PrairiePundit

NY Times: Rival protesters took to the streets again on Tuesday, defying Chinese government efforts to lock down this regional capital of 2.3 million people and other cities across its western desert region after bloody clashes between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese. ... Police fired tear gas on Tuesday at Han Chinese protesters armed with clubs, lead pipes, shovels and hoes, news reports said. Earlier, in an attempt to contain China’s worst ethnic violence in decades, the authorities imposed curfews, cut off cellphone and Internet services and sent armed police officers into neighborhoods. The official Xinhua news agency said an overnight curfew would again be imposed here on Tuesday night. Despite the authorities efforts to bring the situation under control, hundreds of Uighur protesters defied the police, crashing a state-run tour of the riot scene for foreign and Chinese journalists . A wailing crowd of women, joined later by scores of Uighur men, marched down a wide avenue Tuesd...

Times: Police fought to restore order last night after thousands of members of China’s Muslim Uighur minority rampaged through city streets, burning vehicles and blocking traffic. At least three people were killed in a rare outburst of violence in Urumqi, the capital of China’s restive westernmost region of Xinjiang, where many Uighurs chafe at Beijing’s rule and the limits imposed on their religion and cultural traditions. Witnesses said that up to 3,000 rioters went on the rampage, smashing buses and overturning police barricades during several hours of violence. Thousands of police and anti-riot troops later swept through the city, using teargas and water hoses to disperse crowds. “Now the whole city is on lockdown,” one witness said. The violence flared days after reports of ethnic clashes between Han Chinese and Uighur workers at a toy factory in the southern Guangdong province in which two Uighurs were killed and 188 wounded. In the late-night brawl at the Ear...

Fox News: The Obama administration's drive to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has hit a new snag: At least some of the 13 detainees accepted for resettlement by the island nation of Palau don't want to go there. Meanwhile, protests have erupted in Bermuda over its recent resettlement of four Uighur detainees, with the country's leader facing a no-confidence vote by his parliament. Dissent in the British island territory, which sits in the Atlantic Ocean east of North Carolina, came after Bermuda's acceptance of the men strained relations with London, which complained that the island's home-rule government failed to advise it about the decision. Palau, a tiny South Pacific country, seemed to offer a potential solution to a problem that has vexed the Bush and Obama administrations since the Defense Department began clearing 22 Uighurs from China for release, after deciding they were erroneously deemed enemy combatants in the wake of t...

BBC: A senior US official has told the BBC Washington decided not to tell London ahead of time about a deal to resettle four Guantanamo detainees in Bermuda. A diplomatic row blew up over Bermuda's decision to accept the four Chinese Muslim Uighurs on a US request. Bermuda is a British overseas territory but the US official said Washington had acted secretly to ensure success. ... The unnamed senior official also told the BBC that Washington was attempting to shield the UK from Chinese anger. Beijing has demanded the return to China of all 17 Uighurs held by US forces but Washington says they could face persecution in China. ... Well, that is an interesting spin to put on deceitful and undiplomatic conduct. It sounds kind of like a cheating spouse's "altruistic motives" in not letting their partner in on knowledge of the infidelity. It is hard to call this "smart diplomacy." Obviously the real reason for not telling the Brits is the State Department did n...

Times: Under the palm trees of Palau two items of news have got the islanders talking. One is about the latest battle raging in the Philippine jungle between government forces and al-Qaeda linked militants. The other is about the islanders’ soon-to-be neighbours – the Guantánamo Bay inmates who are to be settled in their midst. The two news stories are inextricably linked in the minds of the Palauans, whose tiny remote Pacific nation of islands lies 500 miles east of the Philippine province of Mindanao, where al-Qaeda-linked separatist groups are engaged in a war with the government. Outwardly welcoming, they admit privately that they are concerned about the arrival of up to 13 Muslims, Uighers originally from landlocked western China, who for the past eight years have been held in the prison camp. "We are a Christian nation and we will welcome these people into our islands," Pastor Terrence McClure, who heads the Palau Baptist church told The Times . "...

Times: ... Facing a backlash from the public Mr Brown insisted that there was no “quid pro quo”. Colonel David Burch, Bermuda’s Home Affairs Minister, who flew to Guantánamo Bay to pick up the Uighurs, said that the idea for them to be resettled in Bermuda originated with the Government’s US lobbyists before the premier’s trip to the White House in mid-May and that Mr Brown had put the proposed to US officials. Bermuda is eager to avoid a crackdown by the Obama Administration on offshore financial centres. “One can reasonably expect that if Bermuda gets to a point where it needs some help, Bermuda is in a much stronger position if it made friends before you need them,” Colonel Burch said. Britain would have to approve any grant of citizenship, which could entitle the men to live in Britain. The Uighurs are now sharing a holiday flat paid for by the Bermudian Government, which is reimbursed by the United States. ... Bermuda lives off tourism and being the base for corpora...

Jake Tapper has the story providing anecdotal evidence of the unhappiness at the news.

Michael Ramirez looks at the new tropical paradise for Club Gitmo Uigher alumni.

ABC's Political Punch Blog: ABC News' Kirit Radia reports: The U.S. may be happy to see four more detainees leave the Guantanamo Bay detention facility , but close ally Great Britain is not. London is seething because it says it was not adequately consulted about a decision to move four Uighurs -- Chinese Muslims -- to Bermuda today. "They're pissed," admitted a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. ... This is what the Obama administration calls "smart" diplomacy?

BBC: Four Chinese Muslim Uighurs have been released from the US detention centre at Guantanamo and resettled in Bermuda, US officials said. The four men are part of a group of Chinese nationals handed over to US forces in Afghanistan, but found four years ago not to be "enemy combatants". But Britain has told Bermuda, a UK overseas territory, it should have consulted London before accepting them. Beijing has demanded the return of all Uighurs held by the US forces to China. This week the US said some would be sent to the Pacific island of Palau. Soon after the four former inmates landed in Bermuda, a chain of islands lying off America's eastern seaboard, US justice department spokesman Dean Boyd said: "We will consult regularly with the government of Bermuda on the status of these individuals." They will not be allowed to enter the United States without prior permission, US officials said. The Foreign Office in London expressed its concern at Bermuda's decis...

Politico: The Obama Administration told the Supreme Court Friday that 17 Uighur men forcibly brought to Guantanamo Bay by the American military seven years ago are "free to leave" but have no right to come to the United States. ... In a brief urging the high court not to hear an appeal from the 17 men , the Justice Department said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit acted correctly earlier this year when it overturned a district court judge's order that the men be brought to the U.S. for release. "Petitioners would like the federal courts to order that they be brought to the United States, because they are unwilling to return to their home country. But they have no entitlement to that form of relief," the brief submitted by Solicitor General Elena Kagan said. "As this Court has recognized repeatedly, the decision whether to allow an alied abroad to enter the United States, and if so, under what terms, rests exclusively in the political Branches....

This is from Jessica Sandlin in Sen. Cornyn's office: ... While held at GITMO, the Uighurs were deemed nonviolent and therefore allowed to watch television. However, while watching a televised soccer game, during which footage showed females with exposed arms, the Uighurs had a violent reaction, picking up the TV and smashing it. This indicates a clear refusal, or perhaps inability, to peacefully tolerate western-style cultural norms and practices that pervade not only Northern Virginia, but the entire United States. Eric Holder has suggested that these al Qaeda trained terrorist could be released into the Alexandria, Virginia area where there are sever Uighers who have not gone through al Qaeda terrorist training. I have noted before that the Uighers at Gitmo are like the proverbial turtle on the fence post in Afghanistan. They did not get there by accident as their supporters seem to argue, but came specifically for terrorist training which they received. As the ...