Muscat-horizon-expansion update: Azerbaijan, which will own 20% of the new power station, cracks down on human rights activists and journalists
Published:
April 29, 2014 at 11:39pm
The BBC reports today:
Azerbaijan’s most prominent human rights campaigner has been detained with her husband while trying to leave the country.
Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunus, an academic, were hoping to board a flight from the capital Baku to Doha in Qatar, but were held at the airport.
They were released after a night in custody. But her passport was withheld.
Her arrest comes amid a crackdown on human rights activists and journalists in the oil-rich ex-Soviet state.
Azerbaijan has been ruled by the Aliyev family since 1993, soon after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27202134
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zambia/8073443/Zambian-miners-shot-by-Chinese-managers.html
Hmm maybe the GWU might have met their match…
‘…A Foreign Ministry official in Beijing said that the shooting was a “mistake” but the incident has fuelled demands to curb China’s overwheening position in mine investments….’
‘..”We know we can’t be protected by this government because it has been heavily corrupted by the Chinese for the 2011 elections and the current by-elections,” said Michel Sata, the PF’s leader nicknamed King Cobra for his combatative stance….’
Sounds familiar – Enemalta – Gozo Bridge – Election
“China invested more than £250m in its mining industry last year, as well as providing funds to improve the country’s infrastructure. and reportedly helped the ruling party to get re-elected.”
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2014/02/news-from-the-azerbaijan-dictatorship-controlled-press-maltese-prime-minister-writes-to-azerbaijani-president-with-birthday-greetings/
With ‘friends’ like these, who needs enemies?
Do we actually have an Opposition in Malta? Why isn’t it asking, persistently, about Azerbaijan’s involvement in the planned power station?
The Minister of the Interior has appointed some new reserve constables, and they all seem to be roughly his size and shape.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140430/local/reserve-constables-appointed.516977
What I can’t stand is how Labour deals then comes back with these cultural links or other mental rubbish to justify the deal.
If it was Ghaddafi, we were Libyan revolutionaries, when it was North Korea m’ghamilna xejn, Azerbaijan has this charity thing going on and if it has to be China we get Reno Calleya waxing lyrical on some long lost ‘friendship’.
Bloody business deals turned destiny or whatever it is they go on about. Melodramatic, indispensable, tragically romantic, undemocratic in the sense no one’s to contradict the ‘people’s’ progress.
And that, gives me the heebie jeebies. Either I’m alien to this place, or they’re the same Labour outfit which tried to impose an ideology since Boffa was humiliated. On second thoughts, no wonder Archbishop Gonzi resisted Malta’s independence, he had been Mintoff’s adversary inside the Labour Party, perhaps he saw and anticipated phenomena which stuck to Labour to this day.
The only way to feel normal and of this world then is to consider Labour as not quite right, unless dictatorial regimes with their instruments are to be included within normality.
Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to have an Aditus foundation which wants to take over the role of an Amnesty International and refuses to engage this government on where China stops in this place.
One has to emphasize that Muscat’s ecenomic strategy depends directly on workers’ rights trampled, salaries practically non-existent and unions banned, instruments used to undermine European social fabric, rights and standards of work and living.
Perhaps Muscat should be asked whether he thinks it’s fine to transfer some of that cutting edge Chinese knowhow to Malta to be able to ‘penetrate’ the European market.
In the end, he’ll be stopped, and that, I suspect, is the plan. L-Ewropa will be ta’ Kajin again.
First it’s “friendship”, then it’s “penetration”. Next thing you know it’s “injection”.
All very Trainspotting.