Wednesday, October 30, 2013
China Terror
Wednesday, October 30, 2013 by DXTR corporation
Five arrested in Tiananmen Square incident, deemed a terrorist attack
By Steven Jiang and Katie Hunt, CNN
October 30, 2013 -- Updated 1233 GMT (2033 HKT)
Police seek answers in Tiananmen crash
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Five people detained in connection with deadly crash, police say
- China censors images of jeep that plowed into Tiananmen Square, killing 5
- Uyghur diaspora group says it's too early to assign blame
The attack -- in which
five people died and dozens were hurt -- was "carefully planned,
organized and premeditated," police said on their official Weibo account
online.
Working with police in
northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Beijing police
captured the suspects, a spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Public
Security Bureau said.
The spokesman, who was
not named, said Usmen Hasan; his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim; and his wife,
Gulkiz Gini, drove a jeep bearing a Xinjiang license plate into a crowd
in the famed square at noon on Monday, killing two people and injuring
another 40.
Authorities had earlier put the number of injured at 38.
The jeep then crashed
into a guardrail of Jinshui Bridge across the moat of the Forbidden
City. All three of the jeep's occupants died when they set gasoline
afire, the spokesman said. The other two fatalities were tourists; a
woman from the Philippines and a Chinese man.
Police found gasoline,
two knives and steel sticks "as well as a flag with extremist religious
content" in the jeep, the police posting said.
In addition, authorities found knives and a "jihad" flag in the temporary residence of the five detained suspects, it added.
Tensions between Han Chinese and the largely Muslim Uyghurs have sometimes turned violent.
A spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, a diaspora group, said Wednesday it was not clear that Uyghurs played any role.
"Every time something
like this happens, authorities usually point fingers at Uyghurs," Alim
Seytoff said. "The notice should not be taken as the evidence of Uyghur
involvement in the incident."
Willy Lam, an adjunct
professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Center for China
Studies, said the incident would be considered a loss of face for
Beijing's leaders, especially if it turns out to be related to Uyghur
separatism.
"It was close to the
Zhongnanhai party headquarters and, in terms of timing, it's on the eve
of the plenary session of the Chinese Communist Party, so they don't
want these rumors and speculation," he said.
Earlier this month, Chinese police said they had arrested 139 people in Xinjiang for spreading religious extremism online. The arrests came in the wake of riots that left 35 people dead.
Chinese media outlets
that reported Monday's incident stuck to the bare-bones details
published by China's state run Xinhua news agency.
China's state
broadcaster, CCTV, showed no footage of the incident. Images posted
immediately after the incident on Weibo, China's version of Twitter,
which showed black smoke and a vehicle engulfed in flames, were largely
deleted. Searches combining the words Tiananmen, terrorism and car crash
were also blocked.
CNN broadcasts about the incident were blacked out inside China.
Lam said Chinese media outlets had likely received an official order to stick to Xinhua's version of events.
On Tuesday, the square was back to normal.
Source:CNN news International
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