China: Race riots rock Xinjiang

(photo Globe and Mail)

156 people were killed in race-riots in the Xinjiang region of China... The tensions between Uighur minority and the Han majority seem to have boiled over again, prompting China to send over 20,000 police, army and firefighters to the area to reclaim the streets.

The Communist party has said it is detaining over 1400 people in connection to these riots. Gangs of Uighur are reportedly marching in the streets beating anyone who is not Muslim and gangs of Han Chinese are marching the streets beating Muslims.

Amazing! Didn't we just have the Olympics in China? Where peace and a harmonious society was supposed to prevail? Perhaps not everyone in China shares the "government's" point of view on harmonious living, especially in the ethnic (for lack of a better term) regions of the country such as Tibet and Xinjiang, where tension between the natives and the Chinese has been constant, or so it seems to us in the west.

China has slowed mobile phone and Internet services, tried to block Twitter and many social networking sites in order to attempt to put out the fire in the area and prevent those fighting from communicating. China is also saying that outside influence sparked the deadly riots.

I'd really like to say that one side is wrong and one is right... But my understanding of this whole business just isn't enough to render an educated judgment, so I'll just leave it by saying:
156 dead? because of race? It. is. utterly. stupid.

Muchacho Enfermo

Riots in the streets of Montreal

Montreal is a city that is known throughout North-America as a party city, we have one of the biggest Jazz festivals in the world, one of the largest comedy festivals, the oldest St-Patrick's day parade in Canada... in short everything here is an excuse to party. But the other thing Montreal has become known for is our riots.

There were the Hockey riots of 1955 following the suspension of Maurice Richard, there were the Guns 'n' Roses riots in 1993, the "We won the Stanley Cup" riots of 1994, more recently the 2008 "Police shot Villanueva", just to name a few. Yesterday we added another dark chapter in the long book of Montreal Riots: The Anti-Police Brutality Riots. The annual march against police brutality is one that usually ends with a clash against police, but yesterday was even worse than usual.

It was the first march of the sort since the young Villanueva was shot and killed by police last summer, the hearings are due to start in May, organizer's were hoping the march could raise awareness against police violence and racial profiling. As usual a few bad apples showed up in the crowd and the March turned violent, some protesters hurled rocks, concrete, vegetables and flares at police officers and started heading from the trendy Plateau neighborhood to towards the downtown core.

Things got so bad that tear gas was released into the crowd and 221 arrests were made. The rest of the people present, 189 other, received citations. The damages are estimated at over $200,000 as it was reported in the Montreal Gazette.

What was a march against brutality idiotically became a brutal march. A march against police brutality that saw to officers injured as the protesters became brutal against them. The protesters have cost the city and small business owners a lot of money and for what? So they could throw stuff at police? This march that should have been a moment where people peacefully come together in unity to show their disapproval and support one another ended, yet again, as a black eye to the city, the community and to all those involved.

This march has lost its credibility, the organizations behind it have lost their way and the marchers themselves have lost their minds. Police brutality is always something worth protesting but it's not an excuse to vandalize the entire city.

Muchacho Enfermo