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Abstract The Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 proclaimed 'health for all by the year 2000.' In 2019 health is mainstreamed through the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) initiative. [...]

Security operations in the East China Sea (ECS), particularly around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, have become a very high priority for the Japanese government. Its stance on the Senkakus is that [...]

The importance of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to China, economically, politically, and strategically, cannot be overstated. Covering 640,000 square miles, Uyghuristan is approximately the size of Iran. Located in the far west, it is Beijing's largest administrative unit encompassing one-sixth of China's territory. Due to an abundance of coal, natural gas, and oil, accounting for roughly a quarter of China's total reserves, Uyghuristan has been described as the country's ''national energy strategy base.'' These energy resources have been indispensable to 'growing' the Chinese economy and maintaining the Chinese Communist Party in power. Strategically, Uyghuristan is the vital link for the Chinese economy's increasing need for imported oil from Central Asia and, through the Pakistan pipeline corridor, the Persian Gulf. It is the key to the success of Beijing's ambitious 'One Road, One Belt Initiative' to link the economies of Eurasia to China through infrastructure development. The most important strategic value of Uyghuristan, however, resides in its geography. Consisting mostly of mountains and deserts, the sheer vastness of this inhospitable land provides a natural barrier protecting 'China Proper', the heavily populated lands in the east of the country lying between the Yellow River in the north and the Xi River in the south, from land invasions. For these reasons, China will not relinquish control over Uyghuristan, its resources or its people. The people are Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim nation, who have been seeking their political independence for most of the Twentieth Century. The fall of the last imperial dynasty of China, the Qing, in 1911, was followed by the collapse of the Chinese state. In the ensuing political instability, the Uyghurs declared their independence as the East Turkestan Republic - twice. The first time was in 1933 and endured until suppressed by Nationalist Chinese forces under Chiang Kai-shek in 1934. A second East Turkestan Republic was established in 1944 and lasted until it was overthrown by Communist Chinese forces under Mao Zedong in 1949. Since the 1990s, Beijing has initiated measures to permanently secure Uyghuristan to China by colonizing the land with Chinese settlers. These policies have succeeded in reducing Uyghurs from a majority to a plurality. The objective appears to be to make Uyghurs a demographic minority in their own homeland. Chinese colonization has provoked riots by Uyghurs, ethnic clashes between Uyghurs and Chinese migrants, and repeated calls by Uyghurs for their right to self-determination. Beijing's response as reflected in its 2014 'strike hard campaign against terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism' has, itself, been extreme. In the words of a UN human rights panel, Uyghuristan now resembles a 'massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of 'no rights zone'... members of the Uyghur community and other Muslims were being treated as 'enemies of the state' solely on the basis of their ethno-religious identity.' This article will examine these issues and the fundamental question they raise--are Uyghurs victims of genocide as legally defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide? Key Words: Uyghuristan, Muslim, colonization, concentration camps, Article 14, Ban Ki-moon, Big Brother, biometrics, blowback, breaking lineage, breaking roots, breaking connections, and breaking origins, Cantonese, Chen Quanguo Chiang Kai-shek, China's Syria, Chinese Civil War, Chinese Communist Party, CIA, colonization, concentration camps, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, cultural cleansing, Cultural Revolution, detention camps, East Turkestan Republic, educational transformation training centers, ethnic conflicts, ethnic minorities, extremism, final solution, five guarantees, forced adoption, forced assimilation, forcible separation of families, genocide, Great Western Development, Han, Hui, Human Rights Watch, intermarriage, internment, Islam, Kashgar, Long March, Mandarin, Mao Zedong, militarization, mind control, Muslim, Naming Rules for Ethnic Minorities, national self-determination, national unity, no rights zone, permanent cure, population transfer, re-education camps, riots, sinicization, South Chinese, Soviet Union, Stalin, strike hard campaign against terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism, surveillance, thought crime, thought police, Tibetans, U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China, U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, United Nations Outreach Programme on the Rwanda Genocide, Urumqi, Uyghur, violent separatist groups, Xinjiang, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Regulations on De-radicalization., In 1934-1935, facing annihilation at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist forces, Mao Zedong and his Chinese Communist Party fled into the minority populated areas of China for political [...]

ABSTRACT This is an expanded version of a paper presented at the Parliament of World Religions, November 2018, Toronto, Canada. Dedicated to the memory of our little sister, Jakelin Caal [...]

In a year leading up to the 2014 municipal and provincial elections and a possible choice to hold a referendum on independence (or another negotiated accord), French loyalists and Kanak [...]