UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will visit China this week, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced yesterday, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad kept up air strikes against rebels despite a UN-brokered truce that now appears to be in tatters.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) said that China appreciated Brahimi’s mediation efforts in the Syrian crisis, but did not provide details about who he would meet on his two-day visit which begins today.
“We have consistently expressed our appreciation and support for Special Representative Brahimi and have proactively proposed that relevant parties in Syria respond to Brahimi’s proposals for a ceasefire in Syria during the Eid al-Adha [Muslim] holiday period,” the ministry said.
China and Russia have vetoed three UN resolutions condemning al-Assad’s government for the violence.
However, China has been keen to show it does not take sides in Syria and has urged the government there to talk to the opposition and take steps to meet demands for political change. It has said a transitional government should be formed.
China also has its own security worries.
A Chinese newspaper reported yesterday that Islamic separatists from the country’s far western Xinjiang region are fighting alongside al-Qaeda militants against the Syrian government.
Members of separatists groups have been traveling to Syria since May to “participate in their quest for jihad,” the People’s Daily-published Global Times tabloid said, citing an unnamed Chinese anti-terrorism official.
The official said groups including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which China sees a militant organization that wants to establish an independent state of East Turkestan, are aiding al-Qaeda through kidnapping and gun and drug running operations in Syria.
Separatists from Xinjiang had received “terrorism training” from al-Qaeda and traveled to Syria to meet with “jihadists already on the ground, before forming groups on the frontlines,” the official was quoted as saying.
Xinjiang is home to the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighur people, who account for just above 40 percent of the region’s 21 million population.
Many Uighurs chafe at Chinese government controls on their culture and religion.
Exiled Uighur groups and human rights activists say China overstates the threat posed by militants in Xinjiang, which sits astride south and central Asia.
China has blamed violence in Xinjiang on Islamic separatists and has said that the militants based in western China also have ties to the Pakistani Taliban and other militants in northwestern Pakistani regions along the Afghan border.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS