"Kotaji's Bow": English lefty blogging North East Asia

Swift plug for a new blog, Kotaji's Bow, started by a friend over at SOAS. He says it's for "Thoughts on the Korean peninsula, North East Asia, history and other things", and to get the ball rolling he has a quick note on an under-reported aspect of the "war on terror":

This [report] in particular caught my eye, concerning the as yet undecided fate of Uighur Chinese prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay. I really find it hard to imagine a worse position than that facing these people - caught between US imperial power and Chinese state repression.

The two nations are of course, temporarily and superficially, allies in the 'war on terror'. The Chinese government has used 9/11 as an excuse to crackdown on resistance to their rule in the far west, but the US is clearly slightly embarrassed by this particular appropriation of a rhetoric created in Washington.

The US government quite obviously doesn't care much about the welfare of these people (it has in all likelihood been treating them in much the same way as other Gitmo prisoners/hostages), but at the same time, what would sending them to (more) torture and (possible) death in China do for US human rights rhetoric re the PRC?

Go visit for more (and leave him some encouraging comments).