A big thank you to the following, and apologies to any sites left off the list.

Phayul.com:  News, opinion and other information (including travel information) concerning Tibet

Canada Tibet Committee: Website of a pro-Tibet organizatzion in Canada

Uyghur American Association: An Uygher organization in Washington, D.C., USA

China Aid Association: An organization that monitors the persecution of Christians in China

Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center:  An Inner Mongolia human rights organization located in the U.S.

My piece is on the other (other than Tibet) captive nations in Beijing’s imperialist empire. Here is the article re-printed in its entirety:

The international attention being focused on China’s thuggish military occupation of Tibet in the run up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing is well-deserved, but it should be remembered that Tibetans are by no means the only group in western China living under the heel of the Beijing imperialists.

The Mongol people of Inner Mongolia and the Uighers (pronounced “wee-gurs”) of China’s Xinjiang region are also oppressed by Beijing. But unlike the Tibetans, they have neither a Dalai Lama nor sympathetic celebrities to present their problems on a world stage.

In 1949, the newly formed People’s Republic of China “peacefully liberated” by force the Uigher nation of East Turkestan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was formed.

Like many Tibetans, many Uighers are seeking independence from their oppressors, but their efforts are under-reported. For instance, while world press attention focused recent Tibetan protests, few papers reported on a pro-independence demonstration by the Uighers. Similarly, most of the world failed to notice when expatriate Uighers held anti-China protests during an Olympic torch ceremony in Turkey in early April.

Like the Tibetans, the Uighers have a large diaspora, which has been forced to flee Chinese rule. Yet escaping China does not necessarily mean escaping China’s censorship power. The Associated Press reports: “In the late 1990s, the Chinese leadership exerted strong pressure on Turkey to silence and withdraw any government support for these advocates in an effort that was said to be largely successful.”

Speaking off the record, one American expert described China’s policy as “The only good Uigher is a dead Uigher.” Testifying before the U.S. House Committee on International Relations in 2001, Yemlibike Fatkulin, a Uigher asylum seeker, described Beijing’s population control tactics against ethnic Uighers including forced abortions, forced sterilization and heavy fines for “unauthorized” children.

Islam is the dominant Uigher religion. A 2005 Human Rights Watch report on Beijing’s religious repression of Uighers describes clerics being forced to listen to speeches by Communist Party and government officials. The reports notes the oppressive government regulations “pertaining to religious activities, Party doctrine, and positions on separatism.”

Inner Mongolia’s subjugation by Chinese communists began in 1947. While the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia are forced to live under rigid communist rule, the rest of Mongolia (sometimes called “Outer Mongolia”) is an independent nation that has moved from communist rule as a Soviet satellite to a sovereign parliamentary democracy.

During Mao Zedong’s genocidal “Cultural Revolution” in the 1960s and early 1970s, many thousands of Mongolians of Inner Mongolia were tortured, maimed and killed in a vicious campaign by Chinese communists against an alleged Inner Mongolia independence movement.

Today the Inner Mongolia People’s Party (so named in remembrance of the slaughter of the Cultural Revolution) actually exists as an organization of Mongolian expatriates based in New Jersey. Well outside the reach of Beijing, they affirm their goal of “establishing an independent state of Inner Mongolia.”

One of the historical affinities between Tibet and Mongolia has been Buddhism. Like Tibetans, the captive people of Inner Mongolia saw many of their temples destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Today, as in Tibet, the practice of Buddhism in Inner Mongolia is strictly “regulated” by the state.

Due to a massive re-settlement campaign by Beijing, Han Chinese now make up nearly eighty percent of the population of Inner Mongolia. Chinese imperialism has made Mongolians a minority in their own land.

Westerners eager to appease China tend to dismiss the rights of the captive nations in the Chinese empire. In an April 26 interview with the Financial Times, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge called on the west to be patient with China. Noting that the People’s Republic of China has only been around since 1949, Rogge compared contemporary China to past colonial powers such as Belgium, France and Portugal, “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers. It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Rogge admitted that China may not be a “role model” in the west, but “we owe China to give them time.”

Actually, if anyone is “owed” anything, it is the Tibetans, the Uighers and the Mongolians. They are all owed their inherent human right of self-determination. After more than half-century under the jackboot of the regime in Beijing, they have been patient long enough.

First, China’s communist government vigorously pursues the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee makes the horrid decision to grant Beijing the games. Then when the regime’s domestic and world-wide thuggery–such as its brutal military occupation of Tibet, or its complicity in the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan– gets put under some scrutiny, Beijing cries foul and whines that the games should not be politicized.

“There is a handful of people who are trying to politicize the Olympic Games,” Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters last year. “This is against the spirit of the Games. It also runs counter to the aspirations of all the people in the world, and so their aims will never be achieved.”

What a load of blather. Since Beijing is at the head of the line to politicize the Olympics for its own benefit, it is perfectly reasonable for those who care about human rights to take advantage of the Olympics and help shine a light on one of the world’s great human rights violators. And given the scope of the misery that Beijing heaps not only on its captive nations at home, but also exports around the world, there is no shortage of causes to take up.

And indeed, Beijing’s hosting of the Olympics offers a target rich environment of human righs abuses, including several of China’s captive nations that get much less attention than Tibet:

Like Tibetans, The Uighers (pronounced “wee-gers”) of China’s Xinjiang Province (or what was called East Turkestan before China took it by force) and the Mongolians of Inner Mongolia have lived under the thumb of Beijing for a half-century, suffering similar religious persecution at the hand of Chinese communists and likewise having their national identity steadily wiped out by the large-scale and deliberate re-settlement of Han Chinese into Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia by Beijing.

As I conclude in the article, if you care at all about human rights, go ahead and “politicize” the Olympics in Beijing to your hearts content.  China really has no room to complain.

Entire article here.

Mr Rogge says while he understands the depth of emotion in the west on China’s human rights record, public expectations about the country’s pace of change are unrealistic.

Noting that the People’s Republic of China has only been around since 1949, Mr. Rogge goes on to compare contemporary China to past colonial powers:

Back in 1949, Mr Rogge pointed out, the UK was a colonial power. So too were Belgium, France and Portugal, “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers. It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Let’s be a little bit more modest”.

China may not be a role model in the west, Mr Rogge concedes, but “we owe China to give them time”.

Granted, Mr. Rogge was not the IOC president at the time China was granted the 2008 Olympics, but the IOC awarded the Games to Beijing with full knowledge of China’s atrocious human rights record, so now the IOC gets to reap what it sowed.

But as long as Mr. Rogge wants to tell the rest of us what China is “owed,” perhaps he could also tell us all how much longer the people of places like Tibet and Inner Mongolia should be expected to exist under the boot heel of Beijing, or how much longer the Taiwanese should be expected to live with Chinese ballistic missiles pointed at them from across the Taiwan Strait.