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Month: March 2008

Did Wang Lequan Really Say There Was A Plan To Attack The Olympics?

Posted on March 12, 2008 by davesgonechina


Right on the heels of banning liquids in government officials, the Civil Aviation Administration of China has banned liquids on planes as of Tuesday, March 11, with the exception of baby formula and prescription medication. Details sketchy at the moment, though AVBuyer.com*, the website behind this weeks China Southern’s Xinjiang CYA press release blitz, says that there are plans to install liquid scanning machines in all major airports, most likely the already approved Nuctech‘s THSCAN LS 8016 X-Ray Liquid Security Scanner.
Meanwhile, news on the alleged airline terror plot continues apace, the major new bits being more information from two people who claimed to be passengers, lots of confusion, and snazzy graphics recreating the scene. The best has to be this one depicting the 18/19 year old suspect being apprehended while wearing a traditional Uyghur dancing costume. Subtle, guys.

But more concerning is that alot of facts seem to be getting confused, or at least confusing. From the beginning, many English news outlets have been reporting that Wang Lequan said on Sunday that the “terrorist” group captured in January aimed “specifically to sabotage the staging of the Beijing Olympics”. The source of this appears to be Xinhua’s English website which reported that Wang Lequan said “Obviously, the gang had planned an attack targeting the Olympics,” a report that the Telegraph’s Richard Spencer said had been removed but appears to still be online in at least one place. Xinhua also quoted Wang saying “The Olympic Games slated for this August is a big event, but there are always a few people who conspire sabotages. It is no longer a secret now,” and “Those terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists are to be battered resolutely, no matter what ethnic group they are from.” But is this what Wang actually said in Chinese?

According to this transcript of the press conference on the China Radio website, no. Here’s what Wang Lequan said in response to a Reuters reporters** question. Translation criticism and tips always welcome.


路透社记者:我们知道新疆有一部分人想对奥运会发动袭击,为什么会有这样的想法,这与中国在新疆的政策有关吗?

Reuters reporter: We know Xinjiang has some separatists who plan to attack the Olympics, why do they want to and is it related China’s policy in Xinjiang?
  
王乐泉:总有那么少数人在很多问题上对新疆始终抱有敌意。本来在北京举办奥运会是件大好事,但有人就是要千方百计地进行破坏,在奥运会举办之前就千方百计 地进行干扰。这已经不是什么秘密,他们已经在国际上到处做宣传。但事实上,他们这一举动遭到全世界爱好和平的人民的坚决反对,包括各国政府都已明确表态。 把体育比赛政治化,这是大家坚决反对的,是不得人心的。

Since the beginning in Xinjiang there’s been a small minority that has been hostile. Of course the Olympics is a big deal, but some people have tried to ruin it by any means necessary in the run-up to these Olympics. This is no secret, they’ve publicized it internationally. But the fact is, by this very act they meet with the opposition of peace loving people all over the world. The governments of every nation of the world have already made this crystal clear, when it comes to politics in sports, everyone is opposed, its unpopular.
  

新疆有有“东突”、“三股势力”,即“宗教极端势力、民族分裂势力和暴力恐怖势力”,在国内只有极少数人,主要是在境外。他们有一个代表人物热比娅,在境 外到处鼓噪、煽动,就是要我们办不成奥运会。但这只能是幻想,他们没有多少力量,只能到处胡说八道。这件事境内有少数人响应,确实有这个情况。

Xinjiang has “East Turkestan”, “Three Evil Forces”, namely “religious extremist forces, minority splittist forces and violent terror forces,” domestically they are a tiny minority, primarily they are outside our borders. They have one representative, Rebiya [Kadeer], who goes around the world clamoring, instigating, she doesn’t want us to successfully host the Olympics. But this is only a fantasy, they have no significant power, they can only go around talking nonsense. Within our borders there’s only a few of these people, that’s really the situation.

  

前不久,新疆安全部门刚刚打掉了一个团伙。他们制造炸药、手雷,就是要搞破坏,在准备过程中被我们发现了。抓捕时,他们
向我们的干警让了三枚手雷,七名干警受了轻伤。

Not long ago, the Xinjiang PSB recently cracked down on a cell. They were making explosives, grenades, wanted to cause destruction, in the course of their preparations we discovered them. When we launched a raid, they attacked us with three grenades, and seven officers suffered minor injuries.

  

对奥运会有少数人在那里干扰,第一,我们不希望有这样的现象,第二,我们不怕有这样的情况。我们的原则是加大各方面的工作,把那些想搞破坏的人,在预谋阶段就毫不含糊把他打掉!

There is a small minority determined to interfere with the Olympics. First, we wish this wasn’t the case, [but] second, we don’t fear facing the same circumstances again. Our principle is to increase our work across the board, these people who want to cause destruction, we will resolutely crack down on them during their planning stages!

It doesn’t appear that Wang Lequan said “Obviously, the gang had planned an attack targeting the Olympics,” or anything else directly linking the captured group to a planned attack on the Olympics, at least not at the press conference. There may have been off the cuff remarks made elsewhere, but there is no evidence of this. If this is the case, then Richard Spencer’s comments about China retreating from its claims of an Olympic terror threat have two problems: one, not all the English reports on Wang’s comments were pulled off the ‘net; second, Wang never said it. And not just Mr. Spencer, but the many repetitions of these quotes floating around the web [without clear attribution either, I might add].

Xinhua is giving less coverage (and certainly not continuing wall-to-wall) of the terror stories, but I don’t think this is because the government is “retreating from its claims.” As official state media, they are no doubt under very specific orders about what the narrative for the National Peoples Congress is to be. That means that the words of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao cannot be eclipsed, not by any sexy stuff like terrorism, unless Hu and Wen say it. There are grand five year plans and slogans that have to be at the top of the page, terror plots be damned. Meanwhile, alot of information is coming from Hong Kong (Phoenix TV, Sing Tao Daily, Wei Wen Po, Da Kong Bao). Hong Kong doesn’t have the heavy hand of Mainland censorship, and has a media market more directed to selling papers (read: sex and violence). Foreign media, likewise, sees a hot story in tales of terrorism and the Olympics (hence mentioning the Xi’an bus kidnapping in the same breath as Xinjiang terrorists, though we know the would be bus bomber was a Han man named Xia Tao from the Xi’an Youliang district work unit who apparently had a grudge with local police), and so they are interested in continuing to follow the story as well. It’s not so much that Xinhua is signaling that the government cannot or will not back up their claims, but that they want attention focused elsewhere.

Spencer does raise a good point, however, wondering what the Chinese government is trying to say to the world. Xinhua did, after all, quote Wang Lequan saying that the group was targeting the Olympics, though his point may have been that they are cut from the same cloth as those who would like to see the Beijing Olympics ruined. From my perspective, its important to remember that Wang Lequan is not a typical provincial leader. Xinjiang and Tibet are special cases in the Chinese government. Wang Lequan is head of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps as well as provincial party chief and a member of the Politburo, giving him a unique position. He is the replacement for Wang Enmao, who controlled Xinjiang for nearly thirty years [except when he fell from favor during the Cultural Revolution]. In many ways he is more of a strongman than his peers, and security and “ethnic unity” in Xinjiang have been the obsessive focus of the government for years. While he may not have made a direct link between this attack and the Olympics, he certainly hasn’t been afraid to mention the Olympics as context, and he’s made more than one disparaging remark about Rebiya Kadeer, which has roughly the same effect internationally as his closest peer, Tibet Party Secretary Zhang Qingli’s rough comments about another figure associated with the Nobel Prize, the Dalai Lama. It seems that this sort of less-than-diplomatic talk comes with the job, especially for a domestic audience, and foreign audiences are not the concern of these officials. Add Time Magazine’s quote of Russell Leigh Moses of the China Center in Beijing that “this is exactly the kind of thing that happens around the time of the National People’s Congress… cadres who don’t necessarily get noticed a lot normally want to be seen as publicly carrying out the orders of the central government” and I think you get a pretty good picture of what’s going on.

Also reported recently: China Southern CEO Liu Shaoyong told Phoenix TV that this hijacking was different from others as it was “politically motivated”. I think he needs to read my previous post, An Incomplete History of Chinese Plane Hijackings. Guangzhou Daily also tried to interview Urumqi airport security personnel, but didn’t get very far. And Richard Spencer, who is making a great effort to figure this whole thing out, has also discovered that Sing Tao Daily in Hong Kong is reporting that the Uyghur girl on the plane was sent abroad for “training” when she was six. Just remember, Sing Tao is a pro-PRC paper that first reported rumors of the raid in Urumqi that Wang Lequan was discussing, but managed to get some of the facts wrong.

———————————————————–
* An interesting aside: AVBuyer has apparently plagiarized ESWN’s translation of Southern Weekend’s Searching for Eyewitnesses for CZ6901 Incident, and not credited the original author Ding Bu either.

** It is not clear who the Reuters reporter was, or if the original question was in English. If it was, this question may not be clearly translated. It sounds like its been harmonized a little.

China Southern Airlines Launches Full Court Press Releases

Posted on March 10, 2008May 24, 2020 by davesgonechina
Did One of These Attendants Tackle a “Terrorist”?

Apparently China Southern Airlines Xinjiang Branch is trying to counter bad publicity due to the alleged terror attack that diverted an Urumqi to Beijing flight last Friday by drowning Baidu News in a sea of press releases, all released this afternoon.

Not Terrorists!

Most of them were released on the website avbuyer.com.cn, which is brought to you by the same people who publish the official magazine of the General Administration of Civil Aviation in China (CAAC). Subject matter included: new lounges and VIP services at Urumqi airport, the warming and soothing service provided to delayed Spring Festival travelers (because of the blizzards in Eastern China), saluting Chinese peacekeepers returning home with traditional Uyghur dances, the cleaning and maintenenace of aircraft serving the Xinjiang region, improving ground staff training for the Xinjiang branch, paying attention customer service in Xinjiang, the recollections of a China Southern Xinjiang Branch flight attendant who offhandedly remarks she considered joining the military, and a declaration by the 2008 class of flight attendants for the XJ Branch in which they state that as the “flowers of the Motherland”, they are “customer service and safety defenders”.

Attendants with Peacekeeper Characteristics?

Meanwhile, there are rumors that one the alleged terrorists was a 18-19 year old Uyghur girl who had gone into the toilet with a bottle or bottles of gasoline. Its hard to say if any further details will ever be revealed.

China Southern Airlines Launches Full Court Press Releases

Posted on March 10, 2008 by davesgonechina
Did One of These Attendants Tackle a “Terrorist”?

Apparently China Southern Airlines Xinjiang Branch is trying to counter bad publicity due to the alleged terror attack that diverted an Urumqi to Beijing flight last Friday by drowning Baidu News in a sea of press releases, all released this afternoon.

Not Terrorists!

Most of them were released on the website avbuyer.com.cn, which is brought to you by the same people who publish the official magazine of the General Administration of Civil Aviation in China (CAAC). Subject matter included: new lounges and VIP services at Urumqi airport, the warming and soothing service provided to delayed Spring Festival travelers (because of the blizzards in Eastern China), saluting Chinese peacekeepers returning home with traditional Uyghur dances, the cleaning and maintenenace of aircraft serving the Xinjiang region, improving ground staff training for the Xinjiang branch, paying attention customer service in Xinjiang, the recollections of a China Southern Xinjiang Branch flight attendant who offhandedly remarks she considered joining the military, and a declaration by the 2008 class of flight attendants for the XJ Branch in which they state that as the “flowers of the Motherland”, they are “customer service and safety defenders”.

Attendants with Peacekeeper Characteristics?

Meanwhile, there are rumors that one the alleged terrorists was a 18-19 year old Uyghur girl who had gone into the toilet with a bottle or bottles of gasoline. Its hard to say if any further details will ever be revealed.

China’s War on The Unexpected?

Posted on March 9, 2008May 24, 2020 by davesgonechina
Xinjiang Acting Chairman Nur Bekri during a CCTV interview this weekend

A day after leading the National Peoples Congress in pledging to strike harder against “the three evil forces of terrorists, separatists and extremists”, recently appointed Xinjiang Acting Chairman Nur Bekri said today that an “air disaster” was foiled on board a flight en route to Beijing from Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi. China Southern flight flight CZ6901 left Urumqi at 10:35, and was forced to land at Lanzhou, capital of neighboring Gansu Province, at 12:40 Friday, according to China Daily.

Nur Bekri was quoted in China Daily and Reuters as saying “”Who the people involved in the incident were, where they were from, what their aim was and what their background was, we are now investigating,” “Fortunately our air crew took resolute measures, discovered and put a stop to this action promptly. All the passengers, crew and the aircraft are safe,” and that it was “up to the police department to verify” whether it was a terrorist plot, “but we can be sure that this was a case intending to create an air crash.” An anonymous source also told Reuters that two passengers were arrested and an “inflammable material” was found in the toilet.

But what if this was a false alarm? Would the Chinese government admit so, or would they stick to their guns about it being an “attack”? Security expert and internet celebrity Bruce Scheneier has written repeatedly on his blog and for Wired Magazine about what he calls “The War on The Unexpected”, pointing out how US War on Terror policies often makes terrorist threats out of molehills, and authorities have difficulty walking them back:

Watch how it happens. Someone sees something, so he says something. The person he says it to — a policeman, a security guard, a flight attendant — now faces a choice: ignore or escalate. Even though he may believe that it’s a false alarm, it’s not in his best interests to dismiss the threat. If he’s wrong, it’ll cost him his career. But if he escalates, he’ll be praised for “doing his job” and the cost will be borne by others. So he escalates. And the person he escalates to also escalates, in a series of CYA decisions. And before we’re done, innocent people have been arrested, airports have been evacuated, and hundreds of police hours have been wasted.

This story has been repeated endlessly, both in the U.S. and in other countries. Someone — these are all real — notices a funny smell, or some white powder, or two people passing an envelope, or a dark-skinned man leaving boxes at the curb, or a cell phone in an airplane seat; the police cordon off the area, make arrests, and/or evacuate airplanes; and in the end the cause of the alarm is revealed as a pot of Thai chili sauce, or flour, or a utility bill, or an English professor recycling, or a cell phone in an airplane seat.

Of course, by then it’s too late for the authorities to admit that they made a mistake and overreacted, that a sane voice of reason at some level should have prevailed. What follows is the parade of police and elected officials praising each other for doing a great job, and prosecuting the poor victim — the person who was different in the first place — for having the temerity to try to trick them.

It’s pretty easy to imagine something like this happening in China, and even worse there’s even less investigative journalism or government transparency to reveal that there was ever a mistake in the first place. China has hardly any publicly available evidence of the various Xinjiang terror incidents reported over the years, and have yet to publicly identified the identities or confessions of terrorists caught in either last years cave raid or the more recent apartment raid. This is surprising for a country where its not uncommon to hold public rallies where convicted criminals are displayed and “the masses cheer”. Given the recent wave of Chinese media reports about being vigilant in the face of Xinjiang terrorism in the run-up to the Olympics, its easy enough to imagine that a paranoid flight attendant on a flight from Urumqi might mistake hand cream left in the toilet for a bomb. The plane makes an emergency landing and the affair is forever after included as a “terrorist incident”. One can be just as skeptical that incidents like the cave raid and the apartment battle were in fact against illegal miners and drug dealers, which can all to easily be lumped under “terrorists” given China’s sloppy and probably purposely vague language in defining the “three evil forces”. Reuters and AFP would be wise to use even more skeptical quotation marks when reporting on “alleged” “attacks”. At this point I’d suggest a 2:1 word-to-“word” ratio.

UPDATE: As an added note, with the exception of Phoenix TV, which reported 8PM local time on Sunday (when foreign outlets and the China Daily English site were breaking it), no Chinese language internet site appears to have reported this news until Monday, roughly 10 hours later. Xinhua’s Chinese language site still appears not have an article on it. Does this mean domestic media was told to sit on the story because of the NPC? They sat on the apartment raid story for a couple of weeks before it was broken to a pro-PRC HK Daily as a rumor, and they could’ve kept it hush hush. In the past China has had a schizophrenic approach to publicizing Xinjiang terrorism – on the one hand, it allowed them to seek legitimacy for the conflict under the rubric of the GWOT, while on the other it contradicted claims that it was all under control. One would think they had, after that experience the past few years, considered a media strategy for publicly releasing information, especially to the foreign press, about incidents during the run up to the Olympics.

China’s War on The Unexpected?

Posted on March 9, 2008 by davesgonechina
Xinjiang Acting Chairman Nur Bekri during a CCTV interview this weekend

A day after leading the National Peoples Congress in pledging to strike harder against “the three evil forces of terrorists, separatists and extremists”, recently appointed Xinjiang Acting Chairman Nur Bekri said today that an “air disaster” was foiled on board a flight en route to Beijing from Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi. China Southern flight flight CZ6901 left Urumqi at 10:35, and was forced to land at Lanzhou, capital of neighboring Gansu Province, at 12:40 Friday, according to China Daily.

Nur Bekri was quoted in China Daily and Reuters as saying “”Who the people involved in the incident were, where they were from, what their aim was and what their background was, we are now investigating,” “Fortunately our air crew took resolute measures, discovered and put a stop to this action promptly. All the passengers, crew and the aircraft are safe,” and that it was “up to the police department to verify” whether it was a terrorist plot, “but we can be sure that this was a case intending to create an air crash.” An anonymous source also told Reuters that two passengers were arrested and an “inflammable material” was found in the toilet.

But what if this was a false alarm? Would the Chinese government admit so, or would they stick to their guns about it being an “attack”? Security expert and internet celebrity Bruce Scheneier has written repeatedly on his blog and for Wired Magazine about what he calls “The War on The Unexpected”, pointing out how US War on Terror policies often makes terrorist threats out of molehills, and authorities have difficulty walking them back:

Watch how it happens. Someone sees something, so he says something. The person he says it to — a policeman, a security guard, a flight attendant — now faces a choice: ignore or escalate. Even though he may believe that it’s a false alarm, it’s not in his best interests to dismiss the threat. If he’s wrong, it’ll cost him his career. But if he escalates, he’ll be praised for “doing his job” and the cost will be borne by others. So he escalates. And the person he escalates to also escalates, in a series of CYA decisions. And before we’re done, innocent people have been arrested, airports have been evacuated, and hundreds of police hours have been wasted.

This story has been repeated endlessly, both in the U.S. and in other countries. Someone — these are all real — notices a funny smell, or some white powder, or two people passing an envelope, or a dark-skinned man leaving boxes at the curb, or a cell phone in an airplane seat; the police cordon off the area, make arrests, and/or evacuate airplanes; and in the end the cause of the alarm is revealed as a pot of Thai chili sauce, or flour, or a utility bill, or an English professor recycling, or a cell phone in an airplane seat.

Of course, by then it’s too late for the authorities to admit that they made a mistake and overreacted, that a sane voice of reason at some level should have prevailed. What follows is the parade of police and elected officials praising each other for doing a great job, and prosecuting the poor victim — the person who was different in the first place — for having the temerity to try to trick them.

It’s pretty easy to imagine something like this happening in China, and even worse there’s even less investigative journalism or government transparency to reveal that there was ever a mistake in the first place. China has hardly any publicly available evidence of the various Xinjiang terror incidents reported over the years, and have yet to publicly identified the identities or confessions of terrorists caught in either last years cave raid or the more recent apartment raid. This is surprising for a country where its not uncommon to hold public rallies where convicted criminals are displayed and “the masses cheer”. Given the recent wave of Chinese media reports about being vigilant in the face of Xinjiang terrorism in the run-up to the Olympics, its easy enough to imagine that a paranoid flight attendant on a flight from Urumqi might mistake hand cream left in the toilet for a bomb. The plane makes an emergency landing and the affair is forever after included as a “terrorist incident”. One can be just as skeptical that incidents like the cave raid and the apartment battle were in fact against illegal miners and drug dealers, which can all to easily be lumped under “terrorists” given China’s sloppy and probably purposely vague language in defining the “three evil forces”. Reuters and AFP would be wise to use even more skeptical quotation marks when reporting on “alleged” “attacks”. At this point I’d suggest a 2:1 word-to-“word” ratio.

UPDATE: As an added note, with the exception of Phoenix TV, which reported 8PM local time on Sunday (when foreign outlets and the China Daily English site were breaking it), no Chinese language internet site appears to have reported this news until Monday, roughly 10 hours later. Xinhua’s Chinese language site still appears not have an article on it. Does this mean domestic media was told to sit on the story because of the NPC? They sat on the apartment raid story for a couple of weeks before it was broken to a pro-PRC HK Daily as a rumor, and they could’ve kept it hush hush. In the past China has had a schizophrenic approach to publicizing Xinjiang terrorism – on the one hand, it allowed them to seek legitimacy for the conflict under the rubric of the GWOT, while on the other it contradicted claims that it was all under control. One would think they had, after that experience the past few years, considered a media strategy for publicly releasing information, especially to the foreign press, about incidents during the run up to the Olympics.

Pre-Olympics Xinjiang Terrorism Media Blitz

Posted on March 1, 2008May 24, 2020 by davesgonechina

The third week of February was awfully busy for Xinjiang terrorism news.

First, there were reports of a Uyghur terrorist cell being raided by the police in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. The initial report appears to have been in Singtao Daily, the Hong Kong-based international Chinese language newspaper chain, on February 14th. It said that 18 were killed on February 4th in a huge police assault on an apartment in the Happy Gardens (幸福花园) complex, and two security officers were also killed in the full-scale gun battle. The report was subsequently carried over in smaller web publications on the Mainland like Zaobao, but officials would only confirm that there was an incident, nothing more.

Four days later, on February 18th, Global Times reported that the attack, according to an unnamed government official, happened on January 27th, at the Happy Gardens apartments, two terrorist suspects were killed and another fifteen captured. No police officers were injured, contradicting the previous report. Found at the scene, it was reported, were firearms, homemade explosives and instructive material from “external terrorist organizations”, and the suspects consequently “confessed to their crimes”. The article further mentioned that “the incident reminds us that security concerns are not limited to the Beijing Olympics”. The Chongqing Evening Daily website carried an article the following day from Xinjiang Daily that also included a rendering of the apartment assault (above), though it doesn’t look very authoritative with its two cops and 17 terrorists. A Global Times reporter also investigated the scene, finding little but noting that a local police official may have been removed from his position because the suspects were “right under their noses”.

Wang Lequan

As all this was going on, it was also reported that the Chinese military was rehearsing to combat biological and nuclear threats, while the Hong Kong pro-PRC paper Wen Wei Po said there were fears of such attacks from East Turkestan groups. Even more significantly, Xinjiang Party chief and all-around top guy Wang Lequan gave an extensive interview on Phoenix TV (video below). Notable highlights included

1) Opening with footage of Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble warning of terrorist attacks at the Beijing Olympics, and FBI Director Robert Mueller speaking of his confidence in security during the Olympics, followed by the invocation of September 11.

2) Footage from the video of the “Hotan Conference” in 1996, where the Allah Party, or Hizbollah, of East Turkestan supposedly took oaths to sacrifice themselves to establish an Islamic extremist independent Xinjiang. Xinjiang scholar Yitzhak Shichor saw the same footage(PDF) as part of a Chinese documentary shown to him in 2002, and said of this and one other organization (The Party of Islamic Reformers) “At best, they are – or were –small and loosely organized of little operative value. At worst, they may have been a figment of Chinese imagination or even invented by Beijing. When the Chinese issued their list of “East Turkestan terrorist organizations” on December 15, 2003, these two “parties” have not been included.15 Are these terrorist organizations or not? It seems that Beijing has some doubts, at least.”

3) That after the Yili incident, the East Turkestan Independence Movement launched an assault on vehicles carrying prisoners with a “squadron of 40-50 bicycles”, leaving security forces no choice but to open fire and kill one person. “Voice of America said we killed 1000 people, blahblahblah, which is nonsense, simply not the case.”

4) Wang Lequan puts great emphasis on Document 7, a Politburo directive on Xinjiang stability drawn up in 1997. Before this, he says, the answers to such questions as “What is normal religion, what is illegal religion, what are reactionary religious forces, in the past all this was unclear”. The document clarified, first, that the principle of autonomy must be upheld, but foreign religious influence cannot be permitted. “Secondly, we must always remain comitted to the separation of church and state, not allow religious interference in adminstrative, judicial activities, things like education, health, the One Child Policy, these things…” Wang Lequan seemed to find nothing contradictory in advocating the separation of church and state and simultaneously defining “illegal religion”.

5) Wang Lequan tells that he was target #1 on an assassination list.

6) He wraps up with the tale of Rebiya Kadeer, who he claims funded external separatist forces (doesn’t say who), met with a veteran terrorist named Aisha(?) in Turkey, and spread both secret intelligence and terrible lies to people in the United States, and they released her from prison because she had repeatedly given self-criticism, repented, and there were lots of reasons. It’s not terribly clear. Everybody who supports her and her Nobel nomination, he believes, is being fooled. Most perplexing is Wang Lequan’s rambling last sentence:

我的看法,我就不相信,那些支持她的人,热比娅说的他们都会真信,都认为是真话,不是的,我的看法,那些人,热比娅不出去,热比娅不说,冷比娅说,他也是 一样,他天然就不想说中国的好话,我是这么看法,那些同情支持热比娅的人,不是糊涂虫,他们是骨子里边有毛病,热比娅不说他还编造事实搞这搞那,何况有一 个活人在那儿说呢,说啥信啥。

Why does it say “冷比娅“? Rebiya’s name in Chinese has the first character “re”, as in “hot”. This has the first character “leng”, as in “cold”. Somebody really tired type this up?

So, coincidence a terrorist raid is revealed at the same time that Wang Lequan makes a rather rare extended appearance and the PLA steps up anti-terrorist training while PRC media in Hong Kong plays up the Uyghur separatist threat?

Video 1: 王乐泉:90年代的“反恐”经历


Video 2: 王乐泉讲述“二五事件” 驳美国之音谣言


Video 3: 入恐怖分子“暗杀名单” 王乐泉:不怕


Video 4: 王乐泉:对付恐怖分子的策略

Pre-Olympics Xinjiang Terrorism Media Blitz

Posted on March 1, 2008 by davesgonechina

The third week of February was awfully busy for Xinjiang terrorism news.

First, there were reports of a Uyghur terrorist cell being raided by the police in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. The initial report appears to have been in Singtao Daily, the Hong Kong-based international Chinese language newspaper chain, on February 14th. It said that 18 were killed on February 4th in a huge police assault on an apartment in the Happy Gardens (幸福花园) complex, and two security officers were also killed in the full-scale gun battle. The report was subsequently carried over in smaller web publications on the Mainland like Zaobao, but officials would only confirm that there was an incident, nothing more.

Four days later, on February 18th, Global Times reported that the attack, according to an unnamed government official, happened on January 27th, at the Happy Gardens apartments, two terrorist suspects were killed and another fifteen captured. No police officers were injured, contradicting the previous report. Found at the scene, it was reported, were firearms, homemade explosives and instructive material from “external terrorist organizations”, and the suspects consequently “confessed to their crimes”. The article further mentioned that “the incident reminds us that security concerns are not limited to the Beijing Olympics”. The Chongqing Evening Daily website carried an article the following day from Xinjiang Daily that also included a rendering of the apartment assault (above), though it doesn’t look very authoritative with its two cops and 17 terrorists. A Global Times reporter also investigated the scene, finding little but noting that a local police official may have been removed from his position because the suspects were “right under their noses”.

Wang Lequan

As all this was going on, it was also reported that the Chinese military was rehearsing to combat biological and nuclear threats, while the Hong Kong pro-PRC paper Wen Wei Po said there were fears of such attacks from East Turkestan groups. Even more significantly, Xinjiang Party chief and all-around top guy Wang Lequan gave an extensive interview on Phoenix TV (video below). Notable highlights included

1) Opening with footage of Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble warning of terrorist attacks at the Beijing Olympics, and FBI Director Robert Mueller speaking of his confidence in security during the Olympics, followed by the invocation of September 11.

2) Footage from the video of the “Hotan Conference” in 1996, where the Allah Party, or Hizbollah, of East Turkestan supposedly took oaths to sacrifice themselves to establish an Islamic extremist independent Xinjiang. Xinjiang scholar Yitzhak Shichor saw the same footage(PDF) as part of a Chinese documentary shown to him in 2002, and said of this and one other organization (The Party of Islamic Reformers) “At best, they are – or were –small and loosely organized of little operative value. At worst, they may have been a figment of Chinese imagination or even invented by Beijing. When the Chinese issued their list of “East Turkestan terrorist organizations” on December 15, 2003, these two “parties” have not been included.15 Are these terrorist organizations or not? It seems that Beijing has some doubts, at least.”

3) That after the Yili incident, the East Turkestan Independence Movement launched an assault on vehicles carrying prisoners with a “squadron of 40-50 bicycles”, leaving security forces no choice but to open fire and kill one person. “Voice of America said we killed 1000 people, blahblahblah, which is nonsense, simply not the case.”

4) Wang Lequan puts great emphasis on Document 7, a Politburo directive on Xinjiang stability drawn up in 1997. Before this, he says, the answers to such questions as “What is normal religion, what is illegal religion, what are reactionary religious forces, in the past all this was unclear”. The document clarified, first, that the principle of autonomy must be upheld, but foreign religious influence cannot be permitted. “Secondly, we must always remain comitted to the separation of church and state, not allow religious interference in adminstrative, judicial activities, things like education, health, the One Child Policy, these things…” Wang Lequan seemed to find nothing contradictory in advocating the separation of church and state and simultaneously defining “illegal religion”.

5) Wang Lequan tells that he was target #1 on an assassination list.

6) He wraps up with the tale of Rebiya Kadeer, who he claims funded external separatist forces (doesn’t say who), met with a veteran terrorist named Aisha(?) in Turkey, and spread both secret intelligence and terrible lies to people in the United States, and they released her from prison because she had repeatedly given self-criticism, repented, and there were lots of reasons. It’s not terribly clear. Everybody who supports her and her Nobel nomination, he believes, is being fooled. Most perplexing is Wang Lequan’s rambling last sentence:

我的看法,我就不相信,那些支持她的人,热比娅说的他们都会真信,都认为是真话,不是的,我的看法,那些人,热比娅不出去,热比娅不说,冷比娅说,他也是 一样,他天然就不想说中国的好话,我是这么看法,那些同情支持热比娅的人,不是糊涂虫,他们是骨子里边有毛病,热比娅不说他还编造事实搞这搞那,何况有一 个活人在那儿说呢,说啥信啥。

Why does it say “冷比娅“? Rebiya’s name in Chinese has the first character “re”, as in “hot”. This has the first character “leng”, as in “cold”. Somebody really tired type this up?

So, coincidence a terrorist raid is revealed at the same time that Wang Lequan makes a rather rare extended appearance and the PLA steps up anti-terrorist training while PRC media in Hong Kong plays up the Uyghur separatist threat?

Video 1: 王乐泉:90年代的“反恐”经历

Video 2: 王乐泉讲述“二五事件” 驳美国之音谣言

Video 3: 入恐怖分子“暗杀名单” 王乐泉:不怕

Video 4: 王乐泉:对付恐怖分子的策略

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