You're not Their Citizen

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MacKay slams China's treatment of Huseyin Celil


The Chinese have called the case an "internal affair" and have requested that Canada not interfere with the case. Beijing has refused to recognize Celil's Canadian citizenship.



This is actually an interesting question. Does a foriegn nation have the right to decide who is , and is not a member , of some other nation ? Do they have the right , for example, to decide "You're not a canadian. I don't care what the candian government says. " ?

The reverse question is equally interesting. Does Canada have the right to say "You're now a Canadian Citizen." to a chinese person , even though the Chinese government is saying "No he's not ! He's our citizen not your's !". It should be mentioned that there is the slight mitigating factor that the chinse person must make it to canada and then jump through a number of difficult rings before actually being declared a canadian , Canada does't just pick some random chinese in the middle of china and say "guess what ! You're a canadian citizen !"

The answer , in this case is "BLAHHHHH....".
The right to make your own way in life and decide your own citizen ship is part of most western nations creed, but not part of the chinese creed. And guess what ? There's no ultimate force standing over both the west and china to make final arbritation on the issue , the two sides have to come to some kind of agreement.

And they havn't.

Will they get away with ignoring Huseyin's Canadian Citizenship ?

Unqualified yes.

China is bigger than Canada, and the victem is a muslim, and it just hit the news that some muslims in Turkey killed some helpless innocent Christian's for the horrible crime of working at a bible house, to "protect their faith" ....

The world has little pity for muslims when things like this happen. Our canadian foriegn minister will make the usual noises of outrage, the Chinese will ignore them, and the issue will die.

Is this fair ?

No , the guy was visiting his family in Uzbekistan, which has an extradition treaty with China , and got picked up. His only crime to which anyone will blame him is belonging to some particular religion (muslim). He's not actually accused of doing anything but being a member.

But then , it's not particularily fair to be working at a Bible Publishing House in turkey , and five muslims come in and slit everyone's throat , even stabbing one guy so many times the coriner couldn't count how many stab wounds there were. And when they were caught they claimed they were "defending the muslim faith" from outsiders.

I can just picture both spirits of the victems rising up on the way to their respective heavens , and stopping to talk . "What are you going for ?"
"Oh , the chinese put me in prison for being a muslim , and you ?"
"Oh , a muslim decided he didn't like christians and stabbed me a hundred times."
"Nice."
"But I forgive him ! And pray he doesn't go to hell."
"I just wanted to visit family. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone."

Is this right or wrong ?

Now that , is another question in entirely. What is right and what is wrong , the answers come out different depending on weather you've lived all your life in china , or in the west. And as I said, there is no final arberter on the matter, just a bunch of squabbling politicians from each side giving each other the finger.

Post Script :
China believes it has the final moral right to decide what, ultimately , is right and wrong. And naturally enough beleives it's cause is just and right and the west are corrupt evil capitalists totally out to lunch and it's obvious to everyone in the world they should be ignored.
The west believes china is a bunch of communistic human rights violators who enjoy torturning people , stifling free speach , and generally telling people how to live their lives and shooting them if they don't agree, a practice politely known in the west as "slave keeping". Obviously a slave keeper has no moral ethics at all and their opinion on any such issues is null and void.

*sigh*