http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/world/asia/24china.html
By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — An international news agency has released photos of an attack that took place early this month against Chinese security forces in the remote Silk Road oasis town of Kashgar. Chinese officials have said the assault killed 16 paramilitary officers and wounded 16 others, making it the deadliest attack on Chinese security forces in recent years.
The photos, released by The Associated Press, provide the first visual evidence of the aftermath of the assault. Some critics have said the Chinese government may have fabricated its accounts of the attack to justify a crackdown in parts of Xinjiang, a western autonomous region that is populated by a Muslim Turkic people called the Uighur. Many Uighur resent what they call discriminatory policies put in place by the ruling ethnic Han Chinese.
According to Chinese officials in Kashgar, the attack occurred Aug. 4 when two Uighur men rammed a truck into a group of 70 paramilitary officers jogging near their compound, then attacked the officers with homemade explosives and knives. The men were arrested and later confessed, the officials said.
The officials made those statements to a large group of Chinese and foreign journalists at a news conference in a hotel in Kashgar the day after the attack. At the time, they did not provide any visual evidence of the attack.
It is unclear who took the photos released by the A.P. The news agency did not provide a photographer’s credit and said the photos were not taken by a staff photographer. The pictures appear to have been taken from across the street, possibly from the Barony Hotel, which often hosts foreign tourists.
The A.P. photo editor in charge of Olympic coverage, Mike Feldman, said the photos had been carefully vetted to assure they had not been doctored. He declined to name the source, but said, “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to doubt these photos.”
The three pictures were released last week to run with an article on Uighurs and show graphic scenes from after the attack. One photo shows the bodies of five paramilitary police officers sprawled outside the gate of a compound. Four officers are lying on concrete, while a fifth lies face up in a patch of grass next to the sidewalk. A man lies face down on the concrete, with a trail of blood from his head.
A second photo, blurrier than the first, shows the officer in the grass sitting up with his back to the camera. In both photos, an apparently uninjured officer is walking around the scene.
A third photo shows a truck overturned in front of a building that appears to be the Yiquan Hotel, on the same block as the compound. Other bodies lie in the street near the truck. There is a metal electricity pole that has toppled into the hotel.
Chinese officials said at the news conference after the attack that the officers were jogging in front of the Yiquan Hotel when they were assaulted. The officials said the truck smashed into a pole before the two men proceeded to attack with explosives and knives.
Journalists who showed up at the scene the next morning found little evidence that a deadly attack had taken place. A plastic tarp covered the front of the Yiquan Hotel, and storeowners on the block refused to discuss what happened, possibly urged by the government to stay quiet.
There have been other accounts that suggest an attack did take place. At the time, Agence France-Presse interviewed a Polish tourist named Wlodzislaw Duch who said he witnessed it from his hotel room across the street. “My wife almost threw up and had to lie down afterward,” he said.
Agence France-Presse also quoted a German man staying in the Barony who said he and his family were awoken that morning by two loud bangs. Later, about 20 police officers came onto their floor and checked their cameras to see if they had taken any photos of the attack, said the man, Siegfried Maurer.
On a flight out of Kashgar on Aug. 6, a reporter for Time magazine saw a man lying on a stretcher at the rear of the plane. Flight attendants said the man was an officer injured in the attack. “He had lost his lower right leg, his head was wrapped in bandages, and his face was a swirl of stitches,” the reporter, Austin Ramzy, wrote on Time’s China blog.
Officials in Kashgar said the attackers were linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which calls itself the Turkestan Islamic Party. The group advocates for independence in Xinjiang and has been put on terrorist watch lists by China and the United States. Officials in Kashgar said the group had been planning attacks to disrupt the Olympic Games.
But the officials have not offered evidence to show that the attack in Kashgar was an act of terrorism, and Xinhua, China’s state news agency, reported that an official in Urumqi had said there was no proof the attackers were part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
The attack in Kashgar was the first of three in Xinjiang within nine days. On Aug. 10, a series of bombings shook the town of Kuqa, killing two and injuring five, Xinhua reported. Two days later, three security officers were killed and one wounded in a stabbing at a checkpoint near Kashgar. The string of attacks was the biggest surge in violence in Xinjiang in years.
By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — An international news agency has released photos of an attack that took place early this month against Chinese security forces in the remote Silk Road oasis town of Kashgar. Chinese officials have said the assault killed 16 paramilitary officers and wounded 16 others, making it the deadliest attack on Chinese security forces in recent years.
The photos, released by The Associated Press, provide the first visual evidence of the aftermath of the assault. Some critics have said the Chinese government may have fabricated its accounts of the attack to justify a crackdown in parts of Xinjiang, a western autonomous region that is populated by a Muslim Turkic people called the Uighur. Many Uighur resent what they call discriminatory policies put in place by the ruling ethnic Han Chinese.
According to Chinese officials in Kashgar, the attack occurred Aug. 4 when two Uighur men rammed a truck into a group of 70 paramilitary officers jogging near their compound, then attacked the officers with homemade explosives and knives. The men were arrested and later confessed, the officials said.
The officials made those statements to a large group of Chinese and foreign journalists at a news conference in a hotel in Kashgar the day after the attack. At the time, they did not provide any visual evidence of the attack.
It is unclear who took the photos released by the A.P. The news agency did not provide a photographer’s credit and said the photos were not taken by a staff photographer. The pictures appear to have been taken from across the street, possibly from the Barony Hotel, which often hosts foreign tourists.
The A.P. photo editor in charge of Olympic coverage, Mike Feldman, said the photos had been carefully vetted to assure they had not been doctored. He declined to name the source, but said, “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to doubt these photos.”
The three pictures were released last week to run with an article on Uighurs and show graphic scenes from after the attack. One photo shows the bodies of five paramilitary police officers sprawled outside the gate of a compound. Four officers are lying on concrete, while a fifth lies face up in a patch of grass next to the sidewalk. A man lies face down on the concrete, with a trail of blood from his head.
A second photo, blurrier than the first, shows the officer in the grass sitting up with his back to the camera. In both photos, an apparently uninjured officer is walking around the scene.
A third photo shows a truck overturned in front of a building that appears to be the Yiquan Hotel, on the same block as the compound. Other bodies lie in the street near the truck. There is a metal electricity pole that has toppled into the hotel.
Chinese officials said at the news conference after the attack that the officers were jogging in front of the Yiquan Hotel when they were assaulted. The officials said the truck smashed into a pole before the two men proceeded to attack with explosives and knives.
Journalists who showed up at the scene the next morning found little evidence that a deadly attack had taken place. A plastic tarp covered the front of the Yiquan Hotel, and storeowners on the block refused to discuss what happened, possibly urged by the government to stay quiet.
There have been other accounts that suggest an attack did take place. At the time, Agence France-Presse interviewed a Polish tourist named Wlodzislaw Duch who said he witnessed it from his hotel room across the street. “My wife almost threw up and had to lie down afterward,” he said.
Agence France-Presse also quoted a German man staying in the Barony who said he and his family were awoken that morning by two loud bangs. Later, about 20 police officers came onto their floor and checked their cameras to see if they had taken any photos of the attack, said the man, Siegfried Maurer.
On a flight out of Kashgar on Aug. 6, a reporter for Time magazine saw a man lying on a stretcher at the rear of the plane. Flight attendants said the man was an officer injured in the attack. “He had lost his lower right leg, his head was wrapped in bandages, and his face was a swirl of stitches,” the reporter, Austin Ramzy, wrote on Time’s China blog.
Officials in Kashgar said the attackers were linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which calls itself the Turkestan Islamic Party. The group advocates for independence in Xinjiang and has been put on terrorist watch lists by China and the United States. Officials in Kashgar said the group had been planning attacks to disrupt the Olympic Games.
But the officials have not offered evidence to show that the attack in Kashgar was an act of terrorism, and Xinhua, China’s state news agency, reported that an official in Urumqi had said there was no proof the attackers were part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
The attack in Kashgar was the first of three in Xinjiang within nine days. On Aug. 10, a series of bombings shook the town of Kuqa, killing two and injuring five, Xinhua reported. Two days later, three security officers were killed and one wounded in a stabbing at a checkpoint near Kashgar. The string of attacks was the biggest surge in violence in Xinjiang in years.
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