China leveraging coronavirus vaccine to pressure Turkey to deport Uighur Muslims back to repression Print this article
Chinese Communist Party officials are applying “significant pressure” on Turkey to ratify a treaty that would allow the deportation of Uighur Muslims fleeing the systematicrepression underway in Xinjiang, activists and supporters say, and are using a coronavirus vaccine to do so.
“The Chinese are really trying hard to get into the Turkish Uighur communities; they already have spies and everything,” said Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation senior fellow Adrian Zenz, an expert on China’s abuse of the Uighurs. “And they will [exert] significant backdoor pressure behind the scenes to have them ratify this agreement.”
Palestinian officials announce upcoming military maneuves in Gaza Follow Us
Question of the Day By Mike Glenn - The Washington Times - Monday, December 28, 2020
A group of Palestinian militant factions in Gaza that operate as a quasi-army against Israel is set to kick off joint military exercises in an effort to ready groups for a possible future conflict, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The Washington, D.C. think tank’s “Long War Journal” said the maneuvers, dubbed “Strong Supporter,” are set to begin on Dec. 29, 2020.
“Palestinian factions have been heavily promoting the event by publishing material detailing the militant groups involved in the exercise including the creation of a Telegram channel dedicated to the upcoming event,” the Long War Journal said.
Correspondent Trey Yingst has the latest from Jerusalem on Special Report
While subjected to years of sanctions and a maximum pressure campaign inflicted by the Trump administration, reports indicate that the Iranian regime and its military wing – the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – may have found a crack in their financing system giving them access to millions in funds.
Since March, Tehran has managed to acquire some $15 billion worth of foreign currencies; the money is then inflated and sold by the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), its governor Abdolnaser Hemmati recently said.
However, according to a study by the London-based Iran International TV, the IRGC has its own system in place to effectively masquerade as official money-lenders to buy up dollars and euros from exporters at the black-market rate.
Washington Free Beacon
Rescued Americans speak to Trump s efforts in returning them home safely President Donald Trump and National Security Adviser Robert O Brien / Getty Images
December 23, 2020 5:00 AM
Bryan Nerren spent seven months detained in an Indian prison, unsure if or when he would see his family again. The experience was horrific, very difficult, said Nerren. I was put in a cage, treated like the worst criminal in India.
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For 18 years, the small-town pastor from Shelbyville, Tenn., traveled to India and Nepal to spread the Gospel, cultivating a network of Christian communities across Southeast Asia. In 2019, he had amassed $40,000 for educational aid and anti-poverty efforts in Nepal. After a series of stops in India, government agents detained the pastor and his associates. They faced an eight-hour interrogation of TV-horror quality that focused on their faith. After lengthy negotiations, Nerren s associates were
In a
statement on December 9, the university said it promoted peace, friendship, and brotherhood among nations and slammed the U.S. decision as hegemonic. High-Value Individuals
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington who has closely monitored IRGC activity in Syria, said that, according to his database from January 2012 to December 2020, 3,059 Iranian and allied foreign fighters were killed in combat in Syria.
Alfoneh says of those, only three were students or graduates of the Al-Mustafa International University known as Jamiat al-Mostafa University in Iran. This indicates that Jamiat al-Mostafa has never served as the primary recruitment ground for the IRGC s war effort in Syria, he says.