The first International Indology Graduate Research Symposium (IIGRS) will be held at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University, 28th – 29th September 2009.
Please find the programme and contact me directly at nina.mirnig_at_univ.ox.ac.uk should you be interested in attending.
Nina Mirnig, on behalf of the Organizing Committee (University of Oxford)
G8/G7 summits held in Italy are prone to accidents despite the relatively low interest of international society: Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira died shortly before the 1980 Venice Summit, prompting Japan to send an acting prime minister, and the 1994 Naples Summit was held just after the death of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. This year's summit in L'Aquila in central Italy was also plagued by an accident - riots in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
Chinese President Hu Jintao hurried home, resulting in the absence of the central player in the summit's limelight. In other words, a primary theme of the G8 summit - whether China is really trustworthy - was revealed. However, the Uighur issue was totally skipped, not even mentioned in the Declaration. This is in stark contrast to the 1989 Paris Summit, which issued a political declaration after harshly condemning China for the killings of pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square. Even the torch relay before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing drew harsh international criticism due to China's handling of the unrest in Tibet.