Media furore over Kadeer's tour

The visit of exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer to Japan has provoked a storm of criticism in China's press, with commentators warning that it will be seen as a hostile act towards Beijing.

China accuses Mrs Kadeer, the leader of the US-based Uighur World Congress, of inciting violent clashes in China's Xinjiang province between the Muslim Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese in early July.

There is also anger in the mainland Chinese press about the decision by an Australian film festival to invite Mrs Kadeer to appear at the event.

Beyond China, meanwhile, Beijing's attempt to use its diplomatic muscle to prevent countries from hosting the Uighur dissident has earned it accusations of "bullying" and "thuggishness".

'Extremely unfriendly'

Writing in China's official English-language China Daily, commentator Jin Canrong says that Japan's decision to grant Kadeer a visa represents an "extremely unfriendly" move.

In a dig at the political troubles of embattled Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, an editorial in Beijing-based Huanqiu Shibao says the invitation is "obviously not unrelated to the current political chaos in Japan", and concluded that "1.3 billion Chinese can only have contempt towards [the people of Japan]".

The Japanese authorities are using Kadeer to "vilify" China in order to maintain Japan's pre-eminent status in Asia, says a special report in Hong Kong-based news agency Zhongguo Tongxun She.

An editorial in the Beijing-backed Hong Kong daily Wen Wei Po says this "seriously unfriendly act" has exposed Japan's double standards towards "violent terrorist forces".

An unattributed commentary in Hong Kong's Oriental Daily News accuses the Japanese government of "taking advantage" of China's ethnic problems to undermine the country's stability.

"Malicious provocation"

An editorial in mainland China's Huanqiu Shibao focuses its anger on Australia's invitation to Kadeer to attend a screening in Melbourne of a documentary about her life, "10 Conditions of Love", condemning it as a "malicious provocation".

Two Chinese film directors, Jia Zhangke and Zhao Liang, withdrew their films from the festival in protest. Writing in Guangzhou's Nanfang Ribao, Bi Wenzhang is moved to "heartily admire and applaud this ... act of patriotism".

Chen Shan, of the Beijing Film Academy, also praises the directors' "patriotic protest" in the English-language China Daily.

Lan Xi, writing in Huanqiu, suggests that the Australian government should not do "foolish things that harm the overall situation of Sino-Australian relations".

'PR disaster'

Elsewhere, China's tough approach to Mrs Kadeer's visits to Japan and Australia is perceived as heavy-handed.

Chinese authorities have "learned nothing" from their experience of dealing with the Dalai Lama, says the editorial in Taiwan's Taipei Times.

The campaign against Kadeer is a comparable "public relations disaster", serving only to underscore China's "thuggishness" and alienate it further from the human rights agendas of Western countries, the daily says.

China has "miscalculated the extent of its reach" by seeking to have the documentary on Kadeer pulled from the festival's programme, Christopher Scanlon in Australia's Melbourne-based daily The Age says.

Its efforts have succeeded only in providing the film with "an avalanche of publicity", he adds.

In the same newspaper, Bruce Jacobs contends that the Chinese government was behind the two Chinese filmmakers' withdrawal from the festival.

He says that the move represents part of a concerted "bullying" campaign by Beijing, arguing the objections of the Chinese authorities "need to be faced down" because "you don't give in to bullies".

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