Yesterday I gave a speech on Independence. I said that nations with minorities should grant those minorities independence, if that's what the minorities want. Examples are Tibet and Taiwan. To my shame, I forgot another minority that wants it (at least by some accounts they do), namely the Uighurs. Incidentally, the Uighurs are a Chinese minority, too.
Now there have been demonstrations ending in fights between Uighurs and the police. Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, blames all on the demonstrators, of course. Can that news agency be trusted on anything remotely related to this sort of incident? Of course not. For one thing, "[Xinhua] says three people were killed and more than 20 injured (...)". Other sources says over 140 dead (LA Times, BBC News (video)). (I do realize the numbers could be an artifact of when those reports were made.)
The Uighurs are a Muslim minority of 8 million people in north-west China, an area which, unfortunately, is rich in oil. Therefore China will not grant them independence. There could be other reasons, such as that the Chinese government just cannot stand losing face (correct me if I'm wrong, but that is supposed to be a fairly well-known Chinese trait in general?).
Let those people go!, if that's what they want.
- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
-
Political pollsters are pretending they know what's happening. They don't.1 month ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
-
Course Corrections6 months ago in Angry by Choice
-
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Catalogue of Organisms
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Variety of Life
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?4 years ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China5 years ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM6 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey7 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV8 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
WE MOVED!8 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!9 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez9 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens10 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl12 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House13 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs13 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby13 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files
5 comments:
Markup Key:
- <b>bold</b> = bold
- <i>italic</i> = italic
- <a href="http://www.fieldofscience.com/">FoS</a> = FoS
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I dunno, I think the Chinese government might happily give the Uighurs independence....provided they left, taking nothing of value with them, and just incidentally leaving that all that oil-rich real estate open for resettlement by people of the government's choice.
ReplyDeletecicely
Sure, perhaps we could resettle them in, say, the Middle East somewhere...
ReplyDelete...because that strategy has worked so well in the past....
ReplyDeletecicely
Because it's true, I'm quite fond of saying that frequently the best way to aid or even improve a thing is to leave it alone. "Forced resettlement" has nothing at all to do with "independence" ... something to which, at the least, Native Americans can attest.
ReplyDeleteBecause it's true, I'm quite fond of saying that frequently the best way to aid or even improve a thing is to leave it alone.
ReplyDeleteOoh, that's a very evolutionary way of thinking. I wonder if you could sell that to the Chinese government. (Okay, honestly, I don't wonder that.)