November 2010

Guantanamo must be closed. That was one of US President Barack Obama's first pledges upon taking office. But the newly released US dispatches make it clear that the search for new homes for the detainees wasn't easy or cheap. The list of demands from potential recipient countries, including Germany, was often long.

At least eight Chinese settlers had been killed in three towns in East Turkestan (Chinese: Xinjiang) in what were believed to be attacks by Uyghurs to avenge deprivation, discrimination and injustice on their own land by the Chinese authorities, according to a Radio Free Asia online (RFA) report Nov 26.

Sayid Abdullaev remembers the hostility and the cold stares that filled his childhood in Kyrgyzstan.

China has pulled through the global economic downturn with robust growth and enhanced international sway, but that is now creating strains of its own at home and abroad.