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chris_J2
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Location: From Brisbane, Au.
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 Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 6:28 am Post subject: Terrorist attacks in China foiled. |
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Chinese official says foiled terror plot targeted Beijing Summer Olympics Games
Three separate incidents in China, in under a week:
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BEIJING: Chinese police broke up a terror plot targeting the Beijing Olympics, and a flight crew foiled an apparent attempt to crash a Chinese jetliner in a separate case, officials said Sunday.
Wang Lequan, the top Communist Party official in the far western region of Xinjiang, said materials seized in a Jan. 27 raid in the regional capital, Urumqi, suggested the plotters' planned "specifically to sabotage the staging of the Beijing Olympics."
"Their goal was very clear," Wang told reporters at a meeting of Xinjiang delegates in Beijing.
Wang cited no other evidence or sources of the information and earlier reports on the raid had made no mention of Olympic targets.
Speaking at the same meeting, Xinjiang's governor said a flight crew prevented an apparent attempt to crash a China Southern flight from Urumqi to Beijing on Friday. Nur Bekri did not specifically label the incident a terrorist act, saying it remained under investigation. No passengers were injured and police were investigating, he said.
The incidents may give greater force to China's arguments that extreme measures are necessary to ensure social stability and the safety of the August Olympics, already the focus of negative publicity from the regime's critics.
While deadly violence is less common in China than in many countries � Beijing bans virtually all private gun ownership � officials were quick to assert that a deadly hostage drama involving 10 Australian travel agents last week was not an embarrassment in the run-up to the Olympics.
The hostage-taker was sh()t and killed by a police sniper after an almost three-hour standoff in the northern tourist hub, Xi'an. The hostage-taker's motive was not known.
Chinese forces have for years been battling a low-intensity separatist movement among Xinjiang's Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people who are culturally and ethnically distinct from China's Han majority. Iron-fisted Chinese rule has largely suppressed the violence, however, and no major bombing or shooting incidents have been reported in almost a decade.
China has ratcheted up anti-terror preparations ahead of the Games, with the nation's top police official last year labeling terrorism the biggest threat facing the event.
Although terrorism experts say the threat is not high given China's tight social controls, they warn that Beijing's counterterrorism capabilities are weak, especially in intelligence gathering and analysis.
Earlier reports said police found guns, homemade bombs, training materials and "extremist religious ideological materials" during the January raid in Urumqi, in which two members of the gang were killed and 15 arrested. Authorities have not identified those killed and arrested or their specific targets.
The Global Times newspaper published by the Communist Party had earlier said the group planned bombings and other "violent terrorist incidents" for Feb. 5, the last business day before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday.
Wang said the group had been trained by and was following the orders of a Uighur separatist group based in Pakistan and Afghanistan called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM. The group has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United Nations and the United States. East Turkestan is another name for Xinjiang.
China says its main terror threat comes from ETIM. Although the group is not believed to have more than a few dozen members, terrorism experts say it has become influential among extremist groups using the Internet to raise funds and find recruits.
Chinese forces reported raiding an ETIM training camp last year and killing 18 militants allegedly linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Wang said security forces would take pro-active measures to crush terrorism, religious extremism, and separatism.
"These guys are fantasizing if they think they can disrupt the Olympics," said Wang, known for his hardline stance on crushing dissent. "They don't have the strength."
Few details were available about the alleged attempt to crash the China Southern Airlines flight Friday morning. Bekri indicated that more than one person was involved, but did not specify whom police suspected in the attempt, saying it remained under investigation.
"From what we presently know, this was an attempt to crash the plane," Bekri said.
"Because this incident just occurred, questions as to who these people were, where they came from what their goal was, what kind of background, we are currently investigating. Once we've investigated clearly, I believe you will then know," Bekri said.
He said the crew responded and the plane made an emergency landing in the western city of Lanzhou with no damage or injuries. He said it continued to its original destination, Beijing, after about one hour.
A man who answered the phone at China Southern's Urumqi office said the incident was under investigation and he had no further details. He hung up without giving his name.
An airline spokesman reached at its southern hub of Guangzhou refused to answer questions about the incident and said all press inquiries had to be faxed to corporate headquarters.
While Bekri refused to further characterize the incident, he prefaced his remarks with a harsh denunciation of Uighur separatists, saying "high-pressure tactics" were the only way of dealing with the problem.
"Those in Xinjiang pursuing separatism and sabotage are an extremely small number," Bekri said.
"They may be Uighurs, but they can't represent Uighurs. They are the scum of the Uighurs," Bekri said. |
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/09/asia/AS-GEN-China-Olympics-Terror.php?page=1
Sounds like the plan was to crash the plane, into the main Olympic Games Stadium, in Beijing. The guy that was sh{}t dead in Xian, was on his way to Xian airport. Another attempted planecrash?
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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| IS this for real? |
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TheChickenLover
Joined: 17 Dec 2007
Location: The Chicken Coop
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:58 pm Post subject: |
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The article should be titled China kills Olympic Protesters
That would be far more believable & closer to the truth.
On a side note, their organs were harvested & sold to western patients waiting to receive transplant organs who paid handsomely for the speedy service.
Chicken |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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| TheChickenLover wrote: |
The article should be titled China kills Olympic Protesters
That would be far more believable & closer to the truth.
On a side note, their organs were harvested & sold to western patients waiting to receive transplant organs who paid handsomely for the speedy service. |
Exactly.
This reminds me, wasn't Bush 41 in Shanghai just the other day?
On bended knee, begging Hu Jintao for more money.
Hmmmm ... yes indeed.
Amazing timing. Just when this apparent "terror" ( protest ) plot was exposed.
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=115969 |
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:15 am Post subject: |
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| Does anyone else find it slightly creepy and disheartening that the chinese regime is now able to simply parrot the west in its claims of combating terrorism? |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:29 am Post subject: |
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| yawarakaijin wrote: |
| Does anyone else find it slightly creepy and disheartening that the chinese regime is now able to simply parrot the west in its claims of combating terrorism? |
Creepy? Of course.
Surprised? Hardly.
Disheartened? Never 
Here's a few more "terrorists" ...
Tibetans Start Torch Relay To Oppose Beijing Games
OLYMPIA, Greece (Reuters) - Tibetan activists staged a torch-lighting ceremony outside Olympia on Monday for the start of a global torch relay to protest against decades of Chinese rule over the Himalayan region.
Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games, will host the official torch-lighting ceremony for the Beijing Olympics on March 24.
"We lit this torch which is of so much importance for us, for a free Tibet," Tendon Dahortsang of the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe told Reuters.
The torch was lit outside the gates to the ancient site after the group of about 10 was barred from entering by police.
Tibetan shot-putter Tsultrim Gope was the first relay runner who took the lit torch after five women representing goddesses performed a traditional Tibetan ceremony.
"This is proof of the Chinese state's wide influence," Tendon Dahortsang said. "Greek authorities told us we were not allowed to go in because of our big bags, as Chinese embassy officials stood nearby and watched us." 
The so-called Tibetan freedom torch will stop over at 50 cities and end at the border of Tibet on the day of the start of the Beijing Olympics, on August 8.
Olympia has hosted the Games' torch-lighting ceremony and relay since the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
"The police had a massive presence and they even escorted us back to our hotels but the people of Olympia clapped and cheered us on along the main street," Tibet Olympic Committee spokesman Kelsang Gope said.
China has controlled Tibet since People's Liberation Army troops marched in 1950 and considers it an integral part of its territory.
Critics accuse China of repressing Tibetans' religious aspirations, especially their veneration for the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
China says it has spent billions of dollars developing the impoverished Himalayan region, and raised its living standards.
And it has repeatedly said that it wants to keep politics out of the August Games.
The International Olympic Committee has been under mounting pressure as criticism over China's human rights record grows less than six months before the Games.
The IOC has rejected a Tibetan request to field a team for next year's Beijing Olympics. The Tibetan team currently comprises some 30 athletes, all exiled.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/news_china_olympics_greece_col |
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chris_J2
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Location: From Brisbane, Au.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 12:42 am Post subject: Terrorist attack in China foiled. |
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http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/331879
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| Reports of the incident set off a wave of Chinese nationalistic fury on the Internet, in which people vented their rage and praised the police and the state's security apparatus. |
Sounds remarkably similar to the US response to terrorism.
How the woman got gasoline /petrol in the aircraft cabin, I have no idea. All airports in China I've ever been to, don't even allow spirits purchased duty free, into the aircraft cabin. On my last flight from Shanghai to Guangzhou in 2004, the airport security took me aside, after the xray of my luggage, because I had a bottle of duty free scotch, in my cabin baggage. They quaintly call all spirits in bottles "wine". It was removed, & repackaged as cargo. I collected it in Guangzhou.
And why would the man in Xian (which has a Muslim Quarter) kidnap 10 Australian travel agents at gunpoint, & demand to be taken to the airport?
Oh btw, I was in high school in 1972 during the Munich Olympics, when the entire Israeli athletic team was sh(ot dead by PLO terrorists.
It's not the first time an Olympic Games has been targetted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre |
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