03-10-2008, 03:14 AM
<b>Recent incidents add to China's edginess about terror - Jim Yardley and Jake Hooker</b>
BEIJING : A Chinese passenger jet en route to Beijing from the heavily Muslim Xinjiang region was forced to make an emergency landing Friday after the flight crew prevented at least two passengers from trying to crash the airplane, state media reported Sunday.
Meanwhile, a senior Chinese official said Sunday that a police raid in January against an alleged terrorist group in Xinjiang had uncovered materials that proved the group was plotting an attack on the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
Terrorism usually is not a palpable threat in China, where the authoritarian regime takes an unflinching approach toward maintaining social stability. But for months, Chinese security officials have warned that terrorism is a major concern as Beijing prepares to host the Games in August.
Last week, a man armed with dynamite hijacked a private bus carrying a group of Australian tour operators in the city of Xian. A police sniper later killed the man, and no details have been issued about him or his motives. None of the hostages was injured.
On Sunday, Wang Lequan, the Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, took a hard rhetorical line and said China would strike the "three evil forces" of terrorists, separatists and extremists. "We are prepared to strike them when the evil forces are planning their activities," Wang said, according to Xinhua, the state-run news service.
Xinjiang is a vast northwestern region that is home to China's population of 8 million Uighurs, a Muslim group with linguistic and ethnic ties to Turkey and Central Asia. Tensions have long prevailed in the region because of cultural aspirations by some Uighurs for an independent state. In the past, China has blamed Uighur separatists for a handful of terrorist acts. Meanwhile, human rights groups have accused China of overstating any terrorist threat as a pretext for cracking down on the Uighur population.
Last January, the Chinese police attacked an alleged terrorist gang in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. Two suspected terrorists were killed and 15 others were arrested. Few details were made public at the time. On Sunday, Wang said investigators had found knives, axes and books about terrorism in the raid. He said other materials suggested the group planned an Olympic attack, though no specifics were provided.
"Obviously, the gang had planned an attack targeting the Olympics," Wang told Xinhua.
Wang said the gang had ties to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, a separatist group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations.
Separately, the thwarted airplane attack was also revealed Sunday. Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang government, told state media that "some people were attempting to create an air disaster."
The incident occurred on a China Southern flight that departed Friday morning from Urumqi for Beijing. But the plane was diverted to the city of Lanzhou after an onboard incident. State media provided only a few details, noting that "the attackers were stopped in time by the air police, and all the passengers and crew members are safe."
Bekri suggested that more than one person had been involved but declined to provide specifics, saying that the authorities were investigating "who the attackers are, where they are from and what's their background."
One person with information about the incident said a Uighur woman apparently smuggled three containers of gasoline onto the flight. She then took the containers into the bathroom of the airplane and was later apprehended by members of the flight crew.
A China Southern employee at the Lanzhou airport confirmed that the airplane had been diverted to the city and that the incident had been handled by public security officers. The diversion was initially described as necessary because of "traffic control," the employee said.
<i>Zhang Jing contributed research from Beijing.</i>
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