Two Faces of China

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As China hosted the 2008 Olympian competitors for this year’s games, in far Western Xinjiang a series of attacks have claimed the lives of 19 police officers and 15 civilians, and left a number of others with serious injuries, according to experts who spoke at the Heritage Foundation on August 21.

Since the Olympic Games opened the Turkistan Islamic Party has taken responsibility for killing three civilians in two separate bus bombing incidents, and also fatally-wounding the 19 policemen and 15 civilians inside the Yunnan province. The Chinese Government still insists that these incidents were not acts of terrorism, as John Tkacik, a Senior Research Fellow at Heritage’s China and Asian Studies Center, explained.

Thus far, the Chinese government has been accused of sloppy record keeping and giving a false account of the violent attacks that have recently taken place during the Olympic Games by foreign journalists in Beijing, and the American government, as Tkacik noted.

“To date, little else is known about the Turkistan Islamic Party,” Ben Venzke, founder of Intel and a U.S. government contractor, said at Heritage. “But, one thing we will do is keep an eye on the group’s tactics, selection of targets, organizational structure, and the group’s messages.”

Venzke went on to explain that these attacks are not just limited to China, but that the Turkistan Islamic Group has also demonstrated similar tactics in countries, such as Afghanistan, Turkey, and Pakistan.

Nury A. Turkel, former president of the Uyghur American Association, believes that the violent attacks in far Western Xinjiang are simply due to China’s ongoing efforts to oppress the Uyghur people by means of political oppression, as well as through economic and social discrimination.

Therefore, based on Turkel’s analysis of the violence that is now taking place in far Western Xinjiang, one might draw the conclusion that the only reason the Olympic Games are being targeted by terrorist in Beijing is that, unfortunately, the games are scheduled at a time when China just happens to be in an all out civil war with the Uyghurians. Nevertheless, China has taken the initiative to heighten up their security around the Olympic Games.

Irene Warren is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run jointly by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.