- Three Spain players return from exile for Women’s World Cup – ESPN ESPN
- Alexia Putellas returns for Spain! Barcelona star makes Women’s World Cup squad as Blaugrana team-mates Aitana Bonmati and Mariona Caldentey also return Goal.com
- Spain names Putellas and 3 of the rebel players for preliminary squad for Women’s World Cup The Associated Press
- Spain name 30-player provisional World Cup squad: Putellas and three of ‘Las 15’ return The Athletic
- Vilda calls up Caldentey, Bonmati and Batlle to Spain’s World Cup provisional squad Reuters
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: exile
Constantine, last Greek king whose monarchy ended in exile, dies at 82
A statement by Hygeia Hospital said the former king suffered a stroke and complications from other health problems.
He was the last ruler in a 19th-century family dynasty whose connections to Greece were tenuous but that sought to draw legitimacy from connections to the wider family tree of European royalty.
He lived for decades in London and was a cousin of King Charles III, a godfather to Prince William and part of the family line of Greece-born Prince Philip. The former king traveled as Constantine de Grecia under a Danish passport as a result of his family’s shared lineage with a branch of Denmark’s royal family — in addition to his marriage to a former Danish princess, Ann-Marie. His sister Sophia is the wife of the former Spanish king Juan Carlos.
But for Greeks, he remained deeply woven into the history of the 1967-1974 right-wing dictatorship, whose ruthless suppression of opposition still resonates as uncomfortable memories in the country’s political and cultural life.
Events began to unfold in 1965 when the young king feuded with Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou, leading to the collapse of his government. The political crisis — still known in Greece as the “Apostasy” — began a period of upheavals and caretaker governments.
“The people don’t want you, take your mother and go!” protesters shouted in 1965 in denunciations of the king and his mother, Queen Frederica.
The ongoing political unrest was used by a clique of Greek military officers as justification to take control of the country in April 1967. The “colonels,” as they were known, also feared that the king was planning preemptive moves to install his backers in power.
Backed into a corner, he agreed to officially inaugurate the junta as Greece’s new leaders. The king and his family then relocated to northern Greece, seeking to lead a countercoup. The plans fell apart and the family fled to Rome and later settled in London.
“It was the worst day of my life,” he said in describing the departure from Greece in a 2015 memoir released by the Greek newspaper To Vima. “That day, I saw my first white hair.”
Some officers in the Greek navy remained loyal to him and, in 1973, made another attempt at a revolt against the junta. The military rulers abolished the monarchy — even as he continued to claim he was Greece’s rightful monarch.
Junta leader George Papadopoulos labeled the former king “a collaborator with foreign forces and with murderers.”
After the dictatorship collapsed in 1974 — following a military crisis with Turkey over Greek attempts to unite with the island nation of Cyprus — he sought to make a dramatic return. He was advised to wait by political leaders, who were worried he would upset efforts to restore democracy. Instead, a referendum was held on whether to bring back the monarchy.
On the eve of the vote, the former king seemed confident. The outcome “will find my family and me back home,” he said from London. Yet nearly 70 percent of the votes cast were against reestablishing the royal family. The prime minister, Constantine Karamanlis, was quoted as saying that the voters had rid the nation of a cancerous growth.
The former king did not return to Greece until 1981, after being given clearance for a five-hour visit to bury his mother in the family cemetery of the former royal palace at Tatoi, north of Athens. (The Greek government announced that the former king’s remains would also be interred there.)
From London, the former king used his royal title and claimed ownership of family land in Greece, including Tatoi. In 1994, the Greek government formally stripped him of his citizenship and confiscated the royal property.
A lawsuit he filed in the European Court of Human Rights resulted in a 12 million euro award — far less than the 500 million euros he sought. In 1995, he boasted to Vanity Fair that he received 65,000 letters a year from Greek citizens and needed a four-person staff to help handle his affairs.
His life in exile was far from a bumpy ride. He hobnobbed with other members of European royalty, who often called him “Your Majesty.” He and his wife lived in a manse in London’s tony Hampstead Garden Suburb. If the British royals threw a gala, he was on the guest list.
When Athens hosted the Olympics in 2004, he returned as an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee. The appearance, however, was intentionally subdued at the request of organizers despite his stature as a past Olympic medal winner.
At the 1960 Rome Games, the then crown prince was part of the gold medal-winning team in three-person Dragon Class sailing. He also was the flag-bearer at the Rome Opening Ceremonies, and a Greek postage stamp was made in honor of his team’s victory.
In an interview with NBC’s “Today” during the Athens Olympics, the former king called Greece “his country.”
“I remember I had the privilege of holding the flag when our team came in,” he said, recounting the Rome Games, “and the roar of the crowd was something that is still in my ears.”
For more than a decade, he spent increasing time in Greece as authorities made accommodations and as protests over his presence largely faded. He also made some slight concessions. He belatedly recognized that the age of the monarchy in Greece was long over.
His official website listed him as King Constantine, former King of the Hellenes.
The future king was born on June 2, 1940, in Athens to Princess Frederica of Hanover and Prince Paul, the younger brother of Greece’s King George II and heir to the throne.
Before Prince Constantine’s first birthday, the family fled for Alexandria, Egypt, as Nazi forces occupied much of the country. The family later spent time in South Africa before returning to Greece in 1946 — just as the country was moving into a disastrous civil war between communist-backed forces and nationalists, many loyal to the monarchy.
The nationalist side won, but political rifts remained strong for decades and spilled over into divided views on the monarchy — which some critics decried as outsiders with family links to wartime foe Germany.
The prince was educated at boarding schools and military academies in preparation for the throne. His turn came in 1964, when was he was 23, after the death of his father, King Paul. (The family had ruled Greece since 1863 except for 1924 to 1935).
The final king of Greece is survived by Anne-Marie, his wife of 58 years; five children, Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; and nine grandchildren.
His lineage tracks back to the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, which includes Denmark and other countries. He refused to adopt any of those names, however, after the Greek government said he could have his passport restored only if he adopted a surname.
“I don’t have a name,” he said in 1995 in London. “My family doesn’t have a name.”
Glücksburg is the name of a place, he noted, like any London borough.
“I may as well call myself Mr. Kensington,” he said.
Moscow’s chief rabbi ‘in exile’ after resisting Kremlin pressure over war | Russia
Moscow’s chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, is “in exile” after resisting Kremlin pressure to support the war in Ukraine, his daughter-in-law has said.
Goldschmidt, who also heads the Conference of European Rabbis, left Russia just weeks after it launched its invasion of Ukraine, saying he had to take care of his ailing father in Jerusalem.
But this week his daughter-in-law revealed that Goldschmidt and his wife had also been put under official pressure to support the war and now considered themselves to be in exile because of their opposition to what Russia has called its “special military operation”.
“Can finally share that my in-laws, Moscow chief rabbi [Pinchas Goldschmidt] & Rebbetzin Dara Goldschmidt, have been put under pressure by authorities to publicly support the ‘special operation’ in Ukraine – and refused,” Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, a journalist who is married to Goldschmidt’s son, Benjamin, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday evening.
Can finally share that my in-laws, Moscow Chief Rabbi @PinchasRabbi & Rebbetzin Dara Goldschmidt, have been put under pressure by authorities to publicly support the 'special operation' in Ukraine — and refused. pic.twitter.com/Gy7zgI3YkJ
— Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt (@avitalrachel) June 7, 2022
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Can finally share that my in-laws, Moscow Chief Rabbi @PinchasRabbi & Rebbetzin Dara Goldschmidt, have been put under pressure by authorities to publicly support the ‘special operation’ in Ukraine — and refused. pic.twitter.com/Gy7zgI3YkJ
— Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt (@avitalrachel) June 7, 2022
Goldschmidt has been Moscow’s chief rabbi since 1993 and is one of the most influential Jewish leaders in Russia. If the account is confirmed, Goldschmidt would be a rare high-profile religious leader to leave Russia due to opposition to the war. The Orthodox bishop, Patriarch Kirill, and other religious leaders in Russia have voiced support of the war.
The Guardian has written to Goldschmidt and Chizhik-Goldschmidt for comment.
“They are now in exile from the community they loved, built and raised their children in over 33 years,” Chizhik-Goldschmidt wrote, describing a journey that took her parents-in-law through Hungary and then eastern Europe, where she said they had helped fundraising efforts for Ukrainian refugees.
He went on to Jerusalem, where his father had been in hospital.
“The pain & fear in our family the last few months is beyond words,” she said. “The sounds of the Moscow Choral Synagogue ring in our ears … I’ll never forget our engagement there in ‘14, & taking our children there, Shavuos ‘18… Grateful our parents are safe; worried sick over many others …”
Demographers estimate there are about 150,000 Jewish people in Russia.
Goldschmidt was reelected on Tuesday to another seven-year term as the chief rabbi of Moscow and the leader of the Moscow Choral Synagogue, one of Russia’s most storied houses of worship. He had remained in his post while outside the country, delegating authority to a deputy in his absence.
His reelection was supported by a number of senior Israeli rabbis, who had asked that “no change be made in the composition of the rabbinate and the tribunal without coordination with us”. Another conservative religious leader in Israel warned that “we have been witnessing a difficult reality when governments try to interfere in the tenure of rabbis”.
There were also reports of government pressure to replace Goldschmidt in the elections. “The coup attempt failed,” a source in the Russian Jewish community told the Jerusalem Post.
Goldschmidt had previously told Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that he did “not define myself as an exiled rabbi, I am a rabbi who is not living in his community”.
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But at an opening ceremony for the Conference of European Rabbis in Munich last week, Goldschmidt was accompanied by several German bodyguards while he delivered a speech attacking the war.
“We have to pray for peace and for the end of this terrible war,” he said. “We have to pray that this war will end soon and not escalate into a nuclear conflict that can destroy humanity.”
US and Europe weigh plans for Ukrainian government in exile
The discussions have ranged from supporting Zelensky and top Ukrainian officials in a potential move to Lviv in western Ukraine, to the possibility that Zelensky and his aides are forced to flee Ukraine altogether and establish a new government in Poland, the officials said.
The discussions are only preliminary and no decisions have been made, the sources said.
Western officials have also been wary of discussing a government in exile directly with Zelensky because he wants to stay in Kyiv and has so far rejected conversations that focus on anything other than boosting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, two Western diplomats said. They added that there have been discussions about sending one or more members of Zelensky’s government to an external location where a government could be set up in case Kyiv falls and Zelensky is unwilling or unable to get out.
“The Ukrainians have plans in place that I’m not going to talk about or get into any detail about to make sure that there is continuity of government one way or another, and I’m going to leave it at that,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS on Sunday.
US and European officials believed in the earlier days of the war that Zelensky moving to Lviv might be feasible because it was not clear whether Russia would target western Ukraine. But now — given Russia’s dramatic escalation over the last several days against civilian targets across Ukraine — they are not as sure that Russia will spare any inch of Ukrainian territory.
“All the signs are that [Putin] is going to continue,” a senior Western intelligence official said Friday. “And I think the scraping the bottom of the barrel in some of these other places is indicative that now they really have to go all in, literally, not just figuratively, to make sure that they can proceed” to take the whole country.
One idea that has been floated, but remains unlikely, is the possibility of NATO establishing a no-fly zone over a small portion of western Ukraine, the Western officials and US lawmakers familiar with the discussions said. That in theory would provide a perch for Zelensky’s government and allow Ukraine to build and hone an insurgency against Russian forces — something the intelligence official said would not require that Kyiv remain standing.
“The signs are that [the Ukrainians] can sustain a fight, even a conventional one, without centralized command and control from the Capitol,” the official said.
But the sources acknowledged that NATO establishing a no-fly zone over western Ukraine is highly improbable for the same reasons why it has refused to impose a no-fly zone over the entire country — because it would likely mean direct engagement with the Russian military.
If there were an attempt to close some parts of Ukrainian airspace, it is more likely it would be coordinated by a “coalition of the willing,” rather than by NATO as a bloc, one of the sources said. Similarly, the West’s willingness to fund and support a Ukrainian insurgency varies among NATO member states, the sources said, with some more reluctant than others given the risk of Russian retaliation.
US and European officials have told Zelensky they are prepared to help him evacuate Ukraine, CNN previously reported. But he has so far refused.
Kyre Irving exile must be extra painful for Nets’ Sean Marks
You wonder how the Crown Prince of Culture was spending his private moments Tuesday, sequestered in his office at the HSS Training Facility, hard by the Gowanus Canal. It was a busy morning for Sean Marks, having to essentially kick his star player off the team like a high school coach enforcing curfew, then answering for it, and explaining it.
Marks and the Nets did what they had to do, essentially turning Kyrie Irving into a non-person for as long as he chooses to keep his arms free of the COVID-19 vaccination. In truth, that was the easiest part of his day.
The hard stuff probably comes in quieter moments of solitude when he has to ask himself sometimes: was it all worth it?
The Crown Prince of Culture, you will recall, migrated to Brooklyn from San Antonio, where more poems and paeans have been penned about the Spurs Way than even the hungriest basketball junkie could consume in a lifetime. He promised he wasn’t just going to see to it that the Nets would win more basketball games.
“There’s a certain right way to having success,” he’d said not long after he came aboard in 2016. “I have a strong belief in that. Call it culture if you like, though I’m tired of that word. I just think you need to surround yourself with people who have the same vision you do and then give your belief system time to breathe.”
And here’s the thing:
Given time to breathe, Marks’ blueprint actually worked. He’d hired as a wingman Ken Atkinson, a first-time head coach who believed in pure basketball democracy, who preached the Marks Way, the Nets Way, to a group that started off borderline unwatchable and slowly progressed into a playoff team.
The first full season of the Marks/Atkinson partnership was hard on the senses: 20-62, and at the end of the year you were amazed to look up and see the “20” on the left side of the hyphen. But they were acquiring players, and developing players, and they slowly became fun to follow: 28-54 in Year 2, and then 42-40 in 2018-19, a playoff slot slightly ahead of schedule.
“It’s an enjoyable bunch to work with every day,” Atkinson said after what seemed certain to be the first of many high points of that era, a stunning 111-102 upset of the heavily favored Sixers in their first playoff game. “They all want to grow and learn together. It’s easy to coach guys like that.”
The players weren’t superstars but they were solid and enjoyed playing together and getting better all the time: Spencer Dinwiddie, Caris LeVert, Joe Harris, D’Angelo Russell, Jarrett Allen. You could build hope out of that core. Marks had done what he’d promised: he’d made the Nets watchable and, man, were they on the come.
Then July 1, 2019 happened.
And look: it’s absurd to argue with what Marks decided to do when it became apparent Kevin Durant was interested in hanging his shingle at Barclays Center. Even with a bum Achilles, even with a year’s rehab ahead of him, Durant was one of the two greatest players on the planet. And he wanted Brooklyn, not Manhattan. He wanted the Nets, not the Knicks.
But he wanted other things, too: he wanted a sidekick; that’s how Irving became a Net. He wanted a voice in how things would be in Brooklyn, and that’s how Atkinson became an ex-Net 62 games into the 2019-20 season. There aren’t a lot of athletes who merit such perks. Durant is one.
So the Crown Prince of Culture blew up the blueprint.
Maybe they would’ve won a title last year if Irving’s ankle doesn’t explode in the Milwaukee series, or if Durant’s foot was maybe a size-and-a-half smaller. But they didn’t win a title last year. Irving couldn’t stay healthy. James Harden couldn’t stay healthy. The Bucks eked by them in Game 7, and a month later they were parading across Knapp Street and down Water Street and across Wisconsin Avenue.
“I already can’t wait for next year,” Durant said, noble in defeat.
And maybe they can still do that without Irving. Or maybe circumstances will change, protocols will shift, and the prodigal guard can return. Or maybe this grand experiment is destined for the dust bin of good ideas gone horribly wrong.
“The hope,” Marks said, “is that we have Kyrie back under different circumstances.”
That’s what he said publicly. Privately, you wonder if he misses the old blueprint, the one that was tucked in Atkinson’s back pocket when Marks threw him under the bus. You wonder if the Crown Prince of Culture wishes he could wish that culture back, hard by the Gowanus Canal.
ScummVM Turns 20, Now Supports Grim Fandango And Myst 3: Exile
The Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine, which we all know better as ScummVM, turns 20 this week, and anyone who has ever enjoyed a classic adventure game on a modern PC (or mobile device!) over the last two decades probably owes its creators a drink or two.
Originally released in October 2001 by Ludvig Strigeus (with help from Vincent Hamm), the original plan was just to get Monkey Island 2 running in an emulator. That one game soon became two (Fate of Atlantis), and as word of ScummVM’s success grew, so too did the team size and the number of games (and engines) it supported.
Over the last 20 years ScummVM has grown from something mostly associated with playing old Lucasarts adventures into a program that can now run games from 64 different engines, from Myst to Might & Magic.
To further back that up, to celebrate the program’s birthday the team have announced ScummVM 2.5.0, with a list of additions and improvements they call “tremendous”.
First up, these games now work:
- Little Big Adventure
- Red Comrades 1: Save the Galaxy
- Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice
- Transylvania
- Crimson Crown
- OO-Topos
- Glulx interactive fiction games
- Private Eye
- AGS Games versions 2.5+
- Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy
- The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time
- Crusader: No Remorse
- L-ZONE
- Spaceship Warlock
- Grim Fandango
- The Longest Journey
- Myst 3: Exile
Grim Fandango! Little Big Adventure! Crusader: No Remorse! This rules. But that’s not all, there are also tweaks under the good for everything from the desktop interface to the DS version of ScummVM:
Besides the new games and game versions, ScummVM 2.5.0 brings many notable improvements and new features. We have completed a major rework of the GUI: We now support Unicode characters everywhere. The GUI also adapts to high resolutions used in HiDPI screens. The Nintendo DS port has been significantly rewritten. We added GOG and Steam achievements to a large number of Wintermute games and enabled KeyMapper in more games. Thanks to the work of one of our GSoC students, we have now added an option for text-to-speech to the games Sfinx, Soltys and The Griffon Legend.
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You can download the latest ScummVM release at the project’s site.
Chinese detective in exile reveals extent of torture against Uyghurs
Hundreds of police officers armed with rifles went house to house in Uyghur communities in the far western region of China, pulling people from their homes, handcuffing and hooding them, and threatening to shoot them if they resisted, a former Chinese police detective tells CNN.
“We took (them) all forcibly overnight,” he said. “If there were hundreds of people in one county in this area, then you had to arrest these hundreds of people.”
The ex-detective turned whistleblower asked to be identified only as Jiang, to protect his family members who remain in China.
“Kick them, beat them (until they’re) bruised and swollen,” Jiang said, recalling how he and his colleagues used to interrogate detainees in police detention centers. “Until they kneel on the floor crying.”
During his time in Xinjiang, Jiang said every new detainee was beaten during the interrogation process — including men, women and children as young as 14.
The methods included shackling people to a metal or wooden “tiger chair” — chairs designed to immobilize suspects — hanging people from the ceiling, sexual violence, electrocutions, and waterboarding. Inmates were often forced to stay awake for days, and denied food and water, he said.
“Everyone uses different methods. Some even use a wrecking bar, or iron chains with locks,” Jiang said. “Police would step on the suspect’s face and tell him to confess.”
The suspects were accused of terror offenses, said Jiang, but he believes that “none” of the hundreds of prisoners he was involved in arresting had committed a crime. “They are ordinary people,” he said.
The torture in police detention centers only stopped when the suspects confessed, Jiang said. Then they were usually transferred to another facility, like a prison or an internment camp manned by prison guards.
In order to help verify his testimony, Jiang showed CNN his police uniform, official documents, photographs, videos, and identification from his time in China, most of which can’t be published to protect his identity. CNN has submitted detailed questions to the Chinese government about his accusations, so far without a response.
CNN cannot independently confirm Jiang’s claims, but multiple details of his recollections echo the experiences of two Uyghur victims CNN interviewed for this report. More than 50 former inmates of the camp system also provided testimony to Amnesty International for a 160-page report released in June, “‘Like We Were Enemies in a War’: China’s Mass Internment, Torture, and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang.”
The US State Department estimates that up to 2 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang since 2017. China says the camps are vocational, aimed at combating terrorism and separatism, and has repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses in the region.
“I want to reiterate that the so-called genocide in Xinjiang is nothing but a rumor backed by ulterior motives and an outright lie,” said Zhao Lijian, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, during a news conference in June.
On Wednesday, officials from the Xinjiang government even introduced a man at a news conference they said was a former detainee, who denied there was torture in the camps, calling such allegations “utter lies.” It was unclear if he was speaking under duress.
‘Everyone needs to hit a target’
The first time Jiang was deployed to Xinjiang, he said he was eager to travel there to help defeat a terror threat he was told could threaten his country. After more than 10 years in the police force, he was also keen for a promotion.
He said his boss had asked him to take the post, telling him that “separatist forces want to split the motherland. We must kill them all.”
Jiang said he was deployed “three or four” times from his usual post in mainland China to work in several areas of Xinjiang during the height of China’s “Strike Hard” anti-terror campaign.
Launched in 2014, the “Strike Hard” campaign promoted a mass detention program of the region’s ethnic minorities, who could be sent to a prison or an internment camp for simply “wearing a veil,” growing “a long beard,” or having too many children.
Jiang showed CNN one document with an official directive issued by Beijing in 2015, calling on other provinces of China to join the fight against terrorism in the country “to convey the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important instructions when listening to the report on counter-terrorism work.”
Jiang was told that 150,000 police assistants were recruited from provinces around mainland China under a scheme called “Aid Xinjiang,” a program that encouraged mainland provinces to provide help to areas of Xinjiang, including public security resources. The temporary postings were financially rewarding — Jiang said he received double his normal salary and other benefits during his deployment.
But quickly, Jiang became disillusioned with his new job — and the purpose of the crackdown.
“I was surprised when I went for the first time,” Jiang said. “There were security checks everywhere. Many restaurants and places are closed. Society was very intense.”
During the routine overnight operations, Jiang said they would be given lists of names of people to round up, as part of orders to meet official quotas on the numbers of Uyghurs to detain.
“It’s all planned, and it has a system,” Jiang said. “Everyone needs to hit a target.”
If anyone resisted arrest, the police officers would “hold the gun against his head and say do not move. If you move, you will be killed.”
He said teams of police officers would also search people’s houses and download the data from their computers and phones.
Another tactic was to use the area’s neighborhood committee to call the local population together for a meeting with the village chief, before detaining them en masse.
Describing the time as a “combat period,” Jiang said officials treated Xinjiang like a war zone, and police officers were told that Uyghurs were enemies of the state.
He said it was common knowledge among police officers that 900,000 Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were detained in the region in a single year.
Jiang said if he had resisted the process, he would have been arrested, too.
‘Some are just psychopaths’
Inside the police detention centers, the main goal was to extract a confession from detainees, with sexual torture being one of the tactics, Jiang said.
“If you want people to confess, you use the electric baton with two sharp tips on top,” Jiang said. “We would tie two electrical wires on the tips and set the wires on their genitals while the person is tied up.”
He admitted he often had to play “bad cop” during interrogations but said he avoided the worst of the violence, unlike some of his colleagues.
“Some people see this as a job, some are just psychopaths,” he said.
One “very common measure” of torture and dehumanization was for guards to order prisoners to rape and abuse the new male inmates, Jiang said.
Abduweli Ayup, a 48-year-old Uyghur scholar from Xinjiang, said he was detained on August 19, 2013, when police carrying rifles surrounded a kindergarten he had opened to teach young children their native language.
On his first night in a police detention center in the city of Kashgar, Ayup says he was gang-raped by more than a dozen Chinese inmates, who had been directed to do this by “three or four” prison guards who also witnessed the assault.
“The prison guards, they asked me to take off my underwear” before telling him to bend over, he said. “Don’t do this, I cried. Please don’t do this.”
He said he passed out during the attack and woke up surrounded by his own vomit and urine.
“I saw the flies, just like flying around me,” Ayup said. “I found that the flies are better than me. Because no one can torture them, and no one can rape them.”
“I saw that those guys (were) laughing at me, and (saying) he’s so weak,” he said. “I heard those words.” He says the humiliation continued the next day, when the prison guards asked him, “Did you have a good time?”
He said he was transferred from the police detention center to an internment camp, and was eventually released on November 20, 2014, after being forced to confess to a crime of “illegal fundraising.”
His time in detention came before the wider crackdown in the region, but it reflects some of the alleged tactics used to suppress the ethnic minority population which Uyghur people had complained about for years.
CNN is awaiting response from the Chinese government about Ayup’s testimony.
Now living in Norway, Ayup is still teaching and also writing Uyghur language books for children, to try to keep his culture alive. But he says the trauma of his torture will stay with him forever.
“It’s the scar in my heart,” he said. “I will never forget.”
‘They hung us up and beat us’
Omir Bekali, who now lives in the Netherlands, is also struggling with the long-term legacy of his experiences within the camp system.
“The agony and the suffering we had (in the camp) will never vanish, will never leave our mind,” Bekali, 45, told CNN.
Bekali was born in Xinjiang to a Uyghur mother and a Kazakh father, and he moved to Kazakhstan where he got citizenship in 2006. During a business trip to Xinjiang, he said he was detained on March 26, 2017, then a week later he was interrogated and tortured for four days and nights in the basement of a police station in Karamay City.
“They put me in a tiger chair,” Bekali said. “They hung us up and beat us on the thigh, on the hips with wooden torches, with iron whips.”
He said police tried to force him to confess to supporting terrorism, and he spent the following eight months in a series of internment camps.
“When they put the chains on my legs the first time, I understood immediately I am coming to hell,” Bekali said. He said heavy chains were attached to prisoners’ hands and feet, forcing them to stay bent over, even when they were sleeping.
He said he lost around half his body weight during his time there, saying he “looked like a skeleton” when he emerged.
“I survived from this psychological torture because I am a religious person,” Bekali said. “I would never have survived this without my faith. My faith for life, my passion for freedom kept me alive.”
During his time in the camps, Bekali said two people that he knew died there. He also says his mother, sister and brother were interned in the camps, and he was told his father Bakri Ibrayim died while detained in Xinjiang on September 18, 2018.
Xinjiang government officials responded to CNN’s questions about Bekali during the Wednesday news conference, when they confirmed he had been detained for eight months on suspected terror offenses. But officials said his claims of torture and his family’s detention were “total rumors and slander.” His father died of liver cancer, they said, and his family is “currently leading a normal life.”
‘I am guilty’
From his new home in Europe, former detective Jiang struggles to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. The enduring suffering of those who went through the camp system plays on his mind; he feels like he’s close to a breakdown.
“I am now numb,” Jiang said. “I used to arrest so many people.”
Former inmate Ayup also struggles to sleep at night, as he suffers with nightmares of his time in detention, and is unable to escape the constant feeling he is being watched. But he said he still forgives the prison guards who tortured him.
“I don’t hate (them),” Ayup said. “Because all of them, they’re a victim of that system.”
“They sentence themselves there,” he added. “They are criminals; they are a part of this criminal system.”
Jiang said even before his time in Xinjiang, he had become “disappointed” with the Chinese Communist Party due to increasing levels of corruption.
“They were pretending to serve the people, but they were a bunch of people who wanted to achieve a dictatorship,” he said. In fleeing China and exposing his experience there, he said he wanted to “stand on the side of the people.”
Now, Jiang knows he can never return to China — “they’ll beat me half to death,” he said.
“I’d be arrested. There would be a lot of problems. Defection, treason, leaking government secrets, subversion. (I’d get) them all,” he said.
“The fact that I speak for Uyghurs (means I) could be charged for participating in a terrorist group. I could be charged for everything imaginable.”
When asked what he would do if he came face-to-face with one of his former victims, he said he would be “scared” and would “leave immediately.”
“I am guilty, and I’d hope that a situation like this won’t happen to them again,” Jiang said. “I’d hope for their forgiveness, but it’d be too difficult for people who suffered from torture like that.”
“How do I face these people?” he added. “Even if you’re just a soldier, you’re still responsible for what happened. You need to execute orders, but so many people did this thing together. We’re responsible for this.”
Media companies linked to Chinese exile Guo Wengui reach $539 million SEC settlement
Fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui hold a news conference on November 20, 2018 in New York, on the death of of tycoon Wang Jian in France on July 3, 2018. – Guo was introduced by Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist.
Don Emmert | AFP | Getty Images
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday charged three media companies linked to wealthy Chinese exile Guo Wengui with conducting illegal securities offerings.
The companies – New York City-based GTV Media Group and Saraca Media Group as well as Phoenix, Arizona-based Voice of Guo Media – agreed to settle for more than $539 million, according to the SEC.
The SEC charged GTV, Saraca and Voice of Guo with conducting an illegal unregistered offering of GTV’s common stock. GTV and Saraca were also charged with an illegal unregistered offering of a digital asset security called G-Coins or G-Dollars.
The companies raised $487 million from more than 5,000 investors from the two securities offerings, according to the SEC.
GTV Media, one of the Guo tied media companies, also reportedly has links to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the SEC was looking into fundraising tactics by the company and noted at the time that Bannon was a company director.
Bannon and Guo have been close for years. The former advisor to President Donald Trump was arrested on Guo’s yacht and was charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through his “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign. Bannon pleaded not guilty and was later pardoned by Trump.
The press release does not mention Guo or Bannon by name.
Guo, his associates and some of the same companies were sued to by investors in a class action lawsuit earlier this year for allegedly breaking securities laws. Bannon is not mentioned in the lawsuit.
As for the settlement with the SEC, the Guo linked companies did not admit, nor deny, any of the commission’s findings. Instead, the SEC says the businesses agreed to a detailed settlement.
“GTV and Saraca agreed to a cease-and-desist order, to pay disgorgement of over $434 million plus prejudgment interest of approximately $16 million on a joint and several basis, and to each pay a civil penalty of $15 million,” according to the SEC’s press release.
“Voice of Guo agreed to a cease-and-desist order, to pay disgorgement of more than $52 million plus prejudgment interest of nearly $2 million, and to pay a civil penalty of $5 million. The order establishes a Fair Fund to return monies to injured investors.”
Trump was supposed to be a political Godzilla in exile. Instead, he’s adrift.
Ex-president Donald Trump finds himself adrift while in political exile. And Republicans, and even some allies, say he is disorganized, torn between playing the role of antagonist and party leader.
“There is no apparatus, no structure and part of that is due to a lack of political understanding on Trump’s behalf,” said a person close to the former president, noting that Trump has struggled to learn the ropes of post-presidential politicking.
“It’s like political phantom limbs. He doesn’t have the same political infrastructure he did three months ago as president,” added GOP strategist Matt Gorman, who previously served as communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The version of Trump that has emerged in the month and a half since he left office is far from the political godzilla many expected him to be. He was supposed to unleash hell on a party apparatus that recoiled when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and declined to fiercely defend him during his second impeachment. Instead, Trump has maintained close ties to GOP officials who have committed to supporting incumbents, stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight, delivered fairly anodyne remarks the one time he emerged, and offered only sparse criticism of his successor, Joe Biden.
The cumulative result is political whiplash, as the former president shifts from wanting to support the GOP with his resources and grassroots appeal one day to refocusing on his own brand and thirst for vengeance the next. In the past week alone, Trump has gone from threatening party bodies for using his name and likeness in their fundraising efforts to offering up his Mar-a-Lago estate as a host site for part of the Republican National Committee’s spring donor retreat. He savagely attacked veteran GOP operative Karl Rove for criticizing his first post-presidency speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee, and endorsed Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who repeatedly scrutinized Trump’s own trade practices while in office.
And in the span of 24 hours this week, Trump went from encouraging NFL running back Herschel Walker to mount a primary bid against Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to hosting a vocal opponent of insurgent primary challenges, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., for dinner at Mar-a-Lago. In his role as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott has promised to stick by GOP incumbents — including Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump in his Senate trial last month on charges of inciting an insurrection. The Florida Republican said he had a “great meeting” with Trump in a tweet he shared Friday.
“For any normal politician, it would look like he’s trying to have it both ways but really he’s trying to have it his way,” said a former Trump White House official. “He only cares about maintaining his power and his stranglehold over the Republican Party and it doesn’t matter to him how any of the moves he makes affect the long-term success of institutions or individuals other than himself.”
Trump has always been an impulsive figure who demanded loyalty from those around him. But those traits have come with positions of power: whether atop a real estate empire, as a media celebrity, or — in his last iteration — as president of the United States.
No longer occupying a powerful office, the task has been made more complicated. The former president has appeared to settle into life outside the confines of the West Wing, and even made his first trip to New York earlier this week. He continues to hold court on the patio of his Mar-a-Lago resort where he is greeted by a standing ovation from members when he and the former first lady walk by. He spends his days monitoring the news, making calls and playing golf at his eponymous club just a few miles away.
He has assembled a barebones staff of paid and unpaid advisers who say they are working to vet primary candidates seeking his support and get his fundraising operation off the ground. But the factions that have already formed among those surrounding him suggest potential turbulence ahead. Three veterans of Trump’s 2020 campaign — Brad Parscale, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark — have been screening primary recruitments and brainstorming ways to reestablish his online presence, while Dave Bossie and Corey Lewandowski are in talks with the ex-president to launch a new fundraising entity on his behalf, according to people briefed on the recent discussions.
At the same time, Trump has continued to phone pals from his real estate days and former White House officials — soliciting their counsel on which Republicans he should try to unseat and whether they approve of the primary challengers he’s considering. One former administration official who has been in contact with Trump described him as a “pinball,” noting that his tendency to abruptly change directions or seize on a new idea after speaking with a friend or outside adviser — a habit that often frustrated aides during his time in office — has carried into his post-presidency life.
“You’ve got Trump making endorsements of people without going through the process he agreed to three days ago,” said the former White House official. “It’s really disorganized.”
The fear among Republicans is that Trump’s indecisiveness will extend to his personal political future as well. Trump has continued to dangle a 2024 run over the party, and the will-he-won’t-he guessing game has held presidential hopefuls in limbo.
“Politics is his hobby and he’s having fun with his hobby in between his rounds of golf,” said a former Trump adviser. “His big test is does he run again? Because if he doesn’t, you’ll see people lose interest in the guy in the next hour. As long as he plays the theatrics he’s going to run again, he still garners attention and creates headlines.”
But stripped of a social media platform like Twitter, the former president has had to rely on issuing statements — some mimicking the tone and length of his past tweets — via his post-presidency office or political PAC press lists. So far, he’s issued more than two dozen endorsements and statements since leaving the White House. The more recent ones have bashed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and sought credit for the current Covid-19 vaccine distribution.
And while Trump, an avid cable news consumer, has avoided publicly responding to TV segments that are critical of him or the wave of recent “cancel culture” headlines, he’s been tempted. Before a Wednesday appearance by his senior adviser Jason Miller on the “War Room” podcast hosted by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, Trump told Miller he could “make a little news” by relaying the ex-president’s thoughts on last Sunday’s bombshell Oprah interview of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle.
“When I was talking to the president this morning… he’s like, ‘Yeah, she’s no good. I said that and now everybody’s seeing it. But you realize if you say anything negative about Meghan Markle you get canceled. Look at Piers,’” Miller said, recounting his conversation with Trump, who had been referring to Piers Morgan, the polarizing “Good Morning Britain” host who parted ways with the show this week after dismissing Markle’s revelations as lies.
Some close aides have described Trump’s hiatus from Twitter as a welcome break that allows his rare statements to carry more weight than the thought bubbles he would release on the internet.
But so far, many of his recent political maneuverings have been met with a shrug by the GOP. Trump’s public tussle with the Republican Party over fundraising and the use of his name and likeness in appeals for money appeared to fizzle out after attorneys for the Republican National Committee denied Trump’s cease-and-desist demands. By week’s end, the RNC was not only still using Trump’s name in fundraising solicitations, it was offering him up as an enticement.
“Want to meet President Trump?” a fundraising appeal read, touting the opportunity to dine with the former president at an upcoming spring retreat and even “take a photo” with him too.