Leading fashion brands in staged fashion (propaganda) show in Lhasa, occupied Tibet, September 3, 2019
Image: palennyima/chinadaily
On Tuesday, September 3 the Chinese regime authorized in Lhasa, occupied Tibet what was reported to be an ‘international fashion show’. There are many such events promoted by China’s propagandist outlets, across social media and the internet.
It’s a clever deception targeting a western audience, a cynical psy-op to mislead and distract from the traumatizing reality of Chinese rule in Tibet. Fashion, after all, is considered a form of high culture, a beauteous design reflecting modernity. To stage such shows in Tibet offers the oppressors and torturers of the Tibetan people an opportunity to cement in the perception of an occidental mind the notion that China has brought positive development and economic progress.
It also provides the vultures of commerce a chance to profit, which no doubt explains why the following fashion brands were actively involved in the Lhasa event: Chopard, Max Mara, Lane Crawford, Dazzle, Ports 1961, Brunello Cuccinelli, Mikimoto, Mr & Mrs Italy
Yet as their designers, costumers, cosmetic artists, hair stylists and photographers assembled in Lhasa what consideration was given to the condition and suffering Tibetans beyond the show’s security perimeter?
Of course we know the answer, right? A willing collaboration with the Chinese authorities reveals a cold indifference to the misery, injustice, tyranny and torture inflicted upon Tibetans, beyond the four-star venue and hotels which accommodated these companies.
Next time you go to the mall, keep an eye open for products from those fashion brands and ask yourself if anyone supporting freedom and human rights would in all conscience be comfortable with buying any of their products?
Mehrigul Tursun Uyghur woman arrested by the Chinese regime, separated from her three infants who died under Chinese custody and had been medically operated on without her knowledge. Mehrigan was tortured, beaten, electrocuted and forcibly sterilized.
Image: Amnesty International Japan
As we write this post, in various regions of the world women’s NGOs are assembling to prepare for next year’s UN Commission On The Status Of Women which marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995).
Contained within that declaration the following is urged of governments to:
“Take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful, medically unnecessary or coercive medical interventions…” and that “Acts of violence against women also include forced sterilization and forced abortion, coercive/forced use of contraceptives…” (section D, paragraph 115).
Mrs Phumzile Mlambo Ngucka, executive director of UN Women has offered not a word of opposition or concern against China’s forced sterilizations of women. Her organization and that of UNCSW are actively ignoring serious human rights violations against Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian and Ha Chinese women.
Yet the very same NGOs who will no doubt be praising the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action offer not a word of concern against China’s violations against women’s human and reproductive rights. Since 1995 Women’s organizations and UNCSW have been exposed and challenged for choosing to maintain a silence, offering no criticism, nor condemnation of such medical atrocities. Even though the UN agreement they worked towards, endorsed and approved in 1995 calls for action against such violations!
One of the many detention centers run by the Chinese regime in occupied East Turkistan. Places of misery, torture and suffering, where Uyghurs are indoctrinated, abused, tortured and forcibly sterilized!
Image: NYT
Which is why the same organizations will care little about the testimony of Ms Mehrigul Tursun a Uyghur who escaped from a Chinese regime detention center in occupied East Turkistan (so-called Xinjiang). Last November she documented to the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) a range of human rights abuses she had suffered during her imprisonment. These included forced separation from her thee children, all of whom died in Chinese custody and had been medically operated on without her knowledge or approval. She was detained three times and detailed to the CECC being tortured, beaten and electrocuted. Mehrigul also disclosed that on arrival in the USA a full medical examination confirmed that she had also been sterilized! Atrocities which she presented to an Amnesty International conference in Tokyo earlier this month.
The indoctrination center near Lhasa which is hosting the brainwashing program
Image: tibetanreview
The Chinese regime and its Tibetan stooges are currently running a 10 day ‘training program’ in Lhasa, more accurately described as an intense brainwashing exercise targeting senior Buddhist figures from across occupied Tibet. The aim of this event, run by the ‘Institute of Socialism in Tibet’ is to indoctrinate and coerce on the subject of reincarnation, a process which Xi Jinping and his thugs are seeking to control and define.
Take these comments (from a Tibetan collaborator and active member of China’s communist party) issued on Friday 23rd August. Mr Suolang Renzeng, of the so-called ‘TAR United Front Work Department’ cautioned that reincarnation is “never a religious-only issue or a living Buddha’s personal right” going onto insist it being an important representation of the Communist Party of China’s strategies and policies in the region.
Ever fearful of Tibetan cultural and national identity, particularly the role of the Dalai Lama China’s seeking total control over every aspect of Tibet’s Buddhism. Under this suffocating and dictatorial lockdown only the enlightened wisdom of the Chinese regime has the authority to declare what constitutes a genuinely reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist!
Liverpool Museum reportedly complied with local police to install facial recognition system to scan visitors
Image: dayoutwiththekids
Can you imagine what John Lennon would have thought about a museum in his Liverpool home-town installing facial recognition technology to invade the privacy of visitors, in an act of big-brother surveillance? Maybe his son can write a song about that? Yet for sure that’s what has happened according to a report by the UK campaigners Big Brother Watch, and what lies behind the decision is a cause for real concern to anyone valuing human rights and the intrusion of the state upon civil and personal liberties.
The Chinese regime with the active support of Huawei has rolled out the most intrusive and oppressive mass surveillance system across China and occupied territories such as Tibet and East Turkistan
Image: scmp
The World Museum has admitted that such technology was operated, and in a curious twist stated that the decision to extract the bio-metric data of its visitors was taken during an exhibition on China’s ‘terracotta warriors’.
It’s not the innocent visitors to Liverpool’s World Museum, many of whom were children, who need to be monitored and scanned but the torturers and oppressors of China’s regime!
Image: archive.net
It seems the move was suggested by the local cops! Now what on this good earth would they be so concerned about? Details are scarce, a tight lid has been closed which makes us wonder what was going down behind the scenes. What facts are known show that several Chinese government and academic institutions were closely involved with facilitating the exhibition. That it was taking placed in England, for the first time outside off of London suggests that UK authorities such as the Foreign Office would have a key role.
Did the British government have an agreement with the Chinese regime on excessive security measures surrounding the terracotta army exhibition?
Image: thecommentator
While in the background would be lurking security agencies like MI5. Such monitoring and involvement would have the goal of ensuring matters proceeded without incident or controversy. After all like China’s ‘Panda Diplomacy’ these artifacts are used by the Chinese regime as soft propaganda, exhorting the cultural marvels of an ancient past, for very present political purposes.
China’s totalitarian state has created a surveillance dominated society that would have given George Orwell nightmares!
Image: asiancorrespondent
Given the appeasement which runs through UK policy towards China there would have been an acute sensitivity surrounding the exhibition, the question is who requested that face-scanners be part of security measures? From what we know Britain has some legal restrictions and protocols on the deployment and operation of such technology, on what basis then did the cops press the museum to employ such an intrusion of personal privacy?
Liverpool’s head cop, Andy Cooke needs to answer questions on his forces decision to face-scan visitors to Liverpool’s World Museum
Image: media-planetradio
Did they have confirmed intelligence of a planned protest or criminal action? If so surely an increased police presence would have been an appropriate measure? Was this the result of a confidential accord reached between the UK and Chinese government? Meanwhile we should of course give thought to the use of the bio-metric data which was taken from all those who visited this exhibition. Who had responsibility for it? Was it shared with any other agencies, including the Chinese authorities? Just where is that digital record now?
Whatever dirty politics or anxiety saturated diplomacy may be behind this gross violation of citizens right to privacy, one fact remains the Chinese regime and its technological attack dog, Huwawei have implemented the world’s most oppressive facial-recognition systems against the people of China and indeed in occupied lands such as Tibet and East Turkistan.
There is no privacy within China, no citizens rights, only mass surveillance, oppression, torture and censorship.
Image: ibtimes
That a supposed liberal democracy like the UK has authorized such surveillance against its own people, in probable collaboration with and appeasement of China’s totalitarian regime is a deeply disturbing development. One that should be thoroughly exposed and challenged!
Tibetan nuns, stripped of their Buddhist robes, forced into Chinese military uniforms and ordered to sing daily praise of China’s regime.
Image: cellphone images made possible by an extremely brave Tibetan
This is what happened. Yachen Gar, a major Tibetan Buddhist center, the size of a small town was invaded couple years back by Chinese paramilitary. On the orders of China’s regime the bulldozers moved in, centuries old buildings demolished, thousands of monks and nuns homeless. Rounded up by armed Chinese troops they were forced onto convoys of buses, destination prison camps. Held there under a brutal program of political indoctrination, mental and physical abuse, Tibetans whose daily life was dedicated to following the teachings of Buddhism now are forced to renounce their cultural identity. Failure to comply results in beatings, torture and additional years of detention.
Today we read that Tibetan nuns being held at Jomda near Chamdo in occupied Tibet have been beaten to a pulp by Chinese thugs, their supposed crime? Having each and every day being forced to sing songs in Chinese praising Xi Jinping and China’s communist party, followed by hours watching propaganda films on Chinese military campaigns these Tibetans are in psychological trauma. Some breakdown into tears. It was this response, which was seen as disloyalty and dissent against the glorious Chinese government, that resulted in a number of brutal assaults against these Tibetan women. Left unable to walk, barely conscious and seriously bruised they were removed into isolation cells. Following this attack they were informed their detention would be increased, more endless days of misery and indoctrination.
While these atrocities are being inflicted and China wages cultural genocide against Tibetans the political world shrugs, what kind of world are we inhabiting, in which such atrocities are ignored so as to maintain positive relations with China’s terrorist authorities?
“The UK signed an internationally binding legal agreement in 1984 that enshrines the one country two systems rule, enshrines the basic freedoms of the people of Hong Kong and we stand four square behind that agreement, four square behind the people of Hong Kong…There will be serious consequences if that internationally binding legal agreement were not to be honoured.”. (Source BBC TV)
Wonder what his Chinese partner thinks of such a response? Lucia Hunt, born in Xian China we can only presume she has been given clearance by the English security services? Is she perhaps discretely monitored? After all as the case with Huawei has revealed the Chinese regime is actively engaged in a spying and propaganda war, stealing commercial, industrial information, influencing politicians and media.
China-friendly English Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt with his Chinese partner, Lucia.
Image: cdn4
Not that Jeremy Hunt, his government colleagues or Conservative party are unduly concerned, far too busy appeasing China in the greed-driven scramble to secure deals. Taken the craven and servile policy on China adopted by the Foreign Office (not so different to that of the State Department). Hunt’s assurances on standing with Hong Kong should be taken with an ocean of salt. After all was it not another Conservative government headed then by Margaret Thatcher which betrayed the people of Hong Kong. Having been bullied and dictated to by China into signing a dangerously compromised treaty on the status of the island, they turned their backs upon Hong Kong’s plight. Just as UK governments have consistently done with Tibet.
Image: mediapri
Since then successive UK authorities have remained largely silent on the increasing erosion of rights supposedly enshrined by the ‘international legal agreement’ on Hong Kong.
The basic truth remains that states such as the UK are preoccupied with maintaining and securing trade arrangements with China, the plight of Tibet, Hong Kong, East Turkistan, Southern Mongolia, Manchuria, and that of Chinese people is of little importance. Their suffering and denial of basic freedoms is responded too with hand-wringing platitudes and cosmetic gestures. With that in mind just what does Jeremy Hunt mean by ‘serious consequences’ and from whom?
Donald Trump may be many things to different people, a figure who incites almost unsurmountable arguments for, or against. One aspect of his persona however that must surely be agreed upon by his admirers and critics alike is the recognition that his modus operandi is that of bluster and opportunism. This explains his numerous volte face. His words may appear as drawn from inviolable principle and conviction, as implied by his invective on China’s trade practices and impact on the US economy. Yet this is a man driven by the securement of the deal. As such there’s no consideration of humanitarian ethics operating, only the ambition to maintain or advance profit. In that objective what looked to be uncompromising commitments are like chess pawns, abandoned when their strategic use is exhausted, or circumstance changed.
The latest turn around followed his meeting at the recent G20 Summit with Chinese tyrant Xi Jinping in which he suddenly declared (to the dismay and understandable consternation of the US political and national security establishment) that America was open for business with Huawei, the controversial tech company. This statement runs counter to the genuine concerns expressed by the President’s security advisers, that the considered alarm signalled to the White House regarding the risks to national security by allowing trade with Huawei was nevertheless unceremoniously dumped.
Image:1bp
This suggests that Trump’s inflamed and emphatic announcements with respect to that Chinese corporation were little more than calculated rhetoric, his Executive Order blocking US companies from using Huawei‘s technology, an investment posture to be called in for the advancement of wider goals.
Having decided such objectives are now realized, by affirming American corporations can now freely invest in Huawei‘s products and services the President, in his economic calculations, must be satisfied that he has captured trading advantage to the United States, Well only time will reveal the facts on that matter.
Meanwhile, it remains the case that Huawei is deeply embedded with the Chinese regime, and cannot function without its approval. That it covertly serves as a conduit for China’s intelligence services is widely known, while lesser realized is that it has constructed (and actively operates) within occupied lands such as Tibet and East Turkistan a mass-surveillance infrastructure well beyond the nightmarish vision of George Orwell’s 1984. As shown by President Trump’s vacillations on China such factors do not trouble those who value only commercial expansion and furthering economic supremacy!
