“What does China have that Denmark did not?”
Answer: National will and identity and a refusal to be intimidated. (WVWN Ed.)
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=7456
Cartoons in Denmark = fatwas, effigy burnings, riots, and death threats. (See also: http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3261 Rage.) Chinese suppression of Uighur revolt with actual loss of life = Meh.
Where are the fatwas? The angry marches in front of embassies, the indignant speeches? Where are al-Qaeda’s videos? In short, what does China have that Denmark did not? China has been actively discriminating against Muslims, and recently a number of them have been killed in violent street riots.
In Denmark a newspaper printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and the Muslim world erupted in http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4878. Today that same Muslim world seems to be mute, deaf, and blind, and is oblivious to the violence and discrimination suffered by the Uighurs, a Muslim minority group, at the hands of the Chinese government.
The reaction to the cartoons was swift and furious. Eleven ambassadors from Muslim countries http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5580. The Danish Consulate in Beirut was burned, and several people died in street riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia. Newspapers in Norway and elsewhere decided to print the cartoons in an act of solidarity, which fueled the wave of violence. Al-Qaeda’s videos and Web sites explained that the offensive cartoons were simply another example of the West’s crusade against Islam.
Meanwhile . . . Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has been http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1238, the autonomous region where Uighurs are the largest ethnic group. More than two million have settled there.
Any protests against these practices are harshly repressed. The repression of the Uighurs intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks, when many of their political leaders were jailed, accused of having links with foreign Islamist terrorists. Since then, any individual or group convicted of terrorism, religious extremism, or separatism has received draconian sentences.
The recent troubles in Urumqi, the capital of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3244, have left 184 dead, about a thousand injured, and thousands more detained. These are official figures; Uighurs claim the real numbers are much larger.
What have Muslim leaders worldwide said or done so far? Not much.
Mullahs, imams, and assorted clerics found time to issue http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1428 condemning among other practices, Pokémon cartoons, total nudity during sex for married couples, the use of polio vaccines, and Salman Rushdie. They have yet to find the time to say anything about China’s practices toward Uighurs.
The same applies to the Arab League, governments of Muslim countries (where are the 11 ambassadors who protested to the Danish government?), and Muslim organizations in Europe and Asia. They have either been mute or their reaction has been too little, too late.
http://europenews.dk/en/node/25239