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Taiwan

ISIS Releases Propaganda Song In Chinese

The minaret of Sultan Emin Khoja in the city of Turpan in China's Xinjiang region
The minaret of Sultan Emin Khoja in the city of Turpan in China's Xinjiang region

TAIPEI — The latest piece of ISIS propaganda is a four-minute Chinese-language song released over the weekend on the Islamic terror group's official website Jihadology.

Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) is reporting that the song, which first appeared Sunday, is entitled "We Are Mujahid" and features a vocal chorus in Chinese urging would-be jihadists to join their fight. The Mandarin lyrics include: "Muslim brothers wake up," and repeats the refrain "We are mujahideen," using the Arabic term for those who take up jihad holy war. There are also phrases extoling the virtue of martyrdom: "Our dream is to die on the battlefield', the Taiwanese news agency quoted from the terrorist group's website.

Chen Shimin, associate professor of political science at National Taiwan University, told the United Daily News service that in the Islamic State's founding document announced last year that its territory covers Xinjiang, the northwest region of China that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It would appear that the latest Chinese-language song is aimed at recruiting from among the Chinese region's Uighur Muslim minority. Professor Chen cited reports of some Uighur having joined the terrorist movement in Iraq and Syria.

Arthur S. Ding, Director of the Institute of International Relations at Taiwan's National Chengchi University said that mainland China is much more vulnerable to an Islamist attack than Taiwan, due to Beijing authorities' oppressive rule and mass Han Chinese immigration to Xinjiang.

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Geopolitics

Senegal's Democratic Unrest And The Ghosts Of French Colonialism

The violence that erupted following the sentencing of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison left 16 people dead and 500 arrested. This reveals deep fractures in Senegalese democracy that has traces to France's colonial past.

Image of Senegalese ​Protesters celebrating Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Protesters celebrate Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — For a long time, Senegal had the glowing image of one of Africa's rare democracies. The reality was more complicated than that, even in the days of the poet-president Léopold Sedar Senghor, who also had his dark side.

But for years, the country has been moving down what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "gentle slope of... the weakening and corrosion of the gains of Senegalese democracy."

This has been demonstrated once again over the last few days, with a wave of violence that has left 16 people dead, 500 arrested, the internet censored, and a tense situation with troubling consequences. The trigger? The sentencing last Thursday of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison, which could exclude him from the 2024 presidential elections.

Young people took to the streets when the verdict was announced, accusing the justice system of having become a political tool. Ousmane Sonko had been accused of rape but was convicted of "corruption of youth," a change that rendered the decision incomprehensible.

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