After China threatened to sue them for their research on the Uighur crackdown, a think tank and a scholar say they stand by their work on the human rights violations against the Muslim minority in China’s northwest region of Xinjiang. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and U.S.-based researcher Adrian Zenz have gained international attention in recent years for their investigative papers focusing on China’s policies toward the Turkic-speaking minorities in Xinjiang.  Beijing’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) now wants to take legal action against them for allegedly publishing “disinformation about China for libel.” “Overall, I think our research has the CCP rattled,” said ASPI executive director Peter Jennings.   Accusing Beijing of efforts to undermine free speech, Jennings said that ASPI reports on the region were based on verified sources coming from China.   “In their own offensive way, they are doing their best to pressure ASPI and smear researchers around the world in an effort to stop shining a light into the behaviors of the Communist Party,” Jennings told VOA. On Wednesday, China’s Global Times reported about the Chinese government’s intention to sue ASPI and Zenz. A day later, Chinese government spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters that he was not surprised about the possible lawsuit, claiming “Chinese and foreign media have exposed multiple times those behind Zenz and the ASPI.”   Zhao said he “advises” Zenz and ASPI to “come back to the right course as soon as possible, because too many vile deeds will inevitably lead to one’s self-destruction.” In recent years, both ASPI and Zenz have published several research papers on China’s campaign, most notably on Uighurs who have been subjected to state surveillance, arbitrary detention, forced labor and birth control in Xinjiang where, according to United Nation estimates, more than 1 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities have been detained in internment camps.    Forced labor In a report published in February titled “Uyghurs for Sale,” ASPI said it found the Chinese government facilitating the mass transfer of over 80,000 Uighurs from Xinjiang to work in factories across the country under conditions that strongly suggested forced labor. The Uighurs, ASPI claimed, included those previously held in detention camps and taken to factories that were in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands. The ASPI report was referenced in March by a group of U.S. lawmakers who introduced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Last week, the U.S. departments of State, Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security issued a joint business advisory to caution businesses about the risks of supply-chain links to forced labor in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. Zenz, a senior fellow of China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told VOA that his latest article about mandatory sterilization of Uighur women in Xinjiang has triggered alarm bells and prompted a Washington Post editorial that called the policies of China in Xinjiang “a demographic genocide” aimed at reducing the Uighur population.A Chinese police officer takes his position by the road near what is officially called a vocational education center in Yining in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China September 4, 2018. Picture taken September 4, 2018.“My research is based on analyzing China’s own documents,” said Zenz, adding that his last findings about human rights in Xinjiang has shifted the debate to another level. “People are starting to refer to China’s policies in Xinjiang as genocide. Beijing is really feeling the pressure. I think this is a sign that they’re getting more desperate,” Zenz said. Silencing critics abroadAccording to some experts, the threat by China against ASPI and Zenz are the latest attempt by the communist regime to force Uighur experts abroad into silence.  Michael Clarke, an expert on history and politics of Xinjiang at Australian National University, told VOA that Chinese authorities have long attempted to label both as biased.      China “in the recent past sought to cast doubt on Zenz’s objectivity by attacking his own religious faith and linking it to a perceived alignment with certain political actors/persuasions on the right of American politics,” Clarke said. Meanwhile, the Chinese government called ASPI a mouthpiece of the Australian defense department, said Clarke. “While this is true, (ASPI does receive significant funding from Australian Department of Defense), it, of course, does not invalidate its findings,” he said.   Donald C. Clarke, a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School, warned that by pursuing the “harassing” litigation, China is trying to “bankrupt the defendant.” “This weapon of intimidation is effective only to the degree that Western countries allow it to be effective, since it uses those countries’ legal institutions,” Clarke told VOA. Michael Clarke and Donald C. Clarke are unrelated. This tactic is not risk-free for China. “Any litigation will attract attention. …. It is going to result in an official court verdict that claims about Uyghur detention are not false. Does China really want that?” said Clarke. 
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Amid rising concerns that Beijing and Washington are drifting toward a Cold War, U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared that China’s rise is not a positive development for the United States.  Trump made the remarks in the White House Rose Garden, announcing he had signed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act and issued an executive order ending preferential trade treatment for Hong Kong.  “Hong Kong will now be treated the same as mainland China,” Trump said of the order. The act imposes sanctions on people, entities and financial institutions connected to China deemed responsible for actions to remove autonomy from Hong Kong.Responding to a reporter’s question, Trump said he has no plans to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping anytime soon.  The remarks came on the heels of fresh sanctions on China over its repression of minorities in Xinjiang and moves by Washington to cut off Chinese companies from American technology.  FILE – Chinese President Xi Jinping reaches to vote on a piece of national security legislation concerning Hong Kong during the closing session of China’s National People’s Congress in Beijing, May 28, 2020.The president spent much of his hour in the Rose Garden on Tuesday attacking his opponent in this year’s presidential election, blaming former Vice President Joe Biden for a calamity of errors regarding China and other matters during the Barack Obama administration.  “Donald Trump is busy trying to rewrite his miserable history as President of caving to President Xi and the Chinese government at every turn,” the Biden campaign responded in a statement. “But try as he may, Trump can’t hide from a record of weakness and bad deals that consistently put China first and America last.”  With the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic damage certain to be major topics of the election season, Trump continues to focus blame on China, where the infection was first reported.  “We hold China fully responsible for concealing the virus and unleashing it upon the world,” the president said.  American Enterprise Institute research fellow Zack Cooper expects Trump to pull the United States out of its trade deal with China as the November election approaches to show that he is tough on Beijing.  “But I’m not sure that that’s really going to get the job done, and it’s going to hurt the market a bit, too,” Cooper told VOA. “So, I think there’s some real downsides here for the president in making China such a big campaign issue.” FILE – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a news conference at the State Department in Washington, July 8, 2020.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement Monday declaring a strengthening of U.S. policy and making clear that China’s “claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea — waters through which $4 trillion in trade pass annually — are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.”  Pompeo added that “the world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire.”  The U.S. statement “makes explicit things that had been implied by previous administrations,” said Gregory Poling, senior fellow for Southeast Asia and director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And in that, it sets the stage for more effective diplomatic messaging and stronger responses to China’s harassment of its neighbors.” In response to Pompeo’s announcement, China’s embassy in Washington accused the United States of “throwing its weight around in every sea of the world.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters during a briefing that Beijing has never strived to build an empire in the South China Sea. “It has become so difficult for the U.S. to marshal an international alliance to counter China because the charges it directs at China are groundless and one-sided, stoked by its strategic anxiety,” the Communist Party-controlled China Daily said in an editorial on Tuesday. “Only those willing to bet their future on the current U.S. administration are likely to be duped by its scaremongering.” Prior to the president’s remarks, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia said the Trump administration could apply additional sanctions on Chinese officials.“Nothing’s off the table,” David Stilwell, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said during an online event organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies China announced Tuesday it would sanction U.S. aerospace company Lockheed Martin over recent weapons sales to Taiwan, which Beijing claims is a rogue province of China.  The Trump administration has pressured allies to cut ties for their development of 5G wireless technology with Chinese company Huawei, a move Britain took on Tuesday.Some influential voices inside and outside the Trump administration are pushing for U.S. technology companies to decouple themselves from China’s supply chain, perceiving the links as a long-term threat to national security.  VOA’s Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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Former commanders of the U.S. forces in Korea mourned a legendary Korean War hero, General Paik Sun-yup, who died last Friday at 99. They hailed South Korea’s first four-star general as a hero and mentor.  “He was a hero, diplomat, patriot, and friend. He was a mentor to me when I served as the Commander in Chief of the Combined Forces Command and remained a friend and leader thereafter,” General (Ret.) John Tilelli told VOA Korean service on Friday. Tilelli, who commanded the U.S. Forces in Korea from 1996 to 1999, remembered Paik as a leader who “loved his soldiers,” who remembered their names and battle positions decades after the war.The Commander of USFK also serves as the Commander in Chief of the United Nations Command and the U.S.-Republic of Korea Combined Forces Command. Paik was always invited as an honored guest at the inauguration ceremonies of top U.S. military commanders.  General (Ret.) Burwell Bell, shared his memory of Paik with VOA Saturday. “When I served as the Combined Forces Commander between 2006 and 2008, General Paik met with me frequently to pass on lessons of the Korean War and twice took me on battlefield staff rides to teach and mentor me. He was brilliant,” said Bell.Bell hailed Paik as one of the world’s great military leaders compared to George Washington.  “General Paik Sun-yup was, in my view, the military father of his present-day country, the Republic of Korea. Not unlike America’s George Washington who led our Revolutionary War forces to battlefield victory and was the military father of the United States, General Paik led South Korean forces to many battlefield victories during often chaotic and extremely uncertain combat operations against the North Korean invaders and their Chinese partners,” Bell said.  A mourner takes photos of the late South Korean Army Gen Paik Sun-yup at a memorial altar for him at the Gwanghwamun Plaza in Seoul, South Korea, July 12, 2020.A loss to US-South Korea allianceAs Paik was one of the top Korean commanders who fought alongside U.S. forces during the Korean War, he has long symbolized the U.S.-South Korea military alliance. Paik was among those first recruited when the U.S. helped build a military for South Korea that started from the Constabulary.  In 2013, he was named an honorary commander of the Eighth Army, a U.S. field army, which is the commanding formation of all U.S. Army forces in Korea.  “I have admired him for many decades. So this is a deep loss for the [U.S.-South Korea] alliance and a true part of history that has just passed away,” General (Ret.) Vincent Brooks told VOA in an interview Friday. Brooks led USFK from 2016 to 2018.General (Ret.) James Thurman told VOA, Paik played a pivotal role in the alliance. “He was a true hero and patriot that helped keep the R.O.K-U.S. alliance strong and unbreakable for the last 70 years. … [He is] a very dedicated and trusted leader who was committed to enduring peace and security of the Korean peninsula,” noted Thurman, the commander of USFK from 2011 to 2013.    When North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25th, 1950, Paik commanded the South Korean military’s 1st Infantry Division. Attacked by North Korea, the U.S.-led United Nations force and the South Korean Army retreated to a small area behind a defensive line known as the Pusan Perimeter. Paik is famous for defending that perimeter in August 1950 at the battle of Tabu-dong, known as one of the fiercest fights in the Korean War. Paik and his division continued to push north and were the first to enter Pyongyang in October. Paik participated in all ten of the major campaigns of the Korean War.Controversy over early careerPaik will be interred in the National Cemetery in Daejeon, in central South Korea on Wednesday, not the National Cemetery in capital Seoul. There’s heated debate in South Korea over his funeral arrangements.  The United Future Party, a conservative opposition party charges, “it is a dishonor” that Paik is not interned at the Seoul National Cemetery. Simultaneously, some members of the ruling Democratic Party have opposed burying Paik in a national cemetery.The controversy stemmed from Paik’s earlier career when Japan colonized Korea. In the early 1940s, Paik had served in the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchukuo, Tokyo’s puppet state in Manchuria. Paik said that he never engaged in battles with Korean guerrillas in Manchuria while serving in the unit.In 2009, a South Korean presidential committee put him on a list of ‘pro-Japanese and anti-nation’ figures, who collaborated with Japanese colonizers.  Scott Snyder, U.S.-Korea policy director at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA Monday, the ongoing debate over Paik “may be the most consequential contemporary manifestation of his legacy and contributions.”He added, “But without General Paik’s sacrifices and leadership at a critical historical moment during the Korean War, the freedom to debate Paik’s role itself would possibly not exist.”The White House National Security Council on Sunday tweeted, “South Korea is a prosperous, democratic Republic today thanks to Paik Sun-yup and other heroes who put everything on the line to defeat Communist invaders in the 1950s. We mourn General Paik’s death at age 99 and salute his legacy.”
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