Archive for September 1st, 2008
Our friends, the Chinese
After the magnificency of Chinese Olympic Games and the lack of world opposition to Chinese continous violation of Human Rights during them (if anyone voiced that opposition, he would be expelled from Chinese soil, now we get another news of what China is doing:
On August 21, they filed suit in Superior Court in Los Angeles, alleging that, beginning in July 2003, Bank of China transferred millions of dollars to help Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad. The moneys, originating in Iran and Syria as well as other places in the Middle East, were funneled through Bank of China branches located in the United States to a branch in Guangzhou, the capital of China’s Guangdong province. From there the funds were wired to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, where they were used “for the purpose of planning, preparing for and executing terrorist attacks” between May 2004 to January of last year.
The plaintiffs claim that in April 2005 Israeli counterterrorism officials met with officials from China’s central bank and the country’s Ministry of Public Security to demand an end to Bank of China’s role in the money transfers. The transfers, however, continued, according to the complaint in the case. The Chinese central bank denies the meeting ever took place.
Furthermore, Bank of China denies all of the plaintiffs’ allegations. “The accusation is absolutely groundless,” the bank said in a statement issued Wednesday. Wang Zhaowen, a spokesman for Bank of China in Beijing, said the bank “always complies with the United Nations’ anti-money-laundering regulations. Also, our New York branch and related representative offices always follow U.S. banking regulations.”
(…) Why is Bank of China involved in so many dubious activities? After the 1949 revolution, the bank became the financial window for the People’s Republic. Last decade, it formally gave up that specialized role but has remained the country’s main foreign exchange bank. This decade, Bank of China has sold large strategic stakes to foreign banking institutions and shares to the investing public, but the Chinese government still controls its operations. If Beijing deals with a rogue leader or terrorist somewhere in the world, it most always funnels cash through Bank of China, which has operations in about thirty nations. The central government may say that it does not control the bank, but in reality it does.
Marvellous. So they have detained (and condemned to death and tortured) Uighur Muslims by claiming that they were “Islamic terrorists” and now it results that they are funneling money to Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad. And what do they think this people are? Solidarity crusaders? Or charity nuns?
So we must keep on asking what side of the Jihad is China on.
Kremlin critic shot in Ingushetia
This is what BBC News reported yesterday.:The most interesting thing is that he was shot while in police custody:
The owner of an internet site critical of the Russian authorities in the volatile region of Ingushetia has been shot dead in police custody.
Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the ingushetiya.ru site, was a vocal critic of the region’s administration.
The Russian prosecutor’s office said an investigation into the death had been launched, Russia media report.
A post on Yevloyev’s site says he was detained by police after landing at the airport of the main town, Nazran.
The website owner was taken to hospital but died from his injuries.
While the problem in Abjasia and Osetia remains and Russian President Medvedev has again announced that their independence is “irrevocable”,this new murder of an opposition figure (we all remember Politovskaya) shows again the real face of the “new Russia”.
Pakistan “Honor” Killing: Three Teenage Girls Buried Alive for Choosing Their own Husbands….
ISLAMABAD: Three teenage girls along with their two close elderly relatives were shot at before being buried alive in a desert of Balochistan by their tribesmen in the name of honour.
The shocking reports of this horrible incident reaching the capital from different quarters revealed that the girls studying in classes 10 to 12 intended to marry men of their choice through a civil court by defying the centuries-old tribal traditions. When the fuming elders of Umrani tribe came to know about the intentions of these girls to appear before a local court, they picked them up from their homes along with two of their elderly women relatives. The crying girls were pushed into official cars and driven to a deserted area. There they were pushed out of the cars, made to stand in a queue and volleys of shots fired at them.
Three women who tried to help the girls were also killed the same way. A Pakistani politician, Senator Israrullah Zehri, has defended the crime by saying that everything was a “tribal tradition“.
Which leads to another question: just because a tradition has been maintained for centuries, must be kept for the future? Or one should consider if that tradition is OK from another points of view? Humanity, for example.
Technorati tags: Pakistan,Honor Killings,women in Islam,Islamism
