cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/56159234
Op-ed by Reza Hasmath, Professor in Political Science, University of Alberta, Canada.
On July 1, China brought into force its Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, converting a decade of Xi Jinping’s doctrine of “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation” into binding law.
Most attention has gone to its domestic machinery: entrenching Mandarin over minority languages, unified state textbooks and “inter-embedded” neighbourhoods engineered to dilute concentrations of Uyghurs and Tibetans among the Han majority. In other words, this is an assimilationist project that’s already far advanced.
The provision that matters most to the world outside China is buried near the end. Article 63 declares that organizations and individuals outside Chinese territory who “undermine ethnic unity” or “create ethnic division” shall be pursued for legal liability.
The Chinese government is therefore asserting, in statute, that its authority follows its critics across oceans into other countries, including Canada, home to some of the world’s largest Chinese, Uyghur and Tibetan diaspora communities. The danger is not that the law reaches across borders. It is what it criminalizes, whom it targets and how it’s enforced.
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The intimidation inherent in the new law already violates many domestic harassment and foreign interference laws in jurisdictions around the world. Prosecutors, here, should use them against the agents carrying out the coercion, not the exiles who are its victims.
Governments should shut the unlicensed “police stations,” and press Interpol to reject politically motivated notices aimed at diaspora activists.
Governments can also build dedicated channels for those targeted: a clear law enforcement contact, protective guidance for Chinese and minority diaspora communities and training for officers who could mistake transnational repression for an ordinary domestic dispute.
Finally, asylum systems should treat Article 63 as evidence: a statute in which China announces that diaspora advocacy invites retaliation is close to proof of persecution for those seeking to flee.
China has every right to legislate for its own territory and citizens. What it cannot legitimately do, however warmly it speaks of unity, is disregard borders. The task for all nations, Canada included, is to insist, in law and in practice, that borders still exist.
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being Uyghur is racist? that’s probably the dumbest fucking thing you’ve ever said, and that’s a high bar.
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/
that’s not what I said, but thanks for posting this unrelated article.
Well given that it’s a thing you said and not a thing I said, the utter stupidity of it isn’t surprising.
the article is about China suppressing ethnic minorities. not only did you not read the article, you fucking baboon, but China is literally enshrining racism into law, exactly the opposite of your attempt at a pithy comment. you aren’t just campist filth, you’re dumb as a fucking brick as well.
That’s fucking hilarious coming from someone uncritically accepting the US State Department’s analysis of a law in an AES country.
I’m surprised you know that word, considering you’ve never once thought critically about anything you’ve read online. not that I believe you’ve done much reading, mind. everything you know of theory, you read in your ML Matrix circlejerks. your first experience with working class solidarity is going to be when the mob tears you to pieces for being a jack-booted thug of whatever the closest fascist government LARPing as communist is to you. and it’ll be good riddance, because the only good campists like yourself will ever do for the world is to leave it.
Aww, the Anarkiddie hurt itself in its confusion.
Don’t worry kiddo, the real revolutionaries aren’t going to let you and your playmates hand the world right back over to the bourgeoisie before the smoke clears. And another generation of kids who think homework and bedtime are the epitome of authoritarianism will mald over that for another few decades.
lol yeah ok. look at you, mr. hard commie revolutionary lmao.
Compared to an Anarkiddie? That’s not a hard thing to be.
Get back to me when your ideology manages to hold ground against the capitalists when that ground is somewhere anybody the fuck else actually wants.
come back to me when you manage a revolution without depending on anarchists. for that matter, come see me when you get off the keyboard and attend your first protest, big guy. let’s start with baby steps lmao. you’re gonna love it when you touch some grass for the very first time.
what a joke, but thanks for the laughs.