Uyghur refugee tells of death and fear inside China's Xinjiang camps

Tursun says she and her son are victims of Beijing's growing crackdown on Muslim majority Uyghurs in China's far western Xinjiang region, where a US State Department official says at least 800,000 and possibly up to two million people may have been detained in huge "re-education centers."

The Urumqi Children's Hospital in Xinjiang, where Tursun says her son died, didn't respond to CNN's requests for comment meaning CNN is unable to independently confirm her claims.

On Monday, China's Foreign Ministry vehemently refuted Tursun's allegations, describing her story as a "compete lie, told with ulterior motives."

Speaking at a regular daily press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying denied that Turson had been formally imprisoned or detained in a "vocational training center" -- the government's term for what critics allege are internment camps -- while living in China.

Tursun was detained by local police for 20 days in 2017 for "inciting ethnic hatred and discrimination," according to Hua, and other than that she had traveled freely outside China. Hua also disputed Turson's claim that her son, Mohaned, had died while in hospital in Xinjiang calling it "totally false," suggesting the boy was sent to Turkey to live with relatives by Tursun.

CNN had previously reached out to multiple government agencies for comment, including the Foreign Ministry, who were contacted twice for comment on Thursday and once on Friday in writing before publication. CNN also contacted the Foreign Ministry, via phone, Friday.

But Tursun's story of detention and torture -- which she also delivered in full to the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China in 2018 -- fits a growing pattern of evidence emerging about the systematic repression of religious and ethnic minority groups carried out by the Chinese government in Xinjiang.

"Credible reports found that family members of Uyghurs living outside of China had gone missing inside China, that Chinese authorities were pressuring those outside the country to return, and that individuals were being arbitrarily detained in large numbers," lawmakers wrote.

According to the US State Department, Chinese authorities have indefinitely detained at least 800,000 Uyghur, ethnic Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities since April 2017.

"The pervasive surveillance in place across Xinjiang today has been frequently described as an 'open-air prison,'" Assistant Secretary of State Scott Busby said on December 4th while testifying before Congress.

Beijing has had a long and fractious history with Xinjiang, a massive, nominally autonomous region in the far west of the country that is home to a relatively small population of around 22 million in a nation of 1.4 billion people.

The predominately Muslim Uyghurs, who are ethnically distinct from the country's majority ethnic group, the Han Chinese, form the majority in Xinjiang, where they account for just under half of the total population.

Uyghurs have likened China's campaign against their people to a form of "cultural genocide," with former internment camp detainees describing forced lessons in Communist Party propaganda and region-wide bans on Uyghur culture and traditions.

China has repeatedly denied it is imprisoning or re-educating Uyghurs in Xinjiang, instead saying that it is undertaking voluntary vocational training as part of an anti-extremism program.

"The local Chinese government is taking these preventative counter-terrorism and de-extremization measures to protect more people from being devoured by terrorism and extremism," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said last month

In early January, Chinese authorities took some foreign diplomats and journalists on a carefully supervised tour of some of the "vocational education centers."

Detainees were seen taking language courses in standard Mandarin Chinese, painting, performing ethnic dances and even singing the song, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands," according to a Reuters report.

"All of us found that we have something wrong with ourselves and luckily enough the Communist Party and the government offer this kind of school to us for free," one Uyghur inmate told journalists during the tour.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/asia/uyghur-china-detention-center-intl/index.html

الموسوعة وثائق وأحداث مجزرة خان شيخون.. السارين لقتل السوريين

جريمة تؤكد المعارضة السورية أن قوات النظام ارتكبتها يوم 4 أبريل/نيسان 2017 في مدينة خان شيخون بريف إدلب غربي سوريا، واستخدمت فيها غاز السارين السام، وخلفت مقتل أكثر من مئة مدني، وأكثر من أربعمئة جريح معظمهم من الأطفال، بحسب ما أكدته مديرية صحة إدلب.
غاز السارين

لقصف بدأ حوالي الساعة الثامنة بتوقيت دمشق واستهدف خان شيخون بـ15 غارة جوية تحوي مادة غاز السارين السام، وذلك بحسب مراسل الجزيرة ميلاد فضل الذي أوضح أيضا أن هذه المدينة الملاصقة لريف حماة الشمالي سبق أن تعرضت لقصف بغازي الكلور والسارين، ولكن مادة السارين استخدمت بشكل خفيف.

https://www.aljazeera.net/encyclopedia/events/2017/4/4/%D9%85%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%AE%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%B4%D9%8A%D8%AE%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%84%D9%82%D8%AA%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%8A%D9%86

الملكوت ليس الجنه

الملكوت ليس الجنه٠ بأى حال من الاحوال٠ مفيش نصرانى يستخدم كلمة جنه مطلقا مفيش جنه فى دينهم الملكوت هو عالم غير حسى٠ خلاف الجنه فى الاسلام كما هى موصوفه فى الاسلام؟ معندهمش

Canada Attacks Saudi Arabia Human Rights Abuses

Did Saudis Just Threaten Canada With 9/11-Style Attack for Crime of Criticizing Their Atrocious Human Rights Record?

With hundreds of billions in arms deals from the U.S. and U.K., the Saudi regime is being given carte blanche 

"The U.S. must be clear in condemning repression, especially when done by governments that receive our support." 
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

Riyadh's expulsion of the Canadian ambassador, 

Sherin Khankan is Denmark's first female imam

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/islam-shows-its-female-face-with-rise-of-women-mosques/ar-BBMU0Kt?ocid=spartanntp



Sherin Khankan, founder and Imam of women's mosque Mariam Mosque, poses for a photo for the Thomson Reuters Foundation inside the prayer room at her mosque in Copenhagen, Denmark, 24 August 2018. 

COPENHAGEN (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Relegated to the basement, silenced by the imam and barred from the front door, some Muslim women have had enough of male domination at the mosque and are setting up their own.

From Copenhagen to Los Angeles, a handful of female mosques now cater to Muslim women who want their own place of worship, just as men have had through the ages.

"It is possible to change a narrative that has been patriarchal for centuries," Sherin Khankan, founder of Europe's first women's mosque, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Her first-floor mosque - adjacent to a clothes shop - is invisible from the busy Danish shopping street below. But behind its anonymous, grey door, a quiet revolution is brewing.

For the past two years, women have been leading prayers, delivering sermons and running Copenhagen's Mariam Mosque - though Khankan says she is not challenging the Koran, just rewriting a male-dominated way of worship.

"We can do that by promoting and disseminating new narratives, with a focus on gender equality. It's not a reform. We're going back to the essence of Islam," she said, draping a red floral shawl across her shoulder.

Although men and women are allowed to meet and pray during the week at Mariam Mosque, the mosque's monthly, collective Friday prayers are for women only, said 43-year-old Khankan.

With a tiny prayer room and simple decor of candles, cushions and rugs, the mosque has about 150 worshippers. It was set up by Khankan with the support of Femimam, a group of female Muslim spiritual leaders in Denmark.

OVERLOOKED

Muslim women's groups and researchers say there is a lack of female Islamic leaders and dearth of worship spaces for women, since most mosques are gender-segregated and men dominate the main prayer rooms.

So, after 15 years in the making, Mariam Mosque joined a handful of female-friendly mosques, including two in Los Angeles, another in the German city of Berlin - which welcomes men and women to Friday prayers - and a new build slated for the northern English city of Bradford, where there are plans to build Britain's first women-led mosque by 2020.

Women-only mosques have existed for hundreds of years in China, where women have had a long tradition of leading prayers.

Director of Britain's Muslim Women's Council Bana Gora, who is spearheading the Bradford project, said mosques had overlooked women and girls for years.

She said some women have had to pray in basements of mosques, or use back entrances where there are safety concerns such as a lack of lighting or security.

"Where do women congregate to talk about issues in society? You need a dedicated space where women can convene and talk to people who can help them, and we simply do not have those spaces anywhere," she said in a telephone interview.

"It's about women claiming their space in a mosque - there's nothing wrong with that. I can see this catapulting across different faiths as well over time," said Gora.

ISOLATED

Khankan said the presence of fellow women in a mosque, as well as access to female spiritual leaders, meant women might feel comfortable seeking help for sensitive issues like inter-faith marriage or domestic violence.

And for the 200 or so women in Denmark who wear a face veil, their world has grown smaller after a ban on niqab veils and body-length burqas in public spaces, said Khankan.

Denmark's parliament enacted the ban in May, joining France and some other European Union countries to uphold what some politicians say are secular and democratic values.

The justice ministry said the ban would focus on women forced by their families to wear veils.

"If a woman is isolated and forced to wear a burqa or the niqab, by criminalizing it, you will isolate her even more, because she might not be able to go out," said Khankan, who also runs a domestic violence support group, Exit Circle.

"It's important to fight for any women's right to wear the hijab or not, to wear the niqab or not - if it's her own choice and her own free will," she said.

THE FUTURE

Khankan said she hopes to see a new generation of female Islamic scholars and worship leaders, or 'imam' - a title normally given to men, which Khankan has proudly claimed.

"We are faced with patriarchal structures which we have normalized for decades. As long as they are alive and they are not challenged, we have a problem," said Khankan.

"We have to state that women are the future of Islam. We have to make it possible for women to have the same possibilities as men," she added.

The Koran does not directly address whether women can lead congregational prayer, according to many traditional Islamic scholars.

Some argue the Prophet Mohammad gave permission to women to lead any kind of prayer, while others say that he meant to restrict women to leading prayer at home.

Still, many traditionalists do not believe a man should hear a woman's voice in prayer.

But Giulia Liberatore, who is researching female Islamic scholars at the University of Edinburgh, said seeing women reach positions of power in Islam will have positive effects.

"If women see other women striving for the highest form of scholarship, they will start seeing themselves as someone who can do that as well," she said.

Sherin Khankan

Imam

Sherin Khankan is Denmark's first female imam who has led the foundation of a women-led mosque in Copenhagen called Mariam Mosque. She is also an activist on Muslim issues including female integration and extremism, and has written numerous texts discussing Islam and politics.

• 
  Wikipedia

• Born: Oct 13, 1974 (age 43) · Denmark
• Nationality: Danish

Serbian Arkan Željko Ražnatović the Butcher of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2010

Serbian Arkan Željko Ražnatović the Butcher of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo

Arkan was assassinated in 2000 before his trial.

In March 1999, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced that Zeljko Raznjatovic (Arkan) had been indicted by the Tribunal, although the indictment was only made public after Arkan’s assassination.

According to the indictment Arkan should have been prosecuted on 24 charges of crimes against humanity (Art. 5 ICTY Statute), grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions (Art. 2 ICTY Statute) and violations of the laws of war (Art. 3 ICTY Statute), for the following acts:[10]

Forcibly detaining approximately thirty non-Serb men and one woman, without food or water, in an inadequately ventilated boiler room of approximately five square metres in size.
Transporting twelve non-Serb men from Sanski Most to an isolated location in the village of Trnova, where they shot and killed eleven of the men and critically wounded the twelfth.
The rape of a Muslim woman on a bus outside the Hotel Sanus in Sanski Most.
Transporting approximately sixty-seven non-Serb men and one woman from Sanski Most, Sehovci, and Pobrijeze to an isolated location in the village of Sasina and shooting them, killing sixty-five of the captives and wounding two survivors.
Forcibly detaining approximately thirty-five non-Serb men in an inadequately ventilated boiler room of about five square metres in size, beat them, and withheld from them food and water, resulting in the deaths of two men.
It is claimed that Arkan was individually responsible for the crimes alleged against him in this indictment pursuant to Art. 7 § 1 of the ICTY Statute. But Arkan was also or alternatively criminally responsible as a commander for the acts of his subordinates pursuant to Art. 7 § 3 of the ICTY Statute, since he had at all times the complete authority to direct and control all of the actions of the members of his paramilitary unit.
Assassination

Arkan's graveArkan was assassinated, on 15 January 2000, 17:05 GMT, in the lobby of Belgrade's elite InterContinental Hotel, a location where he was surrounded by other hotel guests. The killer, Dobrosav Gavrić, was a 23-year-old police mobile brigade's junior member. Gavrić had ties to the underworld and was on sick leave at the time. He walked up alone towards his target from behind. Arkan was seating and chatting with two of his friends and, according to BBC Radio, was filling out a betting slip. Gavrić waited for a few minutes, calmly walked up behind the party, and rapidly fired a succession of bullets from his CZ-99 duty-issued pistol. Arkan was shot in his left eye and lapsed into a coma on the spot.[11] His bodyguard Zvonko Mateović put him into a car, and rushed him to a hospital, but he died on the way. According to an article on NPR, Milošević's own men may have killed him for knowing too much 
Hotel IntercontinentalArkan's companions, Milenko Mandić, a business manager, and Dragan Garić, a police inspector, were also shot to death by Gavrić. Gavrić was shot and wounded immediately after by Arkan's bodyguard, Zvonko Mateović, and fell unconscious. A woman bystander was seriously wounded in a shootout between the two as well. After complicated surgery, Gavrić survived, but remained disabled and confined to a wheelchair as result of a spinal wound.

Serbian Arkan Željko Ražnatović the Butcher of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo

http://www.quickiwiki.com/en/%C5%BDeljko_Ra%C5%BEnatovi%C4%87
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDeljko_Ra%C5%BEnatovi%C4%87

قصص وصور التعذيب فى سوريا والعراق

سوريون يروون لحظات الرعب التي عاشوها بسجون “ب ي د/بي كاكا” في عفرين

• العالم
•  2 ساعتين منذ

روى سوريون ناجون من أحد مراكز احتجاز الإرهابيين في بلدة “راجو” بمنطقة عفرين، عمليات التعذيب ولحظات الرعب التي عاشوها، من تنظيم “ي ب ك / بي كا كا” الإرهابي، قبل تحريرهم بفضل عملية غصن الزيتون.

وأفردت قناة “تي آر تي كردي” التركية الرسمية في خبر لها، شهادات لضحايا التعذيب بينهم نساء وأطفال في مراكز احتجاز الإرهابيين براجو.

وأظهرت مقاطع فيديو للقناة، أماكن التعذيب والزنازين الضيقة المعتمة في المركز المسمى “السجن الأسود”، فضلا عن العثور على ملابس عائدة لأطفال داخله.

ونقل الخبر عن القائد في الجيش السوري الحر أحمد بادرلي، قوله، “كانوا يرطمون رأسي بالجدار في السجن الأسود، جراء ذلك تجمع الدم في أذني ما أدى إلى فقدان السمع بإحداها، كما أنهم (عناصر ي ب ك / بي كا كا) قتلوا زوجتي وأولادي”.

من جانبه، ذكر الطبيب نادل حيدر من عفرين، أن إرهابيين اثنين قاموا بربطه وإطفاء سيجارة بعينه، ثم طرحوه أرضا وركلوه.

بدوره، لفت المدني من عفرين آزاد أحمد، أن من يدخل إلى السجن الأسود يفقد أمله بالخروج.

وأضاف “كانوا يُفقدونهم سمعهم، ويعمونهم، ويكسرون أرجلهم وأقفاصهم الصدرية”.

وفي الخبر، أشار أحمد إلى الزنازين التي احتجز الإرهابيون المدنيين فيها، وقال “قتلوا الناس هنا، أنظروا ربما كان في هذه الزنازين أكثر من 100 شخص”.

وأوضح أن الإرهابيين طلبوا من الناس هنا أن ينضموا إليهم أو يحتجزوهم.

وأردف “قالوا إن من لا ينضمون لنا سنقوم بجعلهم عميانا وصما، وسنقطع ألسنتهم، ونقتلع أظافرهم، ونكسر أفخاذهم”.

وبيّن أحمد، أن الموت كان سبيل النجاة للمحتجزين هنا، وأن المركز يحتوي على 100 زنزانة.

وأشار إلى وجود أطفال ونساء ومسنين فيه.

وفي 18 مارس / آذار الماضي، أعلن الجيش التركي السيطرة على كامل قرى وبلدات منطقة عفرين بعد أسبوع من تحرير مركزها.

وأطلقت القوات المسلحة عملية “غصن الزيتون” في 20 يناير / كانون الثاني الماضي بالتعاون مع “الجيش السوري الحر”، لتحرير المنطقة من إرهابيي منظمة “ي ب ك / بي كا كا”.

http://www.turkeyalaan.net/2018/04/%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%86-%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%88%D9%86-%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%B8%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%B9%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%8A-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%B4%D9%88%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%A8/