hey mm, your little autonomous province in the middle of nowhere is finally making headlines in the us because of this story. way to go xinjiang!

Shiver me timbers!

Anyway, this is one time when I think Beijing should err on the side of safety. As a resident of Atlanta, I can assure you Olympic terrorism isn't pretty.

Looks like China had manufactured a case against dissidents to give them excuses for mass arrest and imprisonment of hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people in the western provinces, creating an opportunity to further colonize the region with Hans. The next will be Tibetans and other minorities. Taiwanese after that, or will they do it in time for the Taiwanese election, helping DPP to secure another victory ?

Well, I didn't expect anything less from the organs that be. The weird thing is that I have been to the airport they speak of and I have no idea how the hell someone could have snuck one, much less THREE containers of gas onto a plane and not be noticed. I guess they could have hollowed out a Hami melon and crammed it in there or something.

I can buy that it was an attempt to bring down an airplane, but I don't buy the link to the Olympics at all. Hurr, derailing the Olympics 5 months before kickoff by crashing a plane out in the middle of nowhere... yes, I see that making lots of sense.

All of this sounds like some foreplay for justification to crack down hard on anyone who bitches about the Olympics and discredit anyone with legitimate claims come game time.

Uighurs have no love for the Han, this is true, but they seem to want little more than to just be left the hell alone. Obviously, this is too much to ask of Beijing.

Michael,

From your personal experience, what are most reasons that Uighurs lag behind on the development? I would think that with the oil industry booming in Korla, the service sectors would enjoy a big up and why locals cannot get most of benefits out of it?

Why can't the Uyghurs take advantage of the oil boom? Because their land gets taken from them by force with no compensation or mineral royalties.

As for the woman with the gas bombs, it is more likely she tried to use nail polish remover to remove nail polish and was subdued in a hail of expectorant and seed shells.

No country has managed to rid itself of hard drugs, despite proclaiming wars on them, yet the industry is extremely hierarchical, the sources are known and money traceable.

Yet when a few people that were not considered a high threat flew a few airplanes into a few buildings, suddenly countries all over the world were able to identify and capture cell-like organisations with no central structure and claim a good signal to noise ratio.

Something is up, in any country that claims drugs and terrorism are a big problem, yet claims success in efficiently combating terrorism while failing to tackle the self-identified (even if not publicised in some countries) drug problem.

Beijing Organizers Say Security Assured
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 10, 2008

Filed at 4:32 a.m. ET

BEIJING (AP) -- Beijing's Olympic organizers say the Games are safe from terrorism.

The announcement came a day after an official said that alleged terrorists captured in January were planning on attacking targets associated with the Games.

Few details have been released about the plot and an apparently unrelated attempt to crash a passenger jet that was also revealed on Sunday.

''An efficient Olympic security command system is in place,'' Sun Weide, a spokesman for the organizers, known as BOCOG, told The Associated Press. ''We're confident of holding a peaceful and safe Olympic Games.''

@Tiako: I'm gonna use my ETIM-pirate logo forever! I can't get enough of it.

@Sha: I don't think it's so much that Uyghurs have their land taken from them. After all, most of the oil and gas is found in places where no one really lived. The two main problems are racism and lack of education.

Michael please sent the photo to my Email,Thank you!!

The real threat to the Olympics...

Gebrselassie opts out of marathon - BBC News

Haile Gebrselassie says he will not run in the marathon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics because of the city's air pollution levels.
The marathon world record holder suffers from asthma and missed the 2007 London Marathon because of the problem. The 34-year-old will now try to qualify for Ethopia in the 10,000m at Beijing. "The pollution in China is a threat to my health and it would be difficult for me to run 42km in my current condition," Gebrselassie told Reuters.

"But I am not pulling out of the Olympic event in Beijing all together. I plan to participate in the 10,000 m event."

The International Olympic Committee has voiced concerns over the issue of air pollution in Beijing.

If contingency measures do not have the desired affect then endurance events could be delayed for a few hours or rescheduled for another day.

Last year Britain's Paula Radcliffe called in pollution experts to help her plans to run in the Games marathon.

At the time her husband and manager Gary Lough told BBC Sport that Radcliffe, who suffers from exercise-induced asthma, may have to change her medication in China.

"She may have to adapt her doses or medication but as long as we've done enough research and thought about it, it hopefully won't be an issue," he said.

"There's no point in us being especially concerned, because pollution's not really something you can control."

Sigh.....I suppose even if the bomb did go off, there'll still be people speculating whether it was a govenment in-plant....the govt. here is a bit like Hilary (with more justifications of course), damned if you do, and damned if you don't....

btw, found the etim plane logo thingie slightly unsettling...

A few more details including the mention of a 'petrol bomb':

Petrol fumes foil China plane attack Terror plots thwarted, China claims
China correspondent Stephen McDonell
10 March 2008
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News
(c) 2008 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Chinese media is reporting a young woman was behind the attempt to crash a passenger plane that was headed for Beijing on Friday.

According to Guangzhou's newspaper, the plan to crash a passenger jet bound for Beijing was uncovered because of petrol smells.

The newspaper has reported that a stewardess smelt the fumes and found an 18 or 19-year-old Uighur woman trying to light a petrol bomb.

The report says she was found in the toilet and was prevented from lighting the device by cabin crew.

A second passenger has also been detained.

Last night Chinese authorities blamed Uighur Muslim separatists from Xinjiang for trying to sabotage the Olympics.

The Government says a police raid six weeks ago prevented a planned attack.

'The two main problems are racism and lack of education.'

I agree with the education bit but didn't know that racism was an issue...i guess not many chinese are aware of any racial problems within the country, sadly

I think the third thing is its geographical location. Xingjiang's economic development is restricted by its distance to the east coast where most money goes into export and trades. At least that's what the government is encouraging.
'Xi Bu Kai Fa' (investing in Western China) was an old saying that was never done in real terms

Michael,

Sorry, your most favorite post Nanhai said about lands without compensation and we all know he is an idiot so let's just ignore him.

I admit that most of minorities (except heavy Confucian influenced ethnic Manchus, Koreans, etc.) will have trouble to compete with Han. But in my memory and few Uighur friends I have, they should be good business people such as Hui. I would think a booming oil business will bring a lot of business for Uighur restaurants, bars, dancing clubs, and other sectors. Just think about how popular the food among other Chinese, I can image Uighur should have many restaurants all over China like all Sichuan hot pots.

Also they should be benefit from booming tourism. If that is not the case, I would say there are some problems need to be fix. What about other ethnic groups, such as Uzbeks, Khazaks, and Tajiks?

@Sha: I recommend you to read through the two sided story by following the link http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/953506.aspx?ArticleID=2185456
@Michael: I understand you keep trying hard to make this site running, I really appreciate your efforts. But one question, why USA spend great amount of money for preventing illegal immigrants from Mexico, and as I know your government also admits US needs them?! They - Mexicans, of course, could settle "IN PLACES WHERE NO ONE REALLY LIVED".

A little birdy who lives in a rumor tree told me that the gasoline was smuggled aboard in plastic iced tea bottles. Unfortunately for the would be terrorists, the gasoline melted the plastic and started to leak and the smell was noticed by flight attendants. Apparently one person was able to start a small fire on board but it was quickly extinguished. That person will be facing the death penalty for his actions.

It's not necessarily reliable information, but I figured some of you might be interested.

SCMP is confirming some of the rumored details that I reported yesterday:

Terror threat is real, says Xinjiang chief; Claims that airliner plot was faked cause anger
Raymond Li and Ng Tze-wei in Beijing
12 March 2008
South China Morning Post
(c) 2008 South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

Xinjiang's chief lashed out yesterday at western claims that the foiled terrorist attacks on a Beijing-bound plane were fake or a pretext to crack down on Uygurs.

"I notice that there was some irresponsible reporting by foreign media and some so-called politicians and academics," the autonomous region's chairman, Nuer Baikeli, said on the sidelines of the National People's Congress.

"They expressed doubts that this was probably some incident created by the Chinese Communist Party in an attempt to crack down on certain ethnic groups. I am very angry."

Mr Baikeli said any attack on a civilian aircraft should be considered a terrorist attack.

"How can you apply double standards to this? It's unbelievable," he said.

Exiled Uygur dissident Rebiya Kadeer was quoted by Agence France-Presse on Monday as accusing Beijing of fabricating the plots to taint the name of her community.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang denied the accusation. "These people, like Rebiya Kadeer, link the government's efforts to strike hard against terrorism and connect it to the majority of the Uygur people, which is extremely insidious."

Terrorism, separatism and extremism have been named by the central government as major destabilising factors in predominantly Muslim Xinjiang.

Quoting an unnamed official, Global Times, a paper affiliated to the Communist Party's mouthpiece, People's Daily, reported yesterday that slack Xinjiang airport staff provided the opportunity for the attempted attack. A 19-year-old Uygur woman from Kuche, Xinjiang, was able to carry a mineral-water bottle and two beverage cans through security checks for business travellers manned by a relatively old guard at Urumqi airport.

Despite guidelines barring travellers from carrying beverages on board a plane, the paper said the security worker apparently dropped his guard to let the woman through after she took two mouthfuls from the bottle. The woman was later found locked in an aircraft toilet on China Southern flight CZ6901 with a number of cans filled with petrol.

The plane made an emergency landing in Lanzhou, Gansu , at about 12.40pm on Friday after leaving Urumqi at 10.35am.

None of the passengers or crew were hurt and the plane flew on to Beijing on Saturday morning after being held for several hours. Airline sources said four Uygurs, including the 19-year-old woman, were taken away by police for questioning.

Xinjiang party chief Wang Lequan said on Sunday, when officials for the first time revealed details of the foiled aircraft attack, that the Olympics were a target for the region's terrorists.

A group broken up in Urumqi in January was plotting to attack the Beijing Games in collaboration with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a Uygur group allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, Mr Wang said.

But officials have been quick to quash speculation that Olympic security will be threatened.

"We have the absolute ability and confidence to secure the Olympics security," Mr Baikeli said. "Our airport security is very well placed."

However, according to the Global Times, the woman took several flights to assess airport and on-board facilities as well as security-check procedures so she could take advantage of the security lapse.

Mr Baikeli said the investigation was continuing but "according to my personal analysis [this attack] must involve forces outside China".

REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial)
China's War on Terror
12 March 2008
The Wall Street Journal Europe
(Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

In democratic states, officials fighting terrorism are held accountable by a watching public for the choices they make between national security and transparency. In China, however, where a terrorist plot against the Beijing Olympics and an attempted airplane bombing made international news this weekend, everything is more murky.

On Sunday, the governor of Xinjiang, a western province of China, announced that a China Southern Airlines plane had been forced to divert its flight after passengers attempted to crash the aircraft. At the same press conference, another Party official said that a January police raid -- in the same province -- had killed and nabbed terrorists targeting the Olympics.

Scary stuff, and yet given the way China operates, it's hard to judge these claims or the seriousness of a threat they may represent. The identity of the attackers, their methods and the potential victims' names were all kept under wraps. No local media -- or we -- have been able to confirm details of the airplane story by speaking with airplane passengers, airline authorities or police, although a plane apparently was diverted from Beijing. Xinjiang's Communist Party chief, Wang Lequan, is the only person to have mentioned the Olympics plot -- which is unrelated to the plane incident -- and as we went to press no other government official had confirmed his claims.

China's Communist Party also has a troubled history in Xinjiang, home to Muslim Uighurs, a minority ethnic group. The government there has routinely rounded up peaceful dissidents and conducted closed trials. Beijing has subsidized the mass migration of ethnic Hans into Xinjiang to sinify the region, and has banned some public expressions of religion -- including fasting during Ramadan for students.

It is true that Xinjiang separatists have resorted to violence in the past, if rarely. And in the war on terror, it is important for governments to exercise discretion over information they disclose about counterterrorism activities. But given China's opaque and unaccountable justice system, were this weekend's roundups crackdowns on violent militants or just more cases where the government uses the fear of terrorism to justify arresting peaceful dissidents? We may never know.

It's my opinion hat the threat is real (Olympic games are extremely juicy targets), and Beijing is dragging its feet about releasing details to avoid setting a precedent.

Paranoia reaches Olympic proportions
Alex Lo
13 March 2008
South China Morning Post
(c) 2008 South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

For a paranoid person, it is often difficult to distinguish real foes from imagined ones. Politicians who have struggled for a long time in the trenches frequently display similar characteristics and have trouble telling the difference between real terrorists, political enemies and mere critics. It is telling that Wang Lequan , Xinjiang's party chief, was denouncing "terrorists, saboteurs and splittists", all in one breath. According to Mr Wang, terrorist hijackers, Uygur human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer and even the Dalai Lama all belong to these groups.

Mr Wang was speaking on Sunday on the sidelines of the National People's Congress in Beijing, where he first disclosed a police raid in January against an alleged terrorist cell run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a Uygur group with links to al-Qaeda. He said the group was plotting to disrupt the Olympics. It is, evidently, not an easy job governing as a Han Chinese in a province where the ethnic Muslim minorities are the majority. The Dalai Lama, however, has reaffirmed his support for the Beijing Games this summer. It is not clear whether he was sincere.

At about the same time and in the same venue, Mr Wang's colleague, Xinjiang region chairman Nuer Baikeli, revealed that four Uygurs had been arrested last Friday for allegedly trying to blow up a China Southern flight from Urumqi to Beijing. Suddenly, Muslim terrorists are running amok in China. Or at least that was the impression the two senior Xinjiang officials have created, as their stories were splashed the next day on the front pages of most mass-circulation papers in Hong Kong.

Most ran bold headlines describing the incident last week as a "9/11-style hijacking". But since the terrorist mission, if there really was one, was thwarted, the September 11 scenario must remain hypothetical.

Actually, the controlled release of information and the hysteria in the media were very different from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. If one must draw a September 11 analogy, it was more reminiscent of the US media frenzy over Jose Padilla, one of the few terror suspects who made it to open trial and was originally accused of trying to build and explode a radioactive dirty bomb on US soil. Years after his arrest, it's clear that he was a misguided and incompetent foot soldier, "the wrong Muslim [caught] in the wrong airport on the wrong day", as one US lawyer put it.

Since there were no independent witnesses in the Xinjiang episode, we must place our trust in the official versions. We can, however, rely on our critical sense to gauge the political effects these official stories are creating. For one, they hook onto the same or roughly similar terror narrative familiar to Americans and Europeans: the threat of Muslim extremism. And they help justify an unprecedented security blanket that will envelope Beijing in the run-up to the Olympics and during the Games. But, in reality, it's hardly necessary to justify extreme security and unchecked displays of police power at important events these days, even in western democratic countries.

Ever since the mass protests and violent police response at the 1999 World Trade Organisation conference in Seattle, every international gathering has become an exercise in riot control, whether the situation calls for it or not. Ordinary citizens in western countries now tolerate police barricades, de facto curfews across whole city blocks and overwhelming use of force against protesters, during international meetings of very important people.

The Olympics is, arguably, even more significant and sensitive than any Group of Eight summit or WTO meeting. There will always be critics, but most officials and people from around the world will go along with whatever security arrangements are put in place for the Olympics. Still, Beijing is, understandably, paranoid about its most important (inter)national event in years.

Liquids banned after scare on mainland flight
Raymond Li in Beijing
13 March 2008
South China Morning Post
(c) 2008 South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

Mainland aviation authorities have decided to ban passengers from carrying liquids on board aircraft in a bid to tighten security after a flight crew foiled what authorities said was a plot to down a Beijing-bound airliner on Friday.

Yang Chengfeng , head of the General Administration of Civil Aviation's security bureau, said the ban would not only apply in the lead-up to or during the Beijing Olympics in August, but would be indefinite.

Authorities have yet to agree on a timetable for its introduction but Mr Yang, whose agency oversees aviation industry security on the mainland, said: "As far as I'm concerned, the quicker, the better."

The tightening of airport security came as mainland authorities for the first time admitted that terrorist organisations had plotted attacks on the Olympics.

The admission was in response to the arrest of four Uygur suspects, including a 19-year-old woman from Kuche, Xinjiang , in connection with cans of petrol found in the toilet of a China Southern Airlines flight on Friday, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Lanzhou , Gansu province .

Mainland media reported that the woman was able to walk through security checks with two cans of petrol and a bottle of mineral water by taking advantage of slack security at Urumqi airport.

The Xinjiang Airport Group also reported on its website yesterday that security guards at Yining airport in Yili prefecture detained a man from the region's main Kazakh ethnic group on Saturday after he refused to co-operate during a regular security check. The Yili valley was the scene of large-scale anti-Chinese rioting in 1997. The report said airport security guards uncovered three contraband items hidden under the man's belt but airport authorities refused to give more details.

Security analysts said the lapse at Urumqi airport exposed the vulnerability of the mainland aviation industry to terror attacks and there should be greater security safeguards across the sector.

Li Wei , director of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations Centre for Anti-terrorism Research, said that among other things, security staff must learn to maintain their guard "to treat everyone the same during security checks regardless of whether they are business class passengers or flight attendants". Existing air safety guidelines bar travellers from carrying beverages on board planes, but allow passengers to take one litre of other liquids on domestic flights and 100 millilitres on international flights.

Professor Li said the new measure was more drastic than in other countries and was likely to increase waiting times for passengers. There was also likely to be greater inconvenience for some passengers such as those on medication.

Mr Yang said the terror scare on Friday was a major reason behind the decision to ban liquid carry-on items.

Mainland officials have also sought to assure the international community that Beijing will be safe during the Olympics. Citing an influx of tourists and rising prices for hotel rooms in the capital, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China was one of the safest places in the world.

Yesterday, Liu Jingmin , vice-mayor of Beijing and executive president of the 2008 Games organiser Bocog, also pledged tough security measures during the Olympics.

Additional reporting by Peter Simpson

it is exactly editors like the one in wall street journal that continue to distort facts to dupe the average western reader into believing their flawed money-crazed political/government systems are superior.