About four things

I'm in the library today from dawn to dusk, finishing up this paper that I thought was due tomorrow. Turns out that may not be true. I ran into Graeme on the way in, and he pointed out that while the English copy of our instructions simply says that we have to hand a copy into CIEC before our presentation on the ninth, the Japanese copy says we must do this the day before. Maybe. Literally it says "by about the eighth of March."

Huh? "By about the eighth"? Does that mean the morning of the ninth is okay? I don't understand.

Anyway, I've been walking around with this J-pop song stuck in my head for the last couple of days. It's called Chu-Lip, by Otsuka Ai, and the music video is terribly disturbing. I saw the whole crew on one of the many celebrity talk shows that float around Japanese TV. It was pretty hilarious, and the drag queen with the tutu kept hitting on one of the hosts.

Less hilarious but equally disturbing is the trial of Canadian citizen and refugee Husein Dzhelil in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region , China. Exactly what he stands charged with is unclear. Mr. Dzhelil, who fled XUAR in the mid 1990s, was detained by the authorities in Uzbekistan in March 2006, and handed over to China in June. He was held incommunicado initially, but on the 2nd of February a trial was held that, for the first time, his family was permitted to attend. His treatment is shocking, but not terribly surprising. This is China, after all.

Those close to Husein Dzhelil say he claims that he was tortured after his
extradition to China in June 2006, including by being starved and deprived of
sleep during the first fifteen days of his imprisonment. He has also claimed
that Chinese authorities threatened that he would “disappear” and “be buried
alive” unless he signed a document. This document was later held up as a
confession, although Husein Dzhelil reportedly later claimed he did not know
what he had signed. (Amnesty International)

The Amnesty Page has information on how to write the Prime Minister (of China), and other officials. There's also a link to a year-old open-letter to Stephen Harper, whose integrity when dealing with China's human rights record and Chinese officials has been impeccable. You may remember this article from the Epoch Times about Harper's tumultuous chat with Hu Jintao at APEC in November. Mr. Dzhelil was a hot topic at the time.

Whatever else may be said about the Prime Minister, I appreciate his efforts on this front.

Oh, and one last thing that I'm sure will offend my mom. I've decided to sign up for the Prime Minister's mailing list. I look forward to comparing it to the NDP newsletter, which I have found to encapsulate the worst sort of self-important aggression that has come to characterize the Left Wing. We'll see how it goes.