Behind the Tiananmen Terrorist Attack

(Credit to the Daily Mail, 28 October 2013)

On 28 October 2013 a car crashed in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in what police described as a ‘terrorist suicide attack’. Five people died in the incident: three inside the vehicle and two others nearby, one from the Philippines and the others from China's Guangdong province. Thirty-eight people were injured. Chinese police described it as a "major incident" and the first terrorist attack in Beijing's recent history.

The suspects have names of Uyghurs, a Chinese Muslim minority group and come from their native region Xinjiang. One suspect is from the town of Lukun in Shanshan County, where there was an attack in June and 30 people died.

Upon further investigation, the country's security chief has blamed a Uygur militant group for the suspected terrorist attack in Tiananmen Square and called on the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) to help combat the threat. Meng Jianzhu, head of the Communist Party's Central Politics and Law Commission and a member of the decision-making Politburo, said on the sidelines of an SCO meeting in Uzbekistan on Thursday that the fatal car crash was orchestrated by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

The small separatist group has been listed by the UN as an Al-Qaeda associate and designated by the United States for anti-terrorism sanctions. Li Wei, an anti-terrorism expert with the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said the suspected attack in the capital appeared to be an attempt by the group to expand its influence.

But doubts have been raised as to the suspicion. The Japanese Asahi newspaper reported that family members of Husanjan Wuxur, one of the detained suspects, said he was innocent and had never been involved in terrorism. Furthermore, Meng's claim was rejected by the World Uygur Congress (WUC), a Uygur exile group. “China wants to generate favourable opinion with the international community and it wants to portray the WUC as a terrorist organisation and Uygurs as a terrorist ethnic group,” said Ilham Mahmut, vice-president of the organisation. He questioned whether the ETIM existed.