rather than getting them either on Ukrainian terms or at cut prices. Until President Biden matches words with action, few in Taiwan or India will believe that he is serious about helping out either in the event of a PLA attack. Just now, Foreign Minister Wang Yi is making a scouting tour of several island countries in the Indo-Pacific, looking to repeat the Solomon Islands precedent of giving the PRC , or rather the PLA, bases. None of this seems to have diminished the Ukraine obession of the Biden administration.
Several of Biden’s current policies are helpful to the PRC and a handicap to those countries Anthony Blinken’s speech lauding the PRC under Xi casts doubt on US resolve in seeking to keep the Indo-Pacific free of control by the rising hegemonic power. An example of the way in which the Europe-obsessed policy of the Biden administration is ceding ground to China even among longstanding allies is Saudi Arabia. There remains considerable negativity within the White House and Foggy Bottom towards the reformist Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman, who perhaps as a consequence has substantially enhanced his country’s linkages with China, including through substantial imports of Chinese anti-drone systems and high-velocity firearms.
Russia may be next as a provider of defence platforms to the GCC. Of course, the Saudis are miscalculating if they believe that China will long continue as a significant buyer of Saudi crude. That role will increasingly be filled by Russia, which has become much more reliant on China as a consequence of the US-EU-UK sanctions on it. Another country that is crucial to security in the Indo-Pacific, South Africa, has also entered upon a process of replacing Washington with Beijing as its most important partner. Moves by the US and the EU to punish those democracies that refuse to demonise Putin and abjure Russia are not helping to keep the Indo-Pacific safe from the rising hegemon, quite the reverse. Clumsy diplomacy by the Biden team are conferring ever more advantages to the PRC. The longer President Biden takes to understand that several of his policies are unintentionally giving an advantage to Xi, the greater will be the damage sustained to the Quad project of ensuring a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific.
The Ukrainian leader added that Kiev is counting on France’s support for Ukraine on its path toward getting to a candidate status for EU membership in June…reports Asian Lite News
Visiting French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna has said that her country will deliver more Caesar howitzers to Ukraine, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.
“There will be new deliveries of Caesar self-propelled artillery systems soon, and we will continue to work together in this context,” Colonna told a joint media briefing with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Kiev on Monday.
She said France stands ready to become a mediator in Ukraine’s open dialogue with Russia if a need arises. Besides, the French Minister added that Paris supports granting Ukraine a candidate status to the European Union under a fast-track procedure.
According to media reports, France has already supplied six Caesar howitzers to Ukraine.
Colonna arrived in Ukraine earlier on Monday for a working visit, becoming the highest-ranked French official to visit Kiev since the Russia-Ukraine conflict started on February 24.
During the talks, Zelensky thanked France for the financial aid for Kiev and the assistance of the French government in the treatment of wounded Ukrainian servicemen.
The Ukrainian leader added that Kiev is counting on France’s support for Ukraine on its path toward getting to a candidate status for EU membership in June.
Zelensky and Colonna also exchanged views on the ways to unblock Ukrainian ports to prevent the global food crisis, and they touched upon Ukraine’s post-conflict recovery.
The French Foreign Minister arrived in Ukraine earlier on Monday, becoming the highest-ranked French official to visit Kiev since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on February 24.
Colonna also held talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, pledging to continue military assistance for Ukraine.
The narrative revolves around Harry Palmer, a Korean War veteran now serving the British as an intelligence officer in West Berlin. He gets arrested for developing an illicit network and selling contrabands to the Russians in East Berlin and gets deported to a bleak military prison in Colchester…reviewed by Troy Rebeiro
(Streaming on Lionsgate Play), Duration: Average 47 mins per episode (Total 6 episodes), Director: James Watkins, Cast: Joe Cole, Lucy Boynton, Tom Hollander, Joshua James, Anastasia Hille, Ashley Thomas, David Dencik, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Paul Higgins, Matthew Steer, Tamla Kari, Anna Geislerova, Corey Johnson, Mark Quartley, Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Nora-Jane Noone (Rating: ***)
Set during the Cold War period, this series is a very loose adaptation of Len Deighton’s first spy novel ‘The IPCRESS File’ which was published in 1962. The novel was also the source material for the 1965 released film of the same name, which was directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Michael Caine.
While the basic framework of the story is the same, screenwriter John Hodge and director James Watkins have radically altered the plot and some characters making this series significantly different from the original novel or the film.
The series begins on a similar note to that of Furie’s film. Set in West Berlin in 1963, the opening frame focuses on a pair of thick-black-framed glasses lying on a nightstand our hero, Harry Palmer, drowsily turns in bed to notice the woman who has been teaching him German, waving to him saucily from the bathtub. This opening scene, a direct lift from the film, tries to capture the spirit of the film, but the series has its own soul.
The narrative revolves around Harry Palmer, a Korean War veteran now serving the British as an intelligence officer in West Berlin. He gets arrested for developing an illicit network and selling contrabands to the Russians in East Berlin and gets deported to a bleak military prison in Colchester.
But when Professor Dawson (Matthew Steer), one of the leading British nuclear scientists goes missing from Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, William Dalby (Tom Hollander), director of an enigmatic undercover outfit, recruits Palmer to rescue Dawson. That is because he has been kidnapped by one of Palmer’s contacts. How Palmer, against all odds, makes it his mission to track down his contact and save Dawson forms the crux of the narrative.
With his thick-framed glasses and nerdy boy-next-door-look, Joe Cole- makes an intriguing spy. With his offbeat demeanour, he takes us on an exciting journey that keeps you hooked to the very end. His prompt knee-jerking action sequences definitely take you by surprise.
He is aptly supported by Lucy Boynton, who plays his colleague Jean Courtney to perfection. With her exquisitely styled blond tuft, she is no bimbette. She has her journey that gives the series a feminine heart. Courtney in the series is a prominent character compared to the one in the film.
The rest of the supporting cast, including Tom Hollander, is all-natural and sincere in their performances and are all affable.
On the production front, the series is painstakingly mounted. The era is lavishly portrayed and the sepia-toned frames capture the brilliant period effortlessly.
Somewhere towards the end of the series, there is one minor but glaring error, wherein a day shot, the character on screen profusely apologises over the phone for calling so late at night. Else, the series is blemish-free.
Overall, this series is a hard-boiled British espionage thriller that will appeal to those who love the genre.
The Chinese president said he believes that the new government will bring new changes and Hong Kong will make new advances in its development….reports Asian Lite News
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday met newly appointed Hong Kong chief executive, John Lee and thanked him for achieving a major transition in the city what he described as from “chaos to order.”
In a meeting in Beijing, Xi congratulated Lee on his election win and appointment by the central government. Lee was the former security chief of Hong Kong who oversaw the crackdown on the democracy movement.
Lee, 64, is scheduled to assume his office on July 1, taking over from current chief executive Carrie Lam. The event will coincide with the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s transfer from British to Beijing under the “one country, two systems” framework to safeguard Hong Kong’s freedoms.
“Praising Lee for maintaining the unwavering stance of loving the country and the Hong Kong, being willing to assume responsibilities and actively performing his duties, Xi said Lee has made contributions to safeguarding national security and Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability in various roles.
“The central authorities give full affirmation to you and have full trust in you,” Xi told Lee, as quoted by Xinhua news agency.
“Thanks to the concerted efforts of the central government, the Hong Kong government and the whole society, Hong Kong has achieved a major transition from chaos to order and is now at a crucial stage of advancing to prosperity,” Xi noted.
The Chinese president said he believes that the new government will bring new changes and Hong Kong will make new advances in its development.
Hong Kong, under the terms of its 1997 handover to China, was promised autonomy with “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong.” Representative elections are the end goal under the Basic Law which is Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.
The Chief Executive in Hong Kong is selected by a handpicked panel of about 1,500 members of the political and business elite known as the election committee. Only one candidate was approved by Beijing this year for the election. (ANI)
Personalization became supreme, with Chen justifying his policies as having Xi’s blessing. Such was his fervor that he frequently issued death threats in various speeches against any who resist the state….reports Asian Lite News
A cache of tens of thousands of leaked documents from the Chinese police and re-education camps have confirmed that the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – reaching right to Chairman Xi Jinping at the top – are totally complicit in the human rights atrocities occurring in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang.
The number of Uyghur inmates in Xinjiang’s notorious concentration camps – which China calls “vocational skills education and training centers” – peaked in 2018-19, and perhaps up to two million had suffered imprisonment by 2020.
The Chinese government admits that these camps “wash brains”, “cleanse hearts” and “remove evil”. Muslim internees are punished and brainwashed in these camps that dramatically filled up from 2017 onwards, many detained for no other reason than that Beijing claimed they were “untrustworthy persons”.
The so-called Xinjiang Police Files were “obtained” from Public Security Bureau computers in Konasheher and Tekes counties in Xinjiang. They contained a multiplicity of material such as police training PowerPoint presentations as well as sensitive files, photos and speech transcripts. The vast amount of material helped authenticate their veracity, for their level of detail could only have come from the Chinese government.
After arriving in Xinjiang from Tibet, Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo commenced a five-year work plan to subjugate the restive province. The plan had these phases: in year one (2017) “stabilize” the region; in year two (2018) “consolidate” those gains; in year three (2019) achieve “basic normalization” of the new conditions; and by the fifth year (2021) reach “comprehensive stability”.
What can be learnt from the Xinjiang Police Files?
Adrian Zenz, a German academic who is one of the world’s foremost researchers on Chinese actions in Xinjiang, said the material was “unprecedented”. He also ensured the documents were verified by peers and a consortium of 13 media outlets to verify their authenticity. Firstly, Zenz said, it included high-level speeches that implicated China’s top leadership and contained very blunt language.
For example, Chen Quanguo admitted in a leaked transcript of one speech on 18 June 2018, that his authorization to suppress the Uyghur populace came directly from Xi. “The general secretary sent me to Xinjiang; first, not in order to be an official; second, not in order to make a fortune; third, not in order to have nothing but an empty title. [Rather,] the general secretary sent me to Xinjiang in order to make a stable Xinjiang arise…”
Personalization became supreme, with Chen justifying his policies as having Xi’s blessing. Such was his fervor that he frequently issued death threats in various speeches against any who resist the state.
Then, in December 2021, the CCP appointed Ma Xingru as new party secretary in Xinjiang, replacing the Machiavellian Chen Quanguo. The fact that Chen was replaced by a technocrat suggests that his scheme had gone precisely according to plan – mission accomplished. This also accords with evidence that some overt forms of surveillance (for example, checkpoints on streets) have drawn down in Xinjiang in recent times.
In another transcript from a speech by Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi on 15 June 2018, after a five-day investigative visit to Xinjiang, Zhao offered support for international estimates that between one and two million people were incarcerated. His speech also showed that Xi himself was personally aware of the campaign, and that he issued instructions that enabled its expansion.
What else can be learned from the Xinjiang Police Files?
Secondly, according to Zenz, the world now has far more details concerning camp security instructions. As well as regular guards, camps possessed heavily armed strike units equipped with assault rifles. Their duties included armed patrols to “intimidate” detainees, to escort prisoners, to guard inmates during class hours (they carried shields, batons and handcuffs) and to suppress riots.
Guards in watchtowers possess sniper rifles and light machine guns, although only Han Chinese officers are allowed to carry firearms. Perhaps 150,000 police recruits from around China were sent to Xinjiang in 2018 to guard the mass influx of prisoners.
Chen’s February 2018 speech highlighted the need for “absolute security of vocational skills education and training centers and internment facilities”. Indeed, he was preoccupied with camp security, authorizing troops to shoot first and ask questions later if any camp were attacked externally. Chen also issued shoot-to-kill orders in case any prisoner tried to escape, a policy contrary to national police tactics. Chen brutally argued that when police made arrests, especially of those returning from other countries, they should “arrest them as soon as they see them” and “deal with them as with serious criminal offenders”. That includes handcuffing them, blindfold them and using ankle shackles if needed.
The party secretary said China was unlike the USSR because “we have the wise leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping and the backing of 1.3 billion of the people and millions of troops”. He boasted in a May 2017 speech that 100,000 members of the People’s Armed Police were actively hunting down and capturing suspects.
The intimidation and security measures were obviously effective. There are no eyewitness reports of anyone ever successfully escaping from these camps.
Thirdly, The Xinjiang Police Files included vivid photos of police drills and tactics at these camps, as well as more than 5,000 images of Uyghur suspects photographed at detention centers and police stations.
Of these photos, 2,884 were interned, the youngest of which was a 14-year-old girl named Rahile Omer. Her crime was being the daughter of a government official detained as part of Xinjiang’s “strike hard” campaign in 2017. In fact, 424 of these photos depicted minors.
Fourthly, sets of spreadsheets showed the vast scale of the internments. In 2017/18, for example, more than 12% of the entire Uyghur adult population in Konasheher county was imprisoned simultaneously. This rate was 64 times the national imprisonment rate for China.
Under Chen’s tutelage, Xinjiang became a “high-tech penal colony. Not only that, but China enacted the severest social engineering effort since the convoluted rule of Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution.
Chen observed there was a “bottom line” that cannot be crossed: detainees cannot be released, because “once they are let out, problems will immediately appear. He argued that they “must not be let out,” because “some may not necessarily have been transformed well even after three or five years. It is notable that in 2018/19, the government started sentencing prisoners to longer sentences.
There is yet another aspect to be learned from the release of this treasure trove of Xinjiang documents. Importantly, it goes some way to answering why Xi and the CCP became so ruthless in their suppression of Xinjiang and its Muslim inhabitants, treating a whole ethnic group like a gang of dangerous criminals.
It can be said that Xinjiang entered a “crisis mode”, one featuring increased centralization, personalization, militant mobilization rhetoric and impassioned demands, increased influence of disciplinary and security organs, and a greater role of ideology in decision-making. Exploring this, in an article published in the Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies in May 2022, Zenz offered this assessment: “Scholars have argued that political paranoia is a common feature of atrocity crimes. Here, it is suggested that the preemptive internment of large numbers of ordinary citizens can be explained as a devolution into political paranoia that promotes exaggerated threat perceptions.”
Central government figures have argued in classified speeches that if the Xinjiang situation were not handled properly, it would threaten the realization of China’s most important political goals in the 21st century. “This intimate link between Xinjiang policy and major national political goals, also extensively highlighted by Xi Jinping in his internal speeches from 2014, explains the highly personalized, ideologized, militarized and mobilizational nature of the region’s policy dynamics.”
Questions definitely do need to be asked as to why an antiterrorism crackdown degenerated into mass and arbitrary detention of so many innocent citizens that were punished like radical villains.
Zenz suggested that the escalation of Xinjiang’s de-extremification measures is partially explained by the state sincerely adopting a terror threat perception, but that this perception was then greatly and unjustifiably amplified. Furthermore, “The framing of entire ethnic groups as threats, and the attendant extreme preoccupations with security in the campaign’s execution, reflected a devolution into paranoia.”
Such paranoia can be rooted in reality – for terrorist acts were perpetrated by Uyghurs – but that threat became greatly exaggerated. Such lessons are easily observed in Nazi Germany, where political paranoia led to radical anti-Jewish measures that escalated even further after war broke out.
Zenz elaborated: “The paranoid-schizoid position uses projective identification and splitting to project the hated parts of the self out and onto the ‘Other’, while simultaneously idealizing the good within oneself. This psychological defense mechanism can explain how Xi Jinping, Chen Quanguo and other leaders came to frame Uyghurs as a pathological threat, while simultaneously portraying themselves as their kind benefactors.”
Xi initially delineated the “enemy” as those who act directly against the state. Zenz explained, “However, anyone who cannot be controlled is ‘untrustworthy’ because they could conceivably end up resisting the state in some form. This creates a devolutionary logic by which the ‘enemy’ is no longer just those who actually engage in violent resistance, but also persons who are potentially ‘untrustworthy’ because the state fails to ascertain their state of mind.”
China has convinced itself that permanent security is necessary – in other words, it must have invulnerability to threats – but such a state is truly unobtainable.
Nonetheless, in its hubris and paranoia, China has sought such a goal even if it ends up indiscriminately targeting entire ethnic groups. It irrationally believes the only way to do so is to put the “untrustworthy” in prisons, which are “trustworthy” places, even if the human rights and decency of millions are trampled upon. (ANI)
