Who is Ershidin Israil? An Islamic terrorist? A brave journalist? Or a Chinese spy? This much appears to be clear. In 2009 after riots convulsed Xinjiang, the tumultuous northwestern region of China that is home to the ethnic Uighur people, the 38-year-old teacher decamped to neighboring Kazakhstan. Ershidin’s friends and relatives …
Minorities
The Knights Templar: The Militant Order Championed by Norway’s Terror Suspect
Anders Behring Breivik’s massive, 1,500-pg “2083” manifesto carries within it many odd and jarring tidbits, but nothing piques curiosity more than the Norwegian terror suspect’s obsession with the Knights Templar, a militant-monastic order that participated with bloody effect in the medieval Crusades. Breivik — who is …
A Spade Is a Spade: Why a Western Terrorist Is No Different from a Muslim One
Last year on Sept. 11, I stood by the site of Ground Zero amid hundreds of people shouting obscenities against Muslims and the religion of Islam. They were gathered to protest the proposed construction of a nearby Muslim-run interfaith community center, which had earned the inaccurate moniker “Ground Zero Mosque.” The rally was …
In Israel’s Knesset, Glenn Beck Plays to the Home Crowd
Glenn Beck’s tour guide in the Knesset on Monday was the same fellow who squired Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee around Jerusalem: Danny Danon, the sleek, arch-conservative deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament and a man who knows how to inspire Christian fundamentalists. “I do a lot of fundraising in the United States,” Danon told me …
Will New Evidence of War Crimes Tip the Scales Against the Sri Lankan Government
On June 14, the British television network Channel 4 broadcast a stunning hour-long documentary presenting footage of horrific abuses allegedly committed by Sri Lankan troops during the last months of the country’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The images are graphic and profoundly disturbing. They include the …
New Film About Old Murder Mystery Rekindles French Debate On Racism and Justice
One of France’s most gripping real life whodunits is now the subject of a new feature film. But in addition to suspense and drama “Omar M’a Tuer” (“Omar Killed Me”, see trailer here) creates, its recounting of a Moroccan gardener’s conviction for the 1991 murder of a rich French widow is also generating renewed debate …
Chinese Authorities Try to Limit Protests in Inner Mongolia
Parts of Inner Mongolia, the region that forms much of China’s northern border, have been put under tight control following protests touched off by the hit-and-run death of a herder who was run over by a coal truck. The killing of Mergen, who like some ethnic Mongolians goes by a single name, has raised concerns about development and …
French National Soccer Rocked By Accusations Of Racist Quotas
In the wake of its 1998 World Cup win, France’s victorious national soccer team was a source of French pride beyond its success in bagging the country’s first world crown. It was also celebrated for its black, blanc, beur make-up: the mix of black, white, and ethnic Arab stars who in the space of a month gelled as a peerless …
Six Years After France’s Suburban Project Riots, No Justice For Its Iconic Victims
The decision Wednesday by a French appeals court to drop the case against two police officers implicated in the accidental deaths of youths that sparked nation-wide rioting in France in 2005 offers a reminder of how little things have changed for France’s blighted suburban housing projects since those dark days. Thankfully, …
Official Statistics Mock The Sarkozy-Berlusconi Offensive Against Schengen
As noted yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi created headlines in responding to their bilateral Tunisian dilemma with their call Tuesday for revision and restriction of the entire Schengen treaty. Reworking that 26 year-old text, they made clear, will allow member nations to once again throw up …
There He Goes Again: Threatening To Suspend Schengen Accords, Sarkozy Drifts To the Extreme Right
It would be tempting to give French President Nicolas Sarkozy points for being consistent, except his incessant efforts to approximate the positions of surging extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen have proven so catastrophic it’s difficult not to wonder if the Elysée isn’t suffering from a deep and dysfunctional learning disability. …
After the Earthquake, Not All Quiet on China’s Western Front
One year ago today, an earthquake hit the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, leveling a small, majority-Tibetan town. The magnitude-6.9 temblor shook buildings from the hills and pulled monasteries and mud-brick homes to the ground. The first images from the scene showed crimson-robed monks digging though the rubble by hand. They …
France: Hate Crimes on the Decline, Xenophobia on the Rise
The good news, according to France’s official National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), was the number of racist and anti-Semitic acts in France dropped significantly in 2010—down 13.6% from 2009. But the bad news, the CNCDH’s annual report adds, is that in contrast to that decline in the number of reported racist …