China: Suspected Islamists Attack Tourists In Tiananmen Square With Suicide Car Bomb

For peaceful purposes …

By Wang Zhicheng, AsiaNews – “Beijing police suspect that yesterday’s incident – where a car drove into some tourists in Tiananmen Square , and then exploded , killing all passengers – was carried out by Uyghurs suicide terrorists. The incident occurred almost under the large portrait of Mao Zedong that dominates the front of the Imperial Palace , a few dozen meters from Zhongnanhai, home to many leaders.

The incident took place yesterday at noon and in addition to the three people in the car (an SUV ) , killed a further two people, a Chinese man and a Filipino national, leaving 38 injured. Police and firefighters have cordoned off the area from public view.

Today, the English edition of the Global Times, part of the People’s Daily , said that the police have linked the incident with the Xinjiang and some Uyghur suspects . But the Chinese edition does not mention anything about Xinjiang .

Yesterday, all day censors removed any news or comments about the incident from the web, allowing only the official version of Xinhua.

Last night and today the police launched a manhunt to gather information on two Uyghur men and four cars with the Xinjiang license plate. Ilham Tohti , a Uyghur intellectual , writing on the website Uighurbiz.net , pleaded for caution because it is easy to blame the Uyghurs and increase control over the ethnic minority.

The western region of Xinjiang has been shaken by Islamic Uyghur nationalist movements for decades. For the most part they seek greater autonomy from the cultural and commercial dictatorship of the central government that has colonized the region with millions of Han immigrants and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

The settlement also involves religion: Islam is strongly controlled in Uyghur schools, mosques, and society.” Read more.

Flashback: China: At Least 21 Dead After Suspected Islamists Go On Killing Spree In Xinjiang – “A confrontation involving axes, knives, at least one gun and ending with the burning down of a house left 21 people dead in China’s troubled far-west region of Xinjiang, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday, calling it a ‘terrorist attack’. It was the deadliest violence in the region since July 2009, when Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, was rocked by clashes between majority Han Chinese and minority Uighurs that killed nearly 200 people.” Read more.

Flashback: China: Rioters Shout ‘Allah Is The Only God’ While Hacking People To Death – “Police shot down 14 rioters who attacked a police station in Hotan city of Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Monday, a Communist Party official in Hotan said Wednesday. The official, who declined to be named, said the attack left four people dead, including an armed police officer, a security guard, a woman and a teenage girl. At least three others were injured… Shouting frantic religious slogans like ‘Allah the only God’, the rioters ran to the top floor and police opened fire to stop them, said an anonymous policeman with the police station.” Read more.