Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden greets audience members during a campaign stop at Mack’s Apples in Londonderry, New Hampshire, US on July 13, 2019. (REUTERS Photo)

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters): As U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his efforts to brand four progressive congresswomen as the new face of the Democratic Party, its presidential front-runner, Joe Biden, has been quietly reminding voters in Iowa there remains a middle ground.

Trump’s vilification of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, in which he said the minority lawmakers were hostile to America and should “go back” where they came from, has largely left Biden out of this week’s political conversation.

But it may give Biden’s campaign the boost it needs after his widely panned debate performance last month.

Biden, who served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president and 36 years as a U.S. senator, epitomizes a Democratic establishment the four congresswomen who dub themselves “the squad� have vowed to upend.

Ocasio-Cortez, 29, has at times been a fierce critic of Biden, knocking him as being politically out of touch and suggesting he may be too old to be president.

Biden, 76, has had to be careful in criticizing them in return, not wanting to alienate the party’s emboldened activist left whose votes he will need if he wins the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the November 2020 election.

At the same time, he is working to make clear to moderate voters that he would be a more palatable alternative than a Democratic nominee more in line with the congresswomen’s values, such as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

The approach has seen Biden condemning Trump’s attacks on the congresswomen as racist, another sign the Republican president is “tearing the soul out of this country,� Biden said on Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

But he also indicated he did not believe the four represented the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

In an interview with MSNBC this week, Biden expressed his support for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her struggle with the four to maintain a united policy front in the House of Representatives.

Biden noted that the large majority of seats won by House Democrats in last year’s congressional elections were secured by moderates in his own mold, not self-described socialists such as Ocasio-Cortez.

Voters who support Biden have told Reuters they are concerned the party is drifting too far leftward to beat Trump next year.

Biden spent much of the week defending his healthcare plan – which would bolster the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, and let consumers keep their private insurance plans – against attacks by Sanders, who favors a government-run system.

In that dispute, Biden defined himself as what he calls an “Obama Democrat,” one who wants to preserve the former president’s signature healthcare achievement, rather than “start over with something new.”

“Biden’s theory of change is change as a restoration of stability,” said Scott Kozar, a Democratic strategist who was involved in the 2018 congressional elections.

‘PERFECT PLACEHOLDER’

Trump’s campaign advisers have long sought to paint the entire Democratic presidential field as “socialists.”

They believe they were aided in that effort in last month’s Democratic debate when several candidates on stage came out in favor of eliminating private health insurance, and a larger number supported providing healthcare for immigrants in the country illegally, and decriminalizing the unauthorized crossing of the U.S. border.

When Trump decided earlier this week to exploit the rift between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez’s group, his campaign saw a way to use his tweets in its narrative that the four had become the new standard-bearers for the party, said Ford O’Connell, a Republican who works with the campaign on strategy and messaging.

The squad “is the perfect placeholder until you have a nominee,â€� O’Connell said.

On Thursday, Trump’s campaign was more overt in its intention. “The Squad, as they call themselves, are now the leaders of the Democrat Party,� the campaign’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, said in a statement.

Kozar suggested Trump may end up going too far, giving someone like Biden an opportunity to “triangulate” the race by appealing to voters turned off both by Trump’s conduct and the progressive left.

In his MSNBC interview, Biden appeared to try to walk back some of the positions he took at the debate, particularly on immigration, saying he believed immigrants who are in the United States illegally merited healthcare services only in emergencies and that border crossing should not be completely decriminalized.

“What I’m saying is, you still should not be able to just cross the border,â€� Biden said. “You’ve got to get in line.â€�

Matt Bennett, executive vice president of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said there was a danger the party could play into Trump’s hands unless a moderate such as Biden pushes back at the president’s attempts to frame the election as a contest between himself and a dangerous leftist.

“It’s a lot easier to make that stick if you lean into it,� Bennett said.

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SRINAGAR —  Three men were arrested in connection with the alleged physical abuse of a girl in a houseboat on the Dal Lake in Hazratbal here, police said on Friday.

A complaint was registered, following which a raid was conducted on Thursday. Tawheed Ahmad Mir and Ehsan-ul-haq were arrested during the raid while the third accused, Bilal Ahmad Dar, had jumped into the lake to evade arrest, a police spokesperson said.

Dar was arrested on Friday by a special investigation team, he said.   

Sairagul Sauytbai, an ethnic Kazakh who fled China last year after working in a so-called re-education camp for ethnic minorities, speaks during an interview in Trelleborg, Sweden on July 3, 2019. (REUTERS File Photo)

TRELLEBORG, Sweden/ALMATY, July 19 (Reuters): Sairagul Sauytbai, an ethnic Kazakh who fled China last year after working in a so-called vocational training centre for ethnic minorities, wanted to tell others about the beatings and torture she said she had seen there.

But in neighbouring Kazakhstan, where she arrived to seek refuge, she was accused of crossing the border illegally, stripped naked, and told by state security agents to keep quiet about Beijing’s “de-radicalisation drive”, in which it has put hundreds of thousands of people in camps akin to prisons, Sauytbai and her lawyer told Reuters.

The plight of Sairagul and others who have fled China’s western Xinjiang region because of the camps highlights the difficulties they face in neighbouring countries that have close ties with Beijing, and explains why many remain silent about their experiences.

Human rights groups say China has detained up to a million people in camps set up throughout Xinjiang, a region where Muslim Uighurs are the biggest ethnic group and where ethnic tensions have in the past resulted in violence.

Former camp inmates have described them as prisons and told Reuters that people could be held there for months, being indoctrinated in Communist ideology. Beijing says the camps are “vocational training centres” designed to help prevent terrorism and extremism.

STRIPPED AND THREATENED

Sauytbai, 42, worked as a kindergarten principal in Xinjiang’s Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture when she was suddenly forcibly recruited in November 2017 to teach Chinese language and culture, as well as Communist Party doctrine, to inmates of a camp.

Sauytbai’s husband and two children had already moved to Kazakhstan, but her passport had been confiscated, preventing her joining them. When she got to the camp, she was appalled by the treatment of inmates, and saw beatings and torture.

“I know many of them,” she said. “There are people ranging from ordinary shepherds to writers and social activists. There are people who have committed no crime.”

Four months later, the authorities sent Sauytbai back home, where she was sacked from her kindergarten job. Fearing that she would soon be sent to a camp as an inmate, she sneaked into Kazakhstan illegally through Khorgos, a duty-free trade zone on the border.

Sauytbai was soon detained in Kazakhstan and tried, but a court ruled against sending her back to China and gave her a suspended sentence.

She then applied for asylum, but a state commission turned her down, saying it had not found sufficient evidence of persecution. Last month, she and her family left for Sweden, where she has applied for residence.

Speaking to Reuters in the Swedish town of Trelleborg, Sauytbai said Kazakh security agents had warned her against criticising China.

“After I came to Kazakhstan, having witnessed it all, I wanted to tell the whole world about it,” she said. “But the National Security Committee and my (former) lawyer Abzal Kuspan kept my mouth shut.”

Kuspan confirmed he had advised her not to talk about the Chinese camps to avoid jeopardising her court case and her asylum request: “Our first concern was making sure she was not handed over to China.”

He said he was aware that Sauytbai had come under pressure, especially immediately after her detention in Kazakhstan.

“She was kept in some building, she was stripped naked,” he said.

Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee did not reply to questions from Reuters about Sauytbai’s allegations. China’s foreign ministry said that “the facts of Sairagul Sauytbai’s credit fraud and illegal border crossing crimes are clear and they must be punished severely”.

Sauytbai’s family have told Kazakh media that they had an outstanding bank loan in China which they had planned to repay by selling their house – until she had to flee.

The Chinese ministry also said that the “training centres strictly comply with the constitutional and legal principles and requirements for respecting and protecting human rights, and fully ensure that trainees’ human dignity is not infringed upon”. The Xinjiang government did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

SENT BACK TO CHINA

Xinjiang ethnic Kyrgyz market trader Aishan Memetrasul, 55, says he thought he had reached safety when he managed to get out of a camp by asking to see a badly ill relative.

He crossed the border of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, another central Asian republic, and applied to be naturalised on the basis of his Kyrgyz ethnicity – which local law allows.

But the Kyrgyz authorities told him that he would need a document that he could only obtain in China. They sent him back, and he ended up back in the camp for another six weeks.

He got out of the camp a second time on the pretext of going to Kyrgyzstan to fetch his elderly mother. Now in Kyrgyzstan, he has sought the government’s help to obtain the release of his numerous relatives who still live in Xinjiang.

“The (Kyrgyz) government has not given us any answer,” Memetrasul told Reuters in an interview in Bishkek.

Asked for comment on the camps, a Kyrgyz foreign ministry spokesman said it was keeping an eye on the matter and would use diplomatic channels to discuss any issues with Beijing.

The post For some Chinese Muslims, fleeing doesn’t end trouble appeared first on The Morung Express.

Mumbai, July 19 (IANS) As the ugly spat between actress Kangana Ranaut and a section of media continues, Bollywood celebrities from Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra to Siddharth Malhotra and Adah Sharma said that the relationship between the two fraternity should be based on professionalism and mutual respect.

“The truth is we celebrities and the media share an important relationship. We really need you people because we can reach out to the common people through your medium, and vice-versa. So I hope that the problem that has happened will get resolved,” said superstar Akshay Kumar, who is gearing up for his upcoming ‘Mission Mangal’.

Sidharth Malhotra voiced a similar view at a media event: “I think the relationship between the media and celebrities is almost like an old married couple’s. They might have an argument here or a fight there, but at the end of the day we have a professional relationship. We have no intention to insult anyone when we invite the media to an event. We know that when you guys ask questions, you are doing your job.”

Siddharth, who has faced a lot of criticism over the years since he started his career in 2012 with “Student Of The Year”, added: “There are times when people have written me off, but that does not affect me. Whatever the media writes is their professional opinion. We, the new generation of celebrities, take our relation with media professionally because you guys are, in a way, our colleagues.”

Parineeti, who always maintained a good rapport with the media, highlighted how at times celebrity reputation gets affected.

“Since the time we get into the business, we develop a relationship with journalists. During film promotions, we spend a lot of time giving interviews and that way we share a friendly relationship. Friendship, however, should not be misunderstood because many times an actor is gets misquoted. I just hope a good relationship is maintained because many times the reputation of people gets affected. So, the media should be responsible about these matters,” added the actress who will soon to be seen opposite Sidharth in “Jabariya Jodi”.

Actress Adah Sharma said although she often gets trolled for her experimental looks, she has mostly elicited a positive response from the media.

“The relation between actors and the media is based on professionalism and mutual respect. When I am putting out my work in the public domain I should be prepared for positive as well as negative feedback. I do not take criticism personally. However, there is a distinction between criticism and bullying. The later is more of personal attack, which should never be encouraged,” Adah told IANS.

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