China Reacts to Attack in Kashgar.

China Confidential

Foreign Reporting and Analysis Since April 2005

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

 

China Reacts to Attack in Kashgar

AP reports from China's mainly Muslim restive region:

Blood was washed off the road. Debris was cleared away. And authorities said peace had been restored Tuesday in China's restive Muslim region where 16 police were killed in an attack that may have been timed to overshadow Olympic celebrations.

But there were plenty of other signs suggesting all was not well in Kashgar, this ancient Silk Road city near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan at the opposite end of China from Beijing.

Townspeople were reluctant to talk about Monday's brazen assault. Police stepped up security checks and put schools, hospitals and government offices on heightened alert, state-run media and locals said. Slogans on billboards, walls and buildings urged people to create a more secure and harmonious society.

The precautions underscored the Chinese government's sensitivity to anything that could sour its plans for the Beijing Games to be a pivotal moment of national glory and global acceptance, despite continuing criticism of its record on human rights.

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The Financial Times adds:

The incident is a huge embarrassment to the Chinese authorities before the Beijing Olympics, which start on Friday and which were supposed to present an image of national harmony, although the attack has helped justify the heavy and controversial security measures implemented for the Games.

The two men who conducted the attack were identified as a vegetable peddler and a taxi driver, both -Muslim Uighurs from Kashgar, the former Silk Road city known in Chinese as Kashi.

The head of the Communist party in Kashgar said the attack bore the fingerprints of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an organisation which has been labelled a terrorist group by both the US state department and the United Nations.

"Religion is more important to them than their own life, and so they set out to perform jihad," said the official, Shi Dagang, in Kashgar.

Mr Shi said 18 suspected terrorists arrested this year had received training outside China but he gave no details of their nationality or the timing of their arrests.

However, at a separate press conference in the provincial capital of Urumqi, the head of the Xinjiang public security department played down the evidence of links to terrorist groups. "No sufficient evidence has been found to say for sure the ETIM was behind Monday's deadly attack," said Liu Yaohua, according to Xinhua news agency.

Du Jiang, deputy director of China's National Tourism Administration, told China Daily Xinjiang is still safe for tourists as security has been tightened in the region.

# posted by Confidential Reporter @ 3:48 AM