Michael Caster is a human rights advocate, researcher, and consultant. He holds an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and an MA in Conflict Studies and Human Rights from Utrecht University. He has worked in China, Cambodia, Myanmar/Burma, Thailand, Myanmar, Turkey, and Tunisia.
“At least 25 people drowned in Saturday’s rains, the heaviest to fall on the city since records began in 1951. Six died in housing collapses, five were electrocuted and one person was struck by lightning,” reported Al Jazeera. Atlantic Cities has a nice photo essay. In the wake of the deluge a flurry of resentment … More BEIJING0721
In a number of posts to follow I will identify three places where symbolic power operates, that is, how the Chinese State has exerted its monopoly of symbolic power to instill a signification of Uyghurs as an undeveloped singing, dancing subaltern subject. Indeed, this colonialist objectification: the predominant representation of Uyghurs, and other minzu (ethnic … More Deconstructing ‘Minzu’
A while ago I spent a day in Nanjing. It was not planned. It did not go according to plan. Time misbehaved and light and dark collided. The tombs of revolutionaries, memorials and mausoleums were left unvisited. Green leaves distracted; shadows played furtively with themselves in the afternoon. I waited impatiently as passing buses never … More Nanjing Sojourn
Following the three year anniversary of the Urumqi protests and the recent supposed Hotan plane hijacking attempt, which the Uyghur Human Rights Project warns should be viewed with extreme caution, it seems pertinent to introduce a little of the visuals behind China’s rhetoric of ethnic harmony. It is the same rhetoric of ethnic harmony, also … More Visualizing an Imagined Community
Three years on from riots and mass arrests in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Chinese authorities continue to silence those speaking out on abuses during and in the wake of the unrest… New testimony reveals that dozens, if not hundreds, of the Uighur ethnic minority, many of whom were arrested in the wake of the … More Scenes from Urumqi, five days before 5 July 2009
Through dusty prairies and Northern landscapes of mostly brown and grey, intermittent hills carved millenia ago, passed few, small, scattered lakes and towns, nuclear reactors and the characteristic cirty-outskirt industries of China, the bus from central Beijing has been rumbling along for over two hours; you are about to arrive in the somewhat, if not … More Cuandixia the Cooking Pot: Sojourn, Hills, and Honey
It is a temperate afternoon in Beijing and the dust levels in the air are low, as the sands that blow in from the Gobi in subtle obfuscating layers of golden hue during the Springtime have yet to make their more forceful migration. Calm throngs of pedestrians meander past the 17th century Yonghegong, 雍和宮, The … More Qingming Jie (清明节): On Death and Brightness
((Disclaimer: After I first wrote this article and posted on the evening of March 7 there were several developments. The Revised Text for the New Criminal Procedure Law was made public. At 10:31am on March 8, 2012 Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch Tweeted: Breaking News: “Disappearance clause” stricken out of revisions to the Criminal … More Ai Weiwei’s Wife Reflects on the Criminal Procedure Law (Redux)
This episode of the Sinica podcast offers a great range of topics. Kasier Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn eruditely and entertainingly as ever guide China Heritage Quarterly editor, Australian National University Professor, and veteran China expert Geremie R Barme through the halls of remembering history at Hangzhou’s bucolic West Lake. From there they move into an … More China in the World by Sinica
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