On October 19, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released a report detailing the suffocating social control that the Chinese authorities are exerting on the Uyghurs and other indigenous groups in the Xinjiang region.

In spite of Chinese attempts at muddying the waters on the matter while harassing those seeking to expose the bottom, the Australian report joins a long list of reports, eyewitness accounts and open-source investigations that have shed light on the Chinese government programs in Xinjiang.

The revelations have led two separate American administrations and the Canadian Parliament to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang a genocide.

Yet, there are parallels between the Chinese abuses and the Indian residential school system established in Canada in the beginning of the 20^th century, that was central to the country’s policy on indigenous groups, as well as the American justifications of human rights violations after September 11.

Schools that ‘civilize’

Part of the Chinese social control in Xinjiang appears in the form of Chinese government-run boarding schools intended for Muslim children. In 2019 nearly half a million children in Xinjiang had been separated from their families and placed in such boarding schools.

Most of these boarding school programs began around the beginning of the 20^th century, and in Canada the last of them did not close until 1996. These schools were considered ‘engines of cultural and spiritual change where savages went in and Christians came out.’

Another War on Terror

While Muslim children in Xinjiang have been taken away to boarding schools, many of their parents have been taken to internment camps. It is estimated that more than a million people are currently kept in such camps while upwards of eight million have passed through one of them in recent years.

Former detainees describe how they were subjected to daily physical and psychological abuse, torture as well as attempts at brainwashing through a ceaseless barrage of government propaganda.

However, while the Chinese claim that the camps are not detention camps but rather vocational centres, they often justify internments in Xinjiang as being part of an effort to combat the dangers of separatist extremism and Islamic terrorism in the region.

From changing American administrations a similar rhetoric has been employed in the War on Terror to justify the indefinite detention of people at Guantanamo without due process, the use of drone strikes to target alleged terrorists at the expense of civilian casualties, and the invasion of other countries.

Turning the spotlight to the Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang with strong condemnation compels countries like the US and Canada to engage with their own similarly dark pasts on the matter. Alternatively, genocide could end up simply becoming a meaningless accusation tossed around between geopolitical rivals.

The post Xinjian genocide draws parallels to Canada and US first appeared on The Postcolonial.

If understanding cryptocurrencies alone did not leave you scratching your head, the different government policies aimed at regulating them certainly will.   

China has banned all cryptocurrencies, El Salvador has adopted one of them as their local currency, and the US approves most of them.

What is behind such differing policies? 

Financial authorities’ stance on cryptocurrencies often reflects their national monetary circumstances. On a local level, adoptions are made to meet the local challenges; for example, business owners in Nigeria have adopted cryptocurrencies to combat the volatile local currency.

Cryptocurrencies’ Tarnished Reputation

Since launching in 2009, Bitcoin – possibly the most well-known cryptocurrency – has seen a meteoric rise in value and development. However, today’s crypto sphere includes thousands of different cryptocurrencies – all based on or at least inspired by Bitcoin’s decentralised, open-source and peer-to-peer system. 

With the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, questions have been asked regarding the legitimate need and use for cryptocurrencies in a global financial system, where traditional currencies are regulated by central banks and guaranteed by states. 

The worries are not unreasonable as there have been several cases of cryptocurrencies being used for illicit activities such as money laundering, paying ransoms to hackers and purchasing illegal goods online. But these are not problems solely associated with cryptocurrencies. 

From a climate perspective, focus has been placed on the electricity-intensive mining that is required to maintain the system at a time where the world is trying to reach carbon neutrality. 

From an investment perspective, cryptocurrencies are volatile, making them a risky investment. 

Even Bitcoin, often seen as one of the most “stable” cryptocurrencies, saw its value halving between mid-April to mid-July of 2021 only to double from mid-August to mid-October.

A No-go in China

Some countries have taken a dramatic stance on crypto. An outright ban on financial dealings with cryptocurrencies was issued by the Chinese Central Bank in late September.

The perceived instability of cryptocurrencies was the reason given by the Chinese authorities to justify the government’s repeated restrictions on Chinese financial ventures wanting to adopt cryptocurrencies. 

The ban was not solely due to the volatility of cryptocurrency values or even the potential illicit cryptocurrency activities, but more about the fear of losing monetary control. “The borderless and unregulated nature of cryptocurrencies runs completely contrary to the Chinese government’s vision of a state-controlled economy where the state has tight control over the country’s monetary policy,” Chinese financial consultant Luisa Kinzius told Wired.

A Yes in El Salvador

El Salvador has not had control of its own monetary policy since it adopted the American dollar in 2001 to stabilise the country’s debilitating inflation levels. The adoption of the dollar had essentially transferred monetary control to the US.

By being the first country to adopt a cryptocurrency as a legal tender, President Bukele hopes to attract cryptocurrency investments from abroad, cut down on the country’s reliance on the American dollar and reduce the cost of  transferring money by bypassing services like Western Union. In terms of monetary control, there was a little risk when El Salvador’s crypto-enthusiast President secured legislation that saw Bitcoin being adopted as a legal tender in the country.

But the adoption sparked demonstrations leading to protesters destroying a part of the Bitcoin infrastructure that many Salvadorians see as an expensive and unnecessary investment from their government, in a country that already suffers from high unemployment rates, along with a lack of investments in areas such as education, healthcare and common infrastructure. Additionally, with 50 per cent of Salvadorians lacking access to the internet, many people are and will be unable to trade Bitcoin. This means that the adoption will exclude half of the 6.5 million population, while still demanding that all businesses and vendors start accepting Bitcoin on equal terms with the dollar.

Tipping the Scales with Cryptocurrencies

In the world of crypto, losing monetary control on a state level can mean gaining it at a local level. While Chinese authorities are banning their citizens from engaging in cryptocurrency activities and the Salvadorian authorities forcing citizens to engage in them, people from Argentina and Lebanon to Nigeria and Vietnam have adopted cryptocurrencies irrespective of their governments’ stance on the matter.

In Argentina and Lebanon, people have turned to cryptocurrency in order to bypass capital controls implemented by authorities that essentially limit people’s access to their own bank account savings. 

In Nigeria, local business owners have started using cryptocurrencies due to a shortage of dollars and as a way to insulate their businesses from the volatile local currency. At the same time, several cryptocurrencies offer faster and cheaper transactions, especially when transferring abroad.

Money sent home by workers working abroad are essential for the survival of some countries in the Global South. Using traditional transfer services can cost as much as ten per cent of the original amount in fees, which is a significant cut from family savings. 

Unlike established transfer services, using cryptocurrencies with low transfer fees can cut away this expense, providing a cheaper solution for people where every penny counts.

The post Crypto Road first appeared on The Postcolonial.

On March 12, the European Parliament called on member states to repatriate children currently stuck in indefinite detention with their European mothers in the prison camps of Northeastern Syria.  

The women entered Syria to join ISIS and either brought their children with them or conceived them while in Syria. For that reason the European Parliament’s call largely fell on deaf ears since the children from a legal standpoint cannot be repatriated without their mothers. This seals the children’s fate as most European governments have refused to bring their mothers home.

‘We will not help parents that have turned their backs on Denmark,’ Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, has repeatedly stated.

Her sentiment is shared by other Europeans and their governments, as throughout the EU the detained mothers are labeled as terrorists and traitors.

However, beside a moral-political position of not wanting to repatriate European citizens that joined ISIS, the anti-repatriation camp is increasingly coming under fire as human rights groups and intelligence services, who are voicing concerns that the costs of doing nothing will increasingly outweigh the cost of repatriation.

Threats to Europe

‘We cannot bring back terrorists,’ said Rasmus Stoklund, spokesperson for the Danish government, referring to the Danish women who travelled to Syria and joined ISIS.

He further argued that while their children might not constitute a threat to Danish national security, the women eventually will.

It is therefore not only immoral to repatriate them, it is also dangerous, he said.

However, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) has warned against the dangers posed by leaving the children and their mothers in the camps in Syria.

According to the intelligence service, leaving them can lead to radicalization of the children and further radicalization of the mothers. In time, this can end with ISIS using the children to conduct terror attacks in their European country of origin.

Therefore, the assessment from PET is the opposite of Rasmus Stoklund’s view: The children are the threat, and the threat draws closer with every passing day the children are left to stay in the camps.

However, this warning was dismissed by Danish Minister for Justice Nick Hækkerup, who stated that the intelligence service had merely provided an evaluation, and that it did not fit with the policy of the Danish government.

Another way

Pressured by the threats posed, the Finnish government has chosen a different approach. The Finnish foreign ministry has arranged for about half of the Finnish women and their children to be repatriated while plans are in the making for the remaining ones to be repatriated as well.

The emissary from the Finnish foreign ministry who has been charged with handling the repatriation recognizes the threat that the repatriated might pose to Finnish society once they are back in Finland.

‘I am not saying that there is no risk involved [with repatriation]. It is just that the threat posed by bringing them home is less than doing nothing,’ says Jussi Tanner, Finnish diplomat who will negotiate the homecoming of children located in the Syrian camps.

A European Guantanamo

The British human rights organisation Rights and Security International released an updated report in February about the intolerable conditions that the detainees in the Syrian camps are exposed to. In the report the organisation accuses European countries of having created a Guantanamo of their own by allowing their citizens to remain there.

Children shot by guards. Mothers and their children locked away in solitary confinement for months. Children burned alive in tents.

These are some of the horrific incidents that have occurred in the al-Hol and Roj camps where most of the European mothers and their children are located.

On top of this, the detained are facing malnutrition, kidnappings, dehydration, child labour, lack of medical care and psychological distress, all of these adding to make life for the detained a living hell and creating the perfect conditions for radicalisation.

The American detention camp in Guantanamo was established after the terror attacks on 9/11 and the conditions there have been criticised for breaching the human rights of the detainees due to the indefinite detention without trial and the torture that they have been subjected to.

The post Pressure mounts on Europe’s Guantanamo first appeared on The Postcolonial.

‘I am grateful to the president of the Republic of China on Taiwan,’ said King Mswati III of eSwatini in a speech on February 19^th after recovering from being dangerously ill with COVID-19, reports Reuters.

The king had tested positive in January. 

When president of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen heard about the king’s infection, she arranged for antiviral medication to be sent to the king, according to a spokeswoman for the Taiwanese foreign ministry.

‘I am grateful to the president of the Republic of China on Taiwan’

King Mswati III

King of eSwatini

eSwatini is a small, landlocked country of around one million people that is almost surrounded by South Africa, and it is the only country left on the African continent that still recognizes the government of Taiwan as the legitimate government of China.

That loyalty saved royalty.

However, eSwatini has not been the only recipient of corona aid from Taiwan. Particularly in the spring of 2020 when the COVID was surging through Europe, Taiwan received praise and gratitude for its donations of personal protective equipment to European countries at a time where nations prioritized protecting themselves.

Vaccine Nationalism Versus Vaccine Diplomacy

On the global scale of giving corona aid, Taiwan is a fairly small fish whose efforts have been dwarfed by the contributions from the likes of China, India and Russia.

Almost a year after the personal protective equipment crisis, where the supply of protective gear did not match the worlds demand of it, these three countries have boosted an image of being generous donors at a time where the global hunt is no longer for personal protective equipment but for vaccines. 

‘The vaccine nationalism of western countries created the space for these other countries to practice vaccine diplomacy’

Yanzhong Huang

Senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank

Once again, Western countries are busy procuring themselves with the EU by for example having secured more than 2.3 billion vaccines which will be enough to inoculate its population of about 450 million people several times over.

Meanwhile, China and Russia have donated more than 800 million vaccine doses to 41 countries by February 17^th.

 ‘The vaccine nationalism of western countries created the space for these other countries to practice vaccine diplomacy,’ said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank to the Guardian.

EU member Hungary has even received two million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine which has not yet been certified by the European Medicines Agency.

This exposes cracks in what was supposed to be a united EU vaccine procurement program and can be seen as a victory for Russian diplomacy.

The Personal Approach in the Face of Vaccine Inequality

This is not to say that Western countries have contributed nothing to the global fight against COVID-19. Western countries have donated the most to COVAX.

COVAX is a global initiative spearheaded by WHO and the European Commission that pools funds together to be used for the procurement, coordination and distribution of vaccines to developing countries.

By summer 2020, 165 countries had signed up for COVAX representing 60 percent of the world’s population.

The first COVAX delivery consisted of 600.000 AstraZeneca vaccines that arrived in Ghana on February 24^th.

Estimates show, that when countries depending on vaccines from COVAX will have received enough doses to vaccinate 3 percent of their population, Canada, UK and the US will already be approaching herd immunity.

The stark inequality of COVID-19 immunity has thus presented a ripe opportunity for countries with state-run vaccination productions to score diplomatic points.

‘Obviously Russia and China are not entering emerging countries saying you need to give us something back’

Agathe Demarais

Global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit

Just within the last two weeks, Zimbabwe and Senegal each received 200.000 vaccine doses from China while Egypt received 300.000. Nepal received one million doses from India, and Sri Lanka received 500.000. Mexico received 200.000 from Russia, and Venezuela received 100.000.

But is this vaccine generosity just a token of good will or is something expected in return?

‘Obviously Russia and China are not entering emerging countries saying you need to give us something back,’ said Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit to the Guardian. “But in the long term it will pay dividends. And the Russian and Chinese leaderships understand the pandemic is going to be with us for a long time to come.’

While China and Russia might not have asked for something concrete in return for vaccine doses outright, last week Israeli lawmakers contemplated doing just that when they discussed whether vaccines should only be released to the Gaza Strip in turn for concessions from Hamas that is in control of Gaza.

The post COVID-19 Diplomacy first appeared on The Postcolonial.

‘A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid’

This scathing statement is the title of a paper on the human rights organization B’Tselem’s website. Throughout the paper, the organization argues why this dark designation is applicable to the state of Israel.

The Free Dictionary defines Apartheid  as ‘an official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal and economic discrimination against nonwhites.’

Through a series of laws, it became an integral part of South African society and a guiding principle for keeping white and nonwhite South Africans segregated.

It resulted in nonwhites being deprived of citizen rights and being forced to live on reserves and in so-called townships some of which grew to become huge, chaotic and destitute suburbs to major South African cities within which only whites were allowed to live.

In the paper, B’Tselem draws parallels between the conditions of nonwhites in the South Africa system of Apartheid and the conditions of Palestinians in the Palestinian Territories today.

Israeli Apartheid   

Not unlike people of colour in South Africa, Palestinians today live in disjointed enclaves and do not hold sovereignty of the borders surrounding them. This means that the comings and goings of people, goods and services is out of the hands of the Palestinians.

Freedom of movement for Palestinians is not a guaranteed right since it is the Israeli authorities who de facto control checkpoints and crossings where denied access, arbitrary arrests and detentions are common.

The integrity of the enclaves are not self-assured as unilateral Israeli confiscations of Palestinian land regularly results in the occupation of increasingly more territory in the West Bank. This has forced a growing number of Palestinians into increasingly smaller and crowded enclaves surrounded by walls and fences.

Palestinians do have the right to vote and form political bodies and representations.

However, these representatives only maintain authority of a small range of internal matters in the enclaves while freedom of movement, the occupation of land and territorial security is decided by Israeli authorities representing only Israeli citizens.

These Israeli citizens sometimes only live a few kilometers away on the other side of the walls and the fences.

B’Tselem’s designation of Israel as an Apartheid state drew sharp condemnation from the Israeli authorities with the Israeli education minister going as far as to forbid any organization that calls Israel an Apartheid state from lecturing at schools.

The segregated reality of the corona vaccine rollout

Whether or not Apartheid is an accurate term to describe the Israeli domination of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, the vaccine drive in Israel has nonetheless shown the chasmic difference between an Israeli and a Palestinian life in the region.

It brought the Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International Saleh Higazi to state that ‘Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine program highlights the institutionalized discrimination that defines the Israeli government’s policy towards Palestinians.’

More than 30 percent of the Israeli population of around nine million people had received at least one jab by the middle of February. This is a staggering feat and places Israel far ahead of most other countries. In Europe, most countries have yet to reach five percent of their population.

While Israelis can look forward to having most citizens vaccinated within the coming month, the story is a completely different one in the Palestinian Territories. Here the vaccine drive has barely begun.

Furthermore, the first 2000 vaccines set to enter the Gaze Strip were detained by the Israeli authorities pending review on February 15.

‘There could hardly be a better illustration of how Israeli lives are valued above Palestinian ones’

Saleh Higazi

Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International

On the same day, Israeli lawmakers debated whether vaccines for the Gaza Strip should be withheld and only released in return for concessions by Hamas, the leading authority in the Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, the vaccine drive did not kick into gear before international pressure led the Israeli authorities to transfer 5000 Moderna vaccine doses to the West Bank for use on medical workers.

‘While Israel celebrates a record-setting vaccination drive, millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will receive no vaccine or have to wait much longer – there could hardly be a better illustration of how Israeli lives are valued above Palestinian ones,’ said Saleh Higazi.

Apartheid or no Apartheid the inequality that exists between an Israeli and a Palestinian life is certainly comparable to the inequality between whites and nonwhites in Apartheid South Africa.

The post An Apartheid COVID-19 Vaccine Drive first appeared on The Postcolonial.