China Crash Probe Looks to Restive West: After Deadly Incident in Heart of Beijing, Search for Suspects Turns to Home of Separatists in Remote Corner of Country
WSJ, 30 October 2013
An investigation around a fiery vehicle crash that killed five at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Monday turned the focus on the restive western region of Xinjiang, the home of a separatist movement that has sometimes used violence to protest Chinese rule. Chinese police are investigating whether people from the region were involved in the crash on Monday, and a government adviser on terrorism said it appeared to have been a suicide attack.
Staff at two hotels in Beijing said police sent them a notice Tuesday seeking information about nine men from Xinjiang described as suspects in Monday’s “special case.” The notice also asked about five vehicles with Xinjiang license plates. A spokesman for the Xinjiang government said that police in the region were also investigating the incident, although he declined to give further details.
Xinjiang, a region of deserts and oil and gas fields that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries, is home to the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, members of which have been engaged in a sporadic, sometimes violent campaign against Chinese rule for several decades, though attacks have usually been local.
In the notices given to hotels, eight of the nine men identified in the police notice appear to have Uighur names.
Li Wei, one of China’s top experts and government advisers on terrorism, said Monday’s incident, in which a car burst into flames after plowing through a crowd, appeared to have been a suicide attack, and, given apparent advanced planning, the work of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the main Uighur separatist group.
“They used to only hit targets in Xinjiang, but now, like other international terrorist groups, they’re aiming for a target in a capital city,” said Mr. Li, head of the security and arms control unit of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
Beijing police declined to comment on the investigation. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman also declined to comment on the specific incident, but said overall Xinjiang has experienced steady economic development over the past decade despite some attacks.
“We admit that there are some violent and terrorist cases in Xinjiang. 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,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily media briefing.
In the incident, a sport-utility vehicle drove for several hundred yards along a sidewalk, knocking down several pedestrians, before hitting a guardrail and bursting into flames in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City at the north end of Tiananmen Square, witnesses and state media said.
If confirmed to have been an attack by Uighur separatists, it would be the movement’s most audacious strike yet, hitting the political heart of China’s capital. It would likely trigger preventive measures around potential targets across the country.
Security in parts of Xinjiang appeared tight. At one checkpoint on the road into Urumqi, the regional capital, cars were backed up for at least a mile as police checked drivers’ documents and searched vehicles. But in the city of Turpan, near where recent violence in the region has occurred, all appeared quiet Tuesday night. Some residents said they were unaware of the Tiananmen incident, or its potential link to Xinjiang, and said they hadn’t noticed a greater police presence in the area during the preceding day.
Beijing’s normally high security was already ratcheting higher ahead of an important Communist Party meeting next month, even before Monday’s incident.
Mr. Li said it appeared explosives hadn’t been used in the Beijing incident, which he said had limited the number of casualties and suggested limits on the group’s abilities. “Just because they reached Tiananmen Square, we shouldn’t overstate their capabilities,” he said.
Chinese authorities have previously accused Uighur separatists of carrying out knife attacks, small bombings and other operations targeting the government or members of China’s ethnic Han majority, mostly inside Xinjiang. In 2009, riots between Uighurs and Han left nearly 200 people dead.
The Chinese government has outlawed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization, saying it has links to al Qaeda. Beijing has also lobbied successfully to have the group declared a terrorist organization by the United Nations and the U.S.
But Uighur activists living abroad, and mMany Uighurs in China, say the tensions are caused by a massive influx of ethnic Han Chinese to Xinjiang and a heavy security presence in recent years. Both groups also say government policies, some of which favor Uighurs and others which provide incentives to Han Chinese, have exacerbated tensions.
Three of those killed died in the vehicle while the two others killed were a female tourist from the Philippines and a male Chinese tourist, according to the official Xinhua news agency. An additional 38 people were injured, including three Philippine tourists and one Japanese tourist, Xinhua said.
Xinhua described the vehicle as a Jeep. Photos posted online showed a sport-utility vehicle, but its make wasn’t clear. The police notices sent to hotels in Beijing also asked for information about a gray Ford Mondeo, a red Haojue motorcycle and three other suspicious vehicles, each bearing Xinjiang license plates.
The nine suspects named in the notices, which gave their registered home addresses, hailed from different parts of Xinjiang, some of which—Pishan and Shanshan counties—have reported clashes between police and Uighurs in the past two years. An earlier police notice, sent late Monday, identified two of those men as suspects, hotel staff said.
Media coverage of the incident continued to be tightly controlled. While word spread rapidly through Chinese social media, authorities energetically limited discussion online, with many users’ photos and comments being quickly deleted. There was no mention of the incident on state broadcaster CCTV’s major broadcasts on Tuesday.
Several pictures of the incident could still be found online on Tuesday, including one showing the vehicle engulfed in flames underneath the well-known portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong that overlooks Tiananmen Square.
The area is especially politically sensitive given it was the site of the 1989 student-led democracy uprising, which was eventually crushed by China’s military. Nearby is Zhongnanhai, a former park for the emperors that is now a residential compound for China’s leadership.
—Olivia Geng, Yang Jie and Kersten Zhang contributed to this article.
Write to Jeremy Page at [email protected] and Brian Spegele at [email protected]