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Louisville’s own Carlos Dixon has brought a championship boxing belt back to the Derby City.
November 17, 2019Read More
A weekend that began with relative calm devolved into some of the most dramatic scenes of violence since the protests began nearly six months ago.
November 17, 2019Read More
KSP: 27-year-old man killed in fatal car crash near Mammoth Cave National Park Courier Journal
November 17, 2019Read More
A tranche of Chinese Communist Party documents leaked to the New York Times reveal inside information about Beijing’s crackdown on ethnic minorities, including how Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, told officials to show “absolutely no mercy”, the newspaper says. The cache of 403 documents was leaked by a person the newspaper described as a “member of the Chinese political establishment”. Reporter Austin Ramzy said that they provided the information in an attempt to “prevent party leaders, including Xi Jinping, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.” The leak provided further evidence that the brutal crackdown against Uighur Muslims is happening Xinjiang, a vast province in west China, despite the Chinese government’s denials. Many human rights groups consider it to be the most widespread and brutal human rights abuse campaign in the world today. Over one million members of ethnic minorities, primarily Muslim Uighurs, have been detained in prisons or internment camps in Xinjiang in the past three years, which is officially referred to as a crackdown on terrorism by Beijing. In the camps, which Beijing calls education centres, detainees are indoctrinated to denounce Islam and pledge allegiance to the Communist party. The crackdown intensified in 2014 after a separatist attack in May that year on a market in Urumqi, the provincial capital of Xinjiang, killed 31 people. In July 2009, rioting in the city led to over 140 deaths. The documents, which include many pages of internal speeches by Mr Xi, showed that when the president visited Xinjiang in April 2014 he ordered officials to use the “organs of dictatorship” in a “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism”. He said they should show “absolutely no mercy”. Mr Xi became China’s President in 2013. In August 2016 senior party official Chen Quanguo, who had previously worked in Tibet, was installed as Xinjiang’s party secretary. In October 2017 Mr Chen said in a speech recorded in the documents: “The struggle against terror and to safeguard stability is a protracted war, and also a war of offence.” In February that year he told police to ready themselves for a “smashing, obliterating offensive” and gave orders to “round up everyone who should be rounded up.” A Uighur man looks on as a truck carrying paramilitary policemen travel along a street during an anti-terrorism oath-taking rally in Urumqi, Xinjiang in 2014 Credit: REUTERS Xinjiang camp survivors have reported torture, rape and medical experiments taking place in them. Police presence and surveillance methods in the province have effectively made it a police state, with Uighurs often sent to camps for making even small gestures of loyalty to the Muslim faith. The documents feature a script for officials telling students returning home for holidays that their family members had been detained. It suggests giving veiled threats about students’ behaviour affecting loved ones’ chances of being freed, and using language such as “infectious” and “illness” to describe anti-Party sentiment. The script reads: “Freedom is only possible when this ‘virus’ in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health.” The papers describe how officials who attempted to resist strongly implementing the crackdown have been crushed. A confession by Wang Yongzhi, who oversaw an area in Xinjiang called Yarkand, shows how he defied the party by releasing 7,000 inmates. People walk under Chinese national flags in the Old City in Kashgar in Xinjiang Credit: REUTERS/Thomas Peter In 2018 Mr Wang, who is likely to have given the confession under duress, was investigated by the CCP for “gravely disobeying the party central leadership’s strategy for governing Xinjiang.” The documents state that over 12,000 officials have been investigated for not complying with the crackdown to satisfactory standards. The information sparked hope among some human rights advocates for sterner condemnation of the CCP’s behaviour in Xinjiang from the international community. US senator and Democratic Presidential candidate hopeful Elizabeth Warren said: “The Chinese government’s cruel, bigoted treatment of Muslims and ethnic minorities is a horrifying human rights violation. We must stand up to hatred and extremism at home – and around the world.”
November 17, 2019Read More
Iran is trying an all-too-familiar tactic to hinder protests: cut the lines of communication. The Iranian government has shut down nearly all internet access in the country amidst mounting protests that began over a 50 percent hike in fuel prices and now encompass wider dissent. There are pockets of access that have let people show what’s happening on the ground, but they’re rare. Phone calls abroad still work, but those are also closely monitored.
November 17, 2019Read More
Relatives say a Palestinian freelance photographer has lost vision in one eye after apparently being struck by Israeli fire while covering a demonstration in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian colleagues say Muath Amarneh, 35, was targeted by Israeli…
November 17, 2019Read More
Ariana Grande canceled her Sunday night Lexington show at Rupp Arena, saying she’s been “very sick.”
November 17, 2019Read More
The Kentucky Center for the Arts’ Bomhard Theater is home to CirqueLouis’ latest production called The Circus Life.
November 17, 2019Read More
Iraqi security and medical officials say a protester has been killed by a direct hit to the head from a tear gas cannister amid fresh clashes on a strategic Baghdad bridge. The officials said 32 others were wounded Sunday, hours after protesters retoo…
November 17, 2019Read More
Hong Kong police threatened on Monday to use live bullets if “rioters” used lethal weapons and committed other acts of violence, after the latest flare up during five months of anti-government protests in the Chinese ruled city. The police statement f…
November 17, 2019Read More
North Korea said the former vice president should “be beaten to death with a stick” for calling Kim a "murderous dictator."
November 17, 2019Read More
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