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Attack on police casts pall over Games
GEOFFREY YORK
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
BEIJING — Just four days ago, China was boasting of its ability to prevent attacks by the "disorderly band of rabble-rousers" in its restive Muslim region.
A senior Chinese official, Kurexi Maihesuti, sounded supremely confident as he dismissed the threat of attacks in the final days before the Beijing Olympics. The danger was "hyped up" by the media, and the potential attackers "didn't have any ability to launch large-scale destructive activities," he said.
But yesterday, in a brazen show of defiance, two attackers killed at least 16 Chinese policemen and injured 16 others in Kashgar, one of the biggest cities in the Muslim region of Xinjiang.
It was the deadliest attack on Chinese forces in a decade, and it cast a shadow over Beijing's assertions to have assured the security of the Olympics, which are due to begin on Friday.
China has mobilized 100,000 soldiers and police in an anti-terrorism force to protect the Olympics, and it has even stationed a battery of surface-to-air missiles near the Olympic venues in Beijing.
But yesterday's low-tech assault, relying on improvised and home-made weapons, suggested that China's missiles might be useless against the most likely form of attack.
The attack began at 8 a.m. as a team of more than 70 paramilitary border police were jogging in their regular morning exercise on a street near their headquarters in Kashgar.
According to the state-owned Xinhua news agency, one of the attackers was driving a dump truck.
He plowed the truck into the jogging soldiers from behind, while the other attacker threw a home-made explosive toward the gate of the police headquarters, Xinhua said.
When the truck crashed into an electricity pole, the driver abandoned the vehicle and began throwing explosives at the police. One of the explosives went off prematurely and blew up his arm, Xinhua said.
Both attackers were arrested, and police found 10 home-made explosives in the truck, along with a home-made gun and four knives, the agency said. The two attackers were identified as Uyghur men, 28 and 33 years old. The Uyghurs are the Muslim people of Turkic origin who were traditionally the largest group in Xinjiang.
Four of the 16 injured soldiers are still in intensive care, while the other 12 are out of danger, the news agency said.
It quoted a Chinese terrorism expert, Li Wei, as saying that the attack seems similar to previous terrorist plots by "Eastern Turkistan" separatists that were reportedly foiled by police. Eastern Turkistan is the name given to Xinjiang by militant Uyghurs who seek independence for their homeland.
A separate report, in a Hong Kong newspaper, said the two attackers were "shouting slogans" during the assault.
During the past two decades, many Uyghurs have rebelled against Chinese rule, seeking autonomy or independence for their region. China has cracked down hard, restricting religious activities in the region, putting mosques under heavy surveillance and arresting hundreds of people for agitating for greater autonomy. Since the crackdown, there's been a rise in extremist militancy among some Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
It has been difficult for outsiders to assess the terrorist threat to the Olympics because Beijing has often used the "terrorist" term to apply to any Uyghur or Tibetan who seeks cultural or religious autonomy for their regions.
China has also failed to provide much evidence of the
terrorism threat, and human-rights groups say that China has exaggerated the threat to justify repressive measures in Xinjiang.
There have been no confirmed attacks on Chinese civilians by Uyghur terrorists since a series of bus bombings in the 1990s, although China has reported several clashes between Chinese police and Uyghur militants in the past two years.
China's own officials have contradicted each other on the terrorism issue. Last week, a top Chinese security official said the "Eastern Turkistan terrorist organization" was the biggest threat to the security of the Olympics, with Tibetan radicals as the second biggest threat. "These forces are trying all means to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games," said the official, Senior Colonel Tian Yixiang.
But a much different tone was struck by Mr. Maihesuti, vice-chairman of the Chinese administration in Xinjiang. He said the government knew of only three or four terrorist groups in Xinjiang, and its success against their plots was proof of their ineffectiveness. "We have the ability to prevent such terrorist activities before they even start," he said.
It is unclear whether Uyghur radicals have the ability to strike targets outside Xinjiang. At least three buses were hit by explosions in other regions of China in recent months, but China later said the explosions were not connected to terrorism.
In March, Chinese authorities accused a 19-year-old Uyghur woman of trying to blow up a passenger plane by igniting gasoline that had been smuggled onto the plane.
Most of the violence linked to Uyghur militants in recent years has involved clashes between the militants and Chinese police. Last month, China said its police had killed five knife-wielding Uyghur militants who were planning a "holy war" against Han Chinese people.
Last year, China said its forces killed 18 suspected terrorists in a gun battle in Xinjiang. One policeman was reported killed and another wounded in a police raid on what China described as a "training camp" in the mountains of southern Xinjiang.
At a news conference yesterday, Beijing Olympic spokesman Sun Weide said the Chinese organizers are confident of a "worry-free" Olympics, despite the attack on the police in Kashgar.
"We have strengthened security in all Olympic venues and in the Olympic village," Mr. Sun told reporters.
"We are well-prepared to deal with any kinds of threats. . . . An effective command system has been established, and we have strengthened co-operation in security work, including information exchange and combat against terrorism, with other countries especially those which hosted the Games before."
I wonder how many will cheer on this kind of terror attack as long as it is against 'teh evil Chinese'.
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