Xinjiang
‘attack’ leaves 16 police dead
CARNAGE: Two men were
arrested after they allegedly struck using explosives and knives, while in
Beijing authorities broke up a protest in Tiananmen Square
AP AND AFP, BEIJING
Tuesday, Aug 05, 2008, Page 1
Two men rammed a dump truck into a group of jogging policemen and then tossed
explosives into their barracks yesterday, killing 16 officers and wounding
others in China’s restive Central Asian border province, Xinhua news agency
reported.
The attack in Xinjiang Province came just four days before the start of the
Beijing Olympics — an event that has put security forces nationwide on alert and
that at least one militant Muslim group has vowed to disrupt. Xinhua, citing
local police, called it a “suspected terrorist attack.”
Xinhua said the attackers struck at 8am, plowing into the policemen performing
morning exercises outside the Yijin Hotel next to their paramilitary border
patrol station in Kashgar City.
After the truck hit an electrical pole, the pair jumped out, threw homemade
explosives at the barracks and “also hacked the policemen with knives,” the
report said.
Fourteen died on the spot and two others en route to a hospital while at least
16 more were wounded, Xinhua said.
Police arrested the two attackers, one of them having been injured in the leg,
the report said.
Local government officials declined to comment yesterday. An officer in the
district police department said an investigation had been launched.
The alleged attack was one of the deadliest and most brazen in recent years in
Xinjiang, where local Muslims have waged a sporadically violent rebellion
against Chinese rule. Kashgar lies 130km from the border with Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Chinese security forces have been on edge for months, citing a number of foiled
plots by Muslim separatists and a series of bombings around China in the run-up
to the Olympics, which open on Friday. Last week, a senior military commander
said radical Muslims who are fighting for what they call an independent East
Turkestan in Xinjiang posed the single greatest threat to the Games.
Xinhua said that Xinjiang’s police department had received intelligence reports
about possible terrorist attacks between Aug. 1 and Aug. 8 by the East Turkestan
Islamic Movement. The movement is the name of a group that China and the US say
is a terrorist organization, but Chinese authorities often use the label for a
broad number of violent separatist groups.
In Xinjiang, a local Turkic Muslim people, the Uighurs, have chafed under
Chinese rule. Occasionally violent attacks in the 1990s brought an intense
response from Beijing, which has stationed crack paramilitary units in the area
and clamped down on unregistered mosques and religious schools.
Uighurs have complained that the suppression has aggravated tensions in Xinjiang,
making Uighurs feel even more threatened by an influx of Chinese and driving
some to flee to Pakistan and other areas where they then have readier access to
extremist ideologies.
One militant group, the Turkestan Islamic Party, pledged in a video that
surfaced on the Internet last month to “target the most critical points related
to the Olympics.”
The group is believed to be based across the border in Pakistan, with some of
its core members having received training from al-Qaeda and the Pakistani
Taliban, terrorism experts say.
Terrorism analysts and Chinese authorities, however, have said that with more
than 100,000 soldiers and police guarding Beijing and other Olympic co-host
cities, terrorists were more likely to attack less-protected areas.
Meanwhile, a protest by disgruntled Beijing residents broke out yesterday close
to Tiananmen Square, city officials said. The group were protesting the meager
compensation they were given after being forcibly removed from their homes in
the Qianmen district of the city, an official at the area’s relocation office
said.
The official, who did not want to be named, said “there was some disruption and
the street was blocked for some time.”
A Xinhua report said police broke up the protest after the group voiced
“dissatisfaction with government compensation for demolition of their houses” to
a group of foreign media organizations.
The report said police rushed to the site as the group, made up of three to five
households, had caused a traffic jam towards the south end of Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen is one of the most sensitive sites for Chinese authorities, as it was
the scene of weeks of pro-democracy protests in 1989.
Many Beijing residents have been forced to move out of their homes in recent
years, as the booming city clears many traditional residential areas such as
Qianmen to make way for modern buildings.
Also See: HANCOCK'S GAME: In Beijing, don’t mention the c-word
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‘Taiwan
Post’ sent into history
STAMPED OUT: The name of the
state-run postal company was changed back to the original title Chunghwa Post,
in a low-key ceremony in Taipei
By Shelley Shan
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Aug 05, 2008, Page 3
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|
Customers leave
through the front door of a branch of the Chunghwa Post Co in Taipei
yesterday. The state-run company resumed using its original name
containing the word “Chinese,” which had been dropped by former
president Chen Shui-bian’s government. PHOTO: PATRICK LIN, AFP |
Former Directorate General of Posts director Hsu Chieh-kuei (許介圭) criticized
former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration yesterday for its
name-change policy, calling it nothing more than political maneuvering.
“To a lot of postal workers, it [changing the name from Chunghwa Post to Taiwan
Post] is a history that is too painful to recall,” he said.
Hsu made the comments during a ceremony held yesterday to mark the change of the
postal company’s name back to Chunghwa Post.
Unlike last year, when the company hosted an hour-long inauguration ceremony
attended by Chen and former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) to mark the change to
Taiwan Post, yesterday’s ceremony lasted only 15 minutes and was attended only
by company employees and retirees.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) and other
high-ranking ministry officials were not invited.
The ceremony ended with representatives of the Chunghwa Post Workers’ Union
hailing a victory.
Tsai Liang-chuan (蔡兩全), the workers’ union chairman, said after the ceremony
that the Control Yuan had launched an investigation into the name change.
“All those who were involved in making the decision and executing the policy —
including Chen Shui-bian, former minister of communications and transportation
Tsai Duei [蔡堆], former Chunghwa Post chairman Lai Chin-chyi (賴清祺) and current
chairman Wu Min-yu (吳民佑) — must be held accountable for this wrong policy,” Tsai
Liang-chuan said.
Wu said the two name changes have cost the company about NT$20 million
(US$666,000).
In a statement on Friday, the company said customers could continue using
savings account booklets with Taiwan Post appearing on the cover.
All transactions under the name Taiwan Post are still considered valid by the
company.
Meanwhile, the company would continue using deposit receipts and other
stationery bearing the name Taiwan Post, but would stamp them with the official
Chunghwa Post seal.
Asked for comment, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Kuo Su-chun (郭素春)
said it was “reasonable” for the company to change its name back now that the
KMT was in power.
She said the legislature never approved the postal service’s proposal to change
its name to Taiwan Post, adding that as a result “Taiwan Post never existed.”
She said Chen should be held accountable for the money the company has had to
spend to change back its name because he ordered the move for political gains.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) told a press
conference that “few people outside Taiwan know where letters with the Chunghwa
Post postmark are from.”
She said the company should at least keep “Taiwan” on the postmark, as it would
allow more people abroad to know that Taiwan is a sovereign state.
DPP caucus whip Chang Hwa-kuan (張花冠) said it was ridiculous for “the post
company to spend NT$20 million to diminish ‘Taiwan’ and reinstate ‘Chunghwa.’”
What’s in a
name?
The use of the phrase “Chinese Taipei” by the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) and possibly for Taiwan’s next application to neither “join” nor “return”
to the UN is both insulting to Taiwanese and a deliberate Sino/Taipei-centric
fudge that excludes pretty much anyone outside Taipei. As the administration of
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is keen on using this title, but also insists on
the formal constitutional name — Republic of China — Taiwanese athletes can be
forgiven if they are confused about exactly which country or region they will be
representing at the Olympic Games.
Furthermore, defining an entire geopolitical area by reference to a culture, or
the name of one city in that area — e.g., “British London” — is problematic. Are
we now to assume that residents in Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Taitung, Hualien,
Ilan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, Lanyu and Ludao are all Chinese and all nominally
from Taipei? If we were to use the name of a city, then why not use “Chinese
Taichung?”
To call all people in Taiwan “Chinese” is also wildly inaccurate. Consequently,
we should perhaps reformulate the name so that it will better reflect the
diversity of cultures and languages in Taiwan. Thus “Austronesian Taidong,”
“Hakka Hsinchu” and “Hoklo Tainan” would be equally valid.
While we’re at it, other labels should be changed as well. “Mainland China”
could be changed to “Authoritarian Beijing,” Hong Kong to “Cantonese Kowloon”
and the US to “Native Peoples’ Washington.”
Furthermore, given the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) new, Beijing-pleasing
anti-Japanese attitude, we should simply refer to Japan as “them.”
More seriously, it is clear that while Ma and the KMT live on Taiwan they think
in China, and every ridiculous attempt to avoid using the word Taiwan is just
another nail in the coffin of the Taiwanese polity and its people. Despite this,
the KMT may soon find out that it is neither them nor Beijing alone who will
determine the future of this country, but rather the agent that still holds
economic and physical suzerainty over Taiwan: the US.
As it remains in the interest of the US that Taiwan never achieve de jure
statehood or unification with China, no amount of political goodwill, name
changing, begging or pleading will move this country out of its ambiguous
“status quo.”
Ben Goren
Suao, Ilan County
Accountability for violence
Tuesday, Aug 05, 2008, Page 8
Most people shake their heads when they watch acts of political violence abroad.
Many like to think that such acts only occur in dysfunctional societies or in
countries run by dictatorial regimes, and that when it comes to Taiwan, such
practices were long ago thrown into the dustbin of history.
In recent months, however, there have been hints of a return to a more violent
past. Nothing has highlighted this better than Su An-sheng’s (蘇安生) kicking of
former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in the posterior as the latter was
entering a courthouse last month — an act that was preceded by similar attacks
by the same individual against former representative to Japan Koh Se-kai (許世楷)
and lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄). That it took three of these incidents before Su
was called to account for his acts is cause for concern.
On Saturday the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) notified authorities of a
postcard threatening to kill Chen and members of his family, as well as harm DPP
Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), if assault charges against Su, a member of the
pro-unification Patriot Association (愛國同心會), were not dropped.
It is too early to tell whether there is any substance to the threat. For
radical elements like Su, however, it may now seem permissible to use violence
or the threat of violence against members of the opposition. If the KMT
government does not come down hard on groups and individuals who espouse
violence — and the outcome of the investigation into the postcard will be a hint
of the government’s willingness to tackle this — some could reach the conclusion
that it does not care about the consequences.
The use of intimidation against the DPP and other members of the opposition has
the potential to exacerbate the power imbalance between the KMT and the DPP, and
make the task of rebuilding a coherent opposition more daunting.
When death threats are made against a former head of state, it takes much more
than a meek public comment by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to convince skeptics
and proponents of political intimidation alike that the KMT has once and for all
abandoned the harvest from dirty tricks that characterizes most of its history.
Violence can lead to polarization and invite reciprocal behavior, as we saw when
Su was attacked in broad daylight by a handful of bat-wielding individuals.
Taiwan must not allow clan warfare with its use of proxies from the criminal
underworld to undermine its democracy and threaten social stability. No one who
cares about this nation, or who fought to liberate it after nearly half a
century of state oppression, stands to gain from political violence.
The authorities must nip the situation in the bud before it escalates, and if
the Patriot Association is found to be advocating violence, then it must be held
fully responsible.