China captures 'terrorist attack' suspects
Date October 30, 2013 - 10:22PM
Philip Wen
China correspondent for Fairfax Media
People watch from nearby Chang'an Avenue as smoke rises in front of the Tiananmen Gate on Monday. Photo: Reuters
The fiery car blaze at Tiananmen Square that killed five and injured dozens was a carefully planned “terrorist attack”, Chinese police said on Wednesday after making five arrests in connection with the case.
On Monday, a white four-wheel-drive veered off the road and onto a footpath, ploughing into crowds before bursting into flames in front of the main gate overlooking Tiananmen Square where the iconic portrait of Mao Zedong hangs.
Police said the driver and two passengers had set alight petrol in the car, killing all three on the spot.
Two pedestrians, a Filipino woman and a Chinese man, died from their injuries, and at least 40 have been reported injured.
Official news agency Xinhua said police found petrol and petrol containers, two machetes and metal rods in the burnt out car. It also said a banner with an “extremist religious” message was found on top of the car.
It said the car, a white jeep, was registered with a number plate from China's far-western Xinjiang province, a region plagued with recent religious and ethnic violence involving Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority. The three dead all had Uighur names, as did the five suspects who were arrested.
Police said a “jihad” flag and knives were found on the five suspects.
Beijing has blamed Uighur groups for what it calls "terrorist" attacks in Xinjiang, but details of alleged incidents are hard to confirm, and exile groups accuse China of exaggerating the threat to justify religious and cultural restrictions.
Chinese media reports had made no mention of nature of the investigation, with most focusing on the condition of the injured. Of the 40 injured, 12 remained in intensive care.
If confirmed to have been a deliberate attack by Uighur separatists, it would be the movement’s most audacious protest strike yet, hitting at the political heart of Beijing. While there were no questions about their safety, President Xi Jinping and other senior government leaders were meeting at the Great Hall of the People just across the road.
Beijing has tightened security around other potential targets around the capital, and the main thoroughfare leading to Tiananmen Square remains swarming with armed police and armoured vans.
“We admit that there are some violent and terrorist cases in Xinjiang," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing. “We believe that any government would crack down on such incidents to ensure the safety and security of society and the property and lives of people.”
Ilham Tohti, an ethnic Uighur academic and critic of Chinese policy in Xinjiang, said Uighurs had been driven to take extreme measures by China's repression.
"The use of violent means happens because all other outlets for expression are gone. Uighurs do not have any representation, they have no means of self-expression," he told Reuters.
The Munich-based World Uighur Congress called for caution around the incident and said the Chinese government’s online censorship of the incident meant the public would “never hear a free and fair account of events”.
with agencies
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