China says Muslim ‘terror plot’ uncovered

CHINA said yesterday that it had uncovered a plot by members of a Muslim minority group to sabotage the Beijing Summer Olympics with suicide bombings and kidnappings of foreign visitors.

Police allegedly confiscated almost 22 pounds of TNT-based explosives, eight sticks of dynamite, two detonators, and “jihadist” literature, but Chinese officials offered no evidence to back up the allegations, the latest in a series of dramatic terrorism charges against ethnic minorities in the run-up to the Summer Games.

China says violent separatists are behind recent unrest in Muslim and Tibetan areas that has drawn increased attention to China’s treatment of minority groups. Pro-Tibetan protesters have also outraged China by disrupting sections of the global Olympic torch relay. Last month, authorities in Beijing accused followers of the Dalai Lama of plotting suicide bombings inside China.

Members of the Muslim Turkic Uighur minority in parts of western Xinjiang province have staged a struggle for a breakaway state, accusing Chinese communist authorities of suppressing their culture and religion.

Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said at a news conference that 35 people had been arrested in Xinjiang over recent weeks for plotting to kidnap athletes, foreign journalists and other visitors to the August Olympics. He identified two of the men as Abdulrahman Tuersun and Kuerban Mutalifu, both traditional Uighur names.

He said the gang hatched the plot in November and travelled through Xinjiang last month seeking recruits, including those skilled in weapons and explosives production.

They also sought fanatics to carry out suicide bomb attacks in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, and other Chinese cities, Wu said.

“They wanted to make a global impact to sabotage the Beijing Olympics,” Wu said, adding: “We face a real terrorist threat.”

Nicholas Bequelin, a Xinjiang expert with Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said Beijing has undercut its credibility by consistently labelling criminal acts, anti-government violence and peaceful dissent as terrorism.

Meanwhile IOC president Jacques Rogge said: “I hope that we are through it now. I think the furore that has affected the torch in London, Paris and to some extent in San Francisco will now die down.

“This does not compare to what happened in Munich in 1972, the first Olympic Games I attended, nor in the real crisis in Mexico in 1968 where people were dying in riots on the streets.