SHANGHAI: It took less than 24 hours for all the Christmas trees, lights and bells to disappear from a 27-story shopping and office complex in the Chinese city of Nanyang.
Even the giant teddy bear at the mall entrance wasn’t spared, said Ma Jun, who works at a tutoring company in the building.
“Everything is gone and cleaned,” she said.
Christmas continues to be a shopping festival across most of China, with huge trees adorning shopping malls in Shanghai and Beijing, but a growing emphasis on traditional culture by the ruling Communist Party and the systematic suppression of religion under President Xi Jinping are imperiling Santa Claus’s position.
At least four Chinese cities and one county have ordered Christmas decorations banned this year, according to official notices and interviews. Students, teachers and parents from 10 schools around China told The Associated Press that Christmas celebrations have been curtailed.
“The ongoing local reaction against Christmas is part of the wider sentiment since Xi took power,” said Zi Yang, a China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Xi is trying to broaden the appeal of the Communist Party by casting it as a crusader for Chinese tradition in a fast-changing world, he said. “Therefore, foreign cultural elements such as Christmas are placed on the chopping block.”
The seasonal humbug follows similar outbreaks of anti-Christmas rhetoric in 2014 and 2017. It appears not to be centrally organized, but rather a spreading resistance to foreign festivals by local authorities seeking to align themselves with the growing tide of cultural nationalism.
The squeeze on Christmas is an example of how efforts to “normalize” thinking bleed into the everyday lives of many Chinese. That push exploded into view this year through re-education camps for Uighur Muslims and a crackdown on Christian churches that has continued with force in recent weeks.
In Nanyang, about 950 kilometers (600 miles) west of Shanghai, government officials stopped by the office and shopping complex on Dec. 16 to say that Christmas decorations would have to come down, said Ma, the tutoring company employee.
An official from the city’s urban management bureau hung up when asked for comment.
Nine hours by car south, Hengyang, a city in Hunan province, said in a Dec. 19 notice posted on an official government social media account that anyone caught holding Christmas sales or celebrations that blocked the streets would be punished. Communist Party members, the notice said, should avoid foreign festivals and instead be “models of adherence to Chinese traditional culture.” Hengyang police posted a video on their official social media account of locals discussing the importance of Chinese culture and plans to avoid ostentatious Christmas celebrations.
Langfang city, just south of Beijing, banned Christmas stage performances and merchandising promotions, according to a notice circulated on social media.
Shop windows were to be stripped of Christmas stickers and streets kept free of Christmas banners and lights. Law enforcement patrols were to be stepped up Dec. 23-25 to prevent illegal signs of celebration.
The Langfang urban management bureau declined comment. The state-run Global Times newspaper argued that Western media are exaggerating China’s crackdown on Christmas and reported that the restrictions in Langfang were aimed not at Christmas but at cleaning up roadside stalls and migrant vendors in hopes of winning a “National Civilized City” award from the Communist Party.
Some 270 kilometers (167 miles) west, Fuping county, also in Hebei province, issued a similar clean-up notice. Though the Dec. 21 announcement mentions Christmas eleven times, an official from the Fuping urban management bureau said the rules were aimed at street vendors generally, not Christmas.
Police in the Panlong district of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southern China, circulated a notice that hotels, karaoke parlors, Internet cafes, bars and other crowded places must prohibit Christmas-related decorations and activities.
“It is forbidden to hang Christmas stockings, wear Christmas hats, place Christmas trees, and so on,” the notice read.
It wasn’t clear if the notice applied to all of Kunming city, though a police officer told the AP that the order to circulate it came from city officials.
Reverend Jonathan Liu, founder of the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness, a California nonprofit, said the pushback against Christmas reflects Xi’s efforts to “Sinicize” religion.
Preachers are coached on how to convey Communist Party core values in their sermons and national flags and songs have been injected into some church services, he said.
Liu provided the AP with a notice sent to churches in Zhoukou, a city to the east of Nanyang in Henan province.
It tells churches to vet Christmas plans with the government, forbids minors from participating in Christmas events and caps expenses at 2000 yuan ($290). “I wish you all a happy Christmas! God bless you,” read the notice, which Liu received from a pastor in China.
An official at the United Front Work Department in Zhoukou referred queries to the religious affairs bureau, which could not be reached for comment.
Before becoming president, Xi went to Finland in 2010 and was photographed with Santa Claus. That kind of chumminess appears to be a thing of Christmas past, experts say.
The central government issued guidelines last year for a cultural revival project that calls for a marked boost in the international influence of Chinese traditional culture by 2025.
“You have a culturally conservative ethos in the country that has definitely been encouraged by the central party-state,” said Guo Yingjie, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney. “It’s not hard for university presidents or officials to say, ‘OK celebrating Christmas can easily be seen as de-Sinification or promoting Western culture.’“
Students have taken to social media to complain about restrictions on Christmas celebrations at their schools.
At a top Shanghai university, a student union had its Christmas plans canceled for the first time, an organizer told the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing rebuke.
The students came up with a solution: By replacing “Christmas” with “New Year’s” in their activity proposal and changing the date from Dec. 25, it sailed past school administrators.
Students in the city of Qingdao were reprimanded for hosting an event about gratitude on Thanksgiving Day and warned not to celebrate Christmas publicly, according to a student, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution.
Liu Kaiming, president of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a civil society group in the city of Shenzhen, said that despite the drumbeat of official discontent, Christmas cheer continues to spread in China.
“The sound of resistance is more powerful on the surface, but it has no practical effect,” he said. “Young people’s enthusiasm for the festival is ever-increasing.”
Santa not coming to towns across China
Santa not coming to towns across China
- Christmas remains a shopping festival across most of China
- At least four Chinese cities and one county have ordered Christmas decorations banned this year
Resurgent terror groups in Afghanistan will strike West, warns resistance leader
- Exiled head of National Resistance Front says Al-Qaeda, Daesh presence growing in country
- Taliban emboldened by Western commitment to Ukraine, focus on Middle East
London: Terrorist groups in Afghanistan are regrouping in the wake of the Western evacuation from the country and will strike on US and European soil, the leader of an anti-Taliban movement has warned.
The exiled leader of Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front, Ahmad Massoud, said a terror attack in the US or Europe is “not about a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” The Independent reported.
Massoud said circumstances in the country and the wider region resemble the pre-9/11 landscape, with terror training camps opening across Afghanistan.
Ali Maisam Naziry, the NRF’s head of foreign relations, said of the resurgent groups: “The attacks in Russia, Iran and Brussels, and the neutralised attack in Germany, are examples of how fast they are moving to threaten global security.”
He added that since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Afghanistan has witnessed a “massive influx” of foreign terrorist fighters who belong to the more than 20 militant networks operating in the country, including Al-Qaeda, Daesh-Khorasan and the Haqqani Network.
Massoud warned that the West’s commitment to Ukraine and Israel is serving as a distraction, emboldening the Taliban in the process.
Afghanistan is “no longer a priority” for the Biden administration in the US, he told The Independent last year.
Nathan Sales, a former US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, said last year: “The continued partnership between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda is perhaps best seen in the fact that after the US withdrawal, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri resurfaced in Afghanistan, living in a safe house associated with the Haqqani Network, a Taliban faction that maintains close ties to Al-Qaeda and is itself a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
“The key takeaway is that the Taliban felt emboldened to welcome Al-Qaeda’s leader back to Kabul, and Al-Qaeda’s leader felt it was safe enough there to accept the offer.”
Sudanese man detained in UK for deportation to Rwanda: NGO
- Asylum seeker attended routine sign-in at immigration center in London on Monday
- Home Office: First flight to African country ‘set to take off in 10-12 weeks’
LONDON: A Sudanese asylum seeker in the UK has been told of his imminent deportation to Rwanda after attending a routine Home Office appointment, The Guardian reported.
SOAS Detainee Support, an NGO, told the newspaper that the case is believed to be the first under the Rwanda scheme, which has received royal assent.
The UK government policy aims to deport rejected asylum seekers to the African country through a bilateral agreement.
The Sudanese man said he had arrived on Monday to sign in at the Lunar House immigration reporting center in Croydon, south London, but was told he would be deported to Rwanda, and was subsequently detained.
He is one of three people being held after attending the facility, including an Afghan national, SDS said.
The NGO, which offers advice and support to detained asylum seekers, said it had received an “alarmingly high number of calls” since the government’s announcement of Rwanda flights.
A Home Office spokesperson said in a statement: “Now that the Safety of Rwanda Act has passed and our treaty with Rwanda ratified, government is entering the final phase of operationalising this landmark policy to tackle illegal migration and stop the boats.
“This includes detaining people in preparation for the first flight, which is set to take off to Rwanda in 10-12 weeks.”
Daesh claims gun attack killing six in Afghan mosque
- Daesh said numerous gunmen had stormed the mosque with machine guns
HERAT: The Daesh group has claimed a gun attack on a minority Shiite mosque in western Afghanistan that killed six people on Monday.
Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said Tuesday morning that “an unknown armed person shot at civilian worshippers in a mosque” in Herat province’s Guzara district at around 9:00 p.m. (1630 GMT) the previous night.
“Six civilians were martyred and one civilian was injured,” he wrote on social media platform X.
Late Tuesday, the regional chapter of Daesh group claimed responsibility and said numerous gunmen had stormed the mosque with machine guns — contradicting the official account of a single assailant.
Locals said the mosque, located just south of provincial capital Herat, served the minority Shiite community and that an imam and a three-year-old child were among those killed.
They said a team of three gunmen had staged the attack.
“One of them was outside and two of them came inside the mosque, shooting the worshippers,” said 60-year-old Ibrahim Akhlaqi, the brother of the slain imam. “It was in the middle of prayers.”
“Whoever was in the mosque has either been martyred or wounded,” added 23-year-old Sayed Murtaza Hussaini.
Taliban authorities have frequently given death tolls lower than other sources after bombings and gun attacks, or otherwise downplayed them, in an apparent attempt to minimize security threats.
Daesh in Afghanistan
The regional chapter of Daesh is the largest security threat in Afghanistan and has frequently targeted Shiite communities.
The Taliban government has pledged to protect religious and ethnic minorities since returning to power in August 2021, but rights monitors say they’ve done little to make good on that promise.
The most notorious attack linked to Daesh since the Taliban takeover was in 2022, when at least 53 people — including 46 girls and young women — were slain in the suicide bombing of an education center.
Taliban officials blamed Daesh for the attack, which happened in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital Kabul.
Afghanistan’s new rulers claim to have ousted IS from the country and are highly sensitive to suggestions the group has found safe haven there since the withdrawal of foreign forces.
A United Nations Security Council report released in January said there had been a decrease in Daesh attacks in Afghanistan because of “counter-terrorism efforts by the Taliban.”
But the report said Daesh still had “substantial” recruitment in the country and that the militant group had “the ability to project a threat into the region and beyond.”
The Daesh chapter spanning Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia claimed responsibility for the March attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow, killing more than 140 people.
It was the deadliest attack in Russia in two decades.
UK local polls could determine PM Sunak’s fate
- The polls are the last major electoral test before a general election that Sunak’s party, in power since 2010, seems destined to lose to the Labour opposition
London: Britain’s ruling Conservative party is expected to suffer heavy losses in crunch local elections this week that are likely to increase pressure on beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The polls are the last major electoral test before a general election that Sunak’s party, in power since 2010, seems destined to lose to the Labour opposition.
Sunak has said he wants to hold the nationwide vote in the second half of the year, but bruising defeats in Thursday’s votes could force his hand earlier.
“These elections form a vital examination for the Sunak premiership — road-testing its claim that the plan is working and the degree to which voters still lend that notion any degree of credibility,” political scientist Richard Carr told AFP.
Incumbent governments tend to suffer losses in local contests and the Conservatives are forecast by pollsters to lose about half of the council seats they are defending.
Sunak’s immediate political future is said to rest on whether two high-profile Tory regional mayors get re-elected in the West Midlands and Tees Valley areas of central and northeast England.
Wins for the Conservative mayors, Andy Street and Ben Houchen, would boost hopes among Tory MPs that Sunak can turn around their party’s fortunes in time for the general election.
But speculation is rife in the UK parliament that a bad showing could lead some restive Conservative lawmakers to try to replace Sunak before the nationwide poll.
“If Andy Street and Ben Houchen both lose, any idea that Sunak can carry on is surely done,” said Carr, a politics lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.
“Whether that means he rolls the dice on a general election or gets toppled remains to be seen.”
Factional infighting has plagued the Tories in recent years, serving up five prime ministers since the 2016 Brexit vote, including three in four months from July to October 2022.
A group of restive Conservative MPs have drawn up a “policy blitz” for a potential successor to Sunak in the event of massive losses this week, British media have reported.
Some observers say it would be madness for the Conservatives to topple another leader when Sunak has provided some stability since succeeding Liz Truss in October 2022.
Others say the party’s credibility is already shot so why not try one last desperate throw of the dice to try to stop a predicted Labour landslide.
Some 52 MPs would need to submit letters of no confidence in Sunak to trigger an internal party vote to replace him — a tall ask.
“I still expect Sunak will lead the Conservatives into the general election,” Richard Hayton, a politics professor at Leeds University, told AFP.
“But some MPs may seek to move against him, which will further damage his standing with the general public.”
Sunak, 43, was an internal Tory appointment following Truss’s disastrous 49 days premiership in which her unfunded tax cuts caused market turmoil and sank the pound.
Despite numerous leadership resets under Sunak, the Tories have continued to trail Labour, led by Keir Starmer, by double digits in most opinion polls.
An Ipsos poll earlier this month put Sunak’s satisfaction rating at a joint all-time low of minus 59 percent.
More than 2,500 councillors are standing in England on Thursday, as well as London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan who is seeking a record third term in office.
Most of the council seats up for re-election were last contested in 2021, when ex-Tory premier Boris Johnson was popular as he rolled out Covid-19 vaccines.
UN Human Rights Chief troubled by ‘heavy-handed’ action against protesters at US colleges
- Volker Turk says ‘freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues’
- Protests have taken place on campuses in several states as students demand colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s assault on Gaza
NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s high commissioner for human rights on Tuesday said he is troubled by “a series of heavy-handed steps” taken by education authorities and law enforcement officials to break up protests at college campuses in the US.
Volker Turk said: “freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental to society, particularly when there is sharp disagreement on major issues, as there are in relation to the conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have spread across college campuses in Texas, New York, Atlanta, Utah, Virginia, New Jersey, California and other parts of the US as students protest against the death toll during the war in Gaza, call for a ceasefire and demand authorities at their colleges withdraw investments from businesses involved in Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
Though largely peaceful, at some locations the protests have been dispersed or dismantled by security forces. Hundreds of students and teachers have been arrested, some of whom face charges or academic sanctions.
Turk expressed concern that some of the responses by law enforcement authorities at several colleges might have been disproportionate, and called for such actions to be scrutinized to ensure they do not exceed what is necessary “to protect the rights and freedoms of others.”
He added that all such actions must be guided by human rights law, while “allowing vibrant debate and protecting safe spaces for all.”
He reiterated that antisemitic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian activities and speech are “totally unacceptable, deeply disturbing (and) reprehensible.” However, the conduct of protesters must be assessed and addressed individually rather than through “sweeping measures that impute to all members of a protest the unacceptable viewpoints of a few,” Turk added.
“Incitement to violence or hatred on grounds of identity or viewpoints, whether real or assumed, must be strongly repudiated. We have already seen such dangerous rhetoric can quickly lead to real violence.”
