Browsing Category

Aggression

Aggression

Bhutan Denies Reports of Chinese Village Within its Territory

Pictures of the village, almost 2km within Bhutan’s boundary, were first shared & then deleted by a Chinese scribe. The People’s Republic of China has allegedly infringed on foreign territory and established a permanent residence two kilometers within Bhutan’s boundary, which is also remarkably close to Doklam, where Indian and Chinese troops had a bitter face-off in 2017, reported NDTV.

However, Bhutan’s Ambassador to India has denied claims made in the report, saying that “there is no Chinese village inside Bhutan,” reported news agency ANI.
According to the report, news of the Chinese settlement just nine kilometers away from Doklam were first shared by senior CGTN News Producer Shen Shiwei, which were later deleted.

NDTV journalist Vishnu Som, who first broke the story, shared a screengrab of the purportedly deleted tweet, in which the CGTN News Producer had reportedly said “Now, we have permanent residents living in the newly established Pangda village. It’s along the valley where 35 km south to Yadong country. Here is a map to show the location.”

Satellite Pictures Show Alleged Land Grab by China
Som, who wrote that pictures in the now deleted tweet are a “clear evidence of a CHINESE LANDGRAB WITHIN BHUTANESE TERRITORY,” also posted pictures of the map in order to show where exactly the Chinese settlement had come up.

In one of the maps posted by Som, the village seems to have come up on the banks of a mountainous river, not very far from the Doklam stand-off site.

Commenting on Som’s many posts, Twitter user d-atis, variously described as an Open-source intelligence handle and satellite-enabled intelligence consultant, said hat following the NDTV scribes post, he had noticed a settlement in satellite imagery.

“Nice catch Vishnu, followed your trail, clearly a settlement has come up right there ! Adding an image here,” d-atis tweeted.

China Ramping up Defence Elsewhere Too
While much of the focus on Indo-China tensions remains firm on tensions in along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh, China has been ramping up defense infrastructure along the central, Sikkim and Eastern sectors, reports Hindustan Times.

According to the report, China has been strengthening of surface-to-air missile sites, and has increased the number of unmanned aerial vehicle numbers, while also expanding air bases in Tibet.
In addition, the report mentioned unnamed military commanders and national security experts, who expressed concern over the building of road by China near Churup village, across the Kaurik pass in central sector.

(With inputs from NDTV and Hindustan Times.)

Aggression

‘Back off China’ protests echo in Nepal as Beijing scales new peaks of intrusion in Himalayan nation

MurukeshUpdated : People, armed with ‘Back off, China’ banners, have taken to the streets in protest against the Chinese intrusion in the northern Humla district of Nepal, which Beijing now claims as its own.
People carry the Nepal national flag during a protest in Kathmandu. | File image
People carry the Nepal national flag during a protest in Kathmandu. | File imageKey HighlightsProtesters have flocked the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu over the encroachment of Nepal territories in the northern Humla districtPeople in Lapcha, where the buildings have been constructed, brought it to the notice of the Humla administration; the district falls near the Nepal-Tibet borderThe area is remote from the district headquarters, difficult to reach, barren, unused and a treacherous stretch but China can easily cross over due to its proximity and access to road
Kathmandu: The misadventures of China continue to smother peace in the Indian subcontinent and Beijing has reached new lows of bullying Nepal after they unilaterally constructed 11 buildings inside Nepalese territory.

People, armed with ‘Back off, China’ banners, have taken to the streets in protest against the Chinese intrusion in the northern Humla district of Nepal, which Beijing now claims it its own.

Advertising

Advertising
Protesters even flocked the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu over the encroachment of Nepal territories in the northern Humla district.

People in Lapcha, where the buildings have been constructed, brought it to the notice of the Humla administration; the district falls near the Nepal-Tibet border.

The area is remote from the district headquarters, difficult to reach, barren, unused and a treacherous stretch but China can easily cross over due to its proximity and access to road.

After the locals in Lapcha raised the issue about the buildings, they also claimed that the Chinese have threatened them from even visiting the bordering areas. Following this, the Home Ministry of Nepal sent senior officials to the disputed land to take stock of the actual extent of encroachment by the Chinese.

Though the Nepal home ministry officials are yet to submit their report, Bishnu Bahadur Lama, the chairman of the Namkha Rural Municipality who was the first to bring the matter to the notice of the administration, said that they have interacted with the locals and also communicated with the Chinese security officials.

“They (Chinese) told us that due to Covid pandemic, it was not possible to sit in a face to face talks urging that those 11 buildings were constructed inside Chinese territory and asked us to leave the place. Then we left. It is happening largely due to one missing pillar,” Lama said.

According to Nepali officials, eight years ago boundary pillar number 11 was damaged during a road construction process and a replacement had not been erected since. Now it seems like the Chinese side caught Nepal napping and took advantage of the critical point along the border.

Locals claim that the territory that the Chinese claim is theirs.

“It belongs to us which has been used by the Nepalese for several purposes in the past. It was basically used for grazing by both sides,” Lama said, according to news agency IANS.

Check the latest facts on Covid-19 here. Times Fact ‘India Outbreak Report’ by TIMES NETWORK and Protiviti is a comprehensive analysis that highlights the impact of the pandemic in India and projects the possible number of active cases in the weeks ahead.

Aggression

After Ladakh, Chinese army’s eyes on Pamir Of Tajikistan

: Recent articles in the state-controlled Chinese media have called for Tajikistan’s Pamir mountain range to be ceded to ChinaThis despite the fact that the two countries signed a border agreement in 2011
China is opening up another front in its relentless drive to expand its territorial claims. The latest target of the Communist Party’s seemingly insatiable expansionist agenda is the central Asian republic of Tajikistan.

More than 90 per cent of the territory of this Muslim majority country is mountainous.

Recent articles in the state-controlled Chinese media, which don’t publish anything without the prior approval of the Communist Party, have called for Tajikistan’s Pamir mountain range, which runs along the Tajik border with Afghanistan and China, to be ceded to China.

According to a report in the Times of India, these include an article by a Chinese nationalist historian who cited official sources to make the audacious claim that the entire Pamir region rightfully belonged to China and needed to be returned.

This despite the fact that the two countries signed a border agreement in 2011. Clearly, the Xi Jinping regime is now emboldened enough to pay scant respect to both formal agreements as in the case of Tajikistan and informal understandings like it has with India regarding the Line of Actual Control.

China and central Asia

Part of the erstwhile Soviet Union, Tajikistan became independent in 1991 but the very next year it saw a civil war that lasted five years. Since then the country has been ruled with an iron grip by the dictatorial president Emomali Rahmon.

Because of its Soviet past, Tajikistan had remained in the Russian sphere of influence, but in the last two decades, there’s another giant, China, to reckon with which has much deeper pockets than Russia. China, which shares borders with more than a dozen countries, including Tajikistan, has ramped up investments in Central Asia.

In 2011, the parliament of Tajikistan ratified an earlier agreement to hand over 1,000 sq km of land in the Pamir mountains to China in return for debt forgiveness.

At that point, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson said the dispute had been solved “according to universally recognised norms of international law through equal consultations”.

Just how much debt China decided to forego is not clear, but land for debt has been an integral part of China’s expansionist tactics in many parts of the world, some of them thousands of miles from China’s borders.

Five years after that land-for-debt swap, Tajikistan, which continues to be heavily debt-ridden, allowed China to open a military base.

The Tajik government, however, is quite sensitive about the Pamirs, where some local communities tend to be restive. Last month, following the publication of the article by the Chinese historian, the Tajik foreign ministry called China’s ambassador to complain.

China has followed a policy of carrots and sticks with its other central Asian neighbours — Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – as well. But under Xi Jinping, Beijing’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy has acquired a menacing edge.

From India and Japan to Taiwan and countries in Southeast Asia, China is not adding to its friends’ list with its bullying tactics and bellicose behaviour. Tajikistan may be too weak to stand up to China, but a loose alliance of counties fed up with Beijing’s actions can start pushing the dragon back.