22 May 2014

You say you want a revolution...

...said the Beatles.


The BBC has an article about the real thing (photo):
Attackers in China's restive Xinjiang region have crashed two cars into shoppers at a market, killing thirty people, Chinese media reports say. They also threw explosives during the attack in the regional capital, Urumqi. More than ninety people were injured, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. The Ministry of Public Security called it a "violent terrorist incident".
Xinjiang, which is home to the Muslim Uighur minority, has seen a spate of attacks in the past year. Last month a bomb attack at a station in Urumqi killed three people and injured dozens more. China blamed the attack on Uighur separatists.
Information about incidents in the region, where ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese continue, is tightly controlled.
Pictures on Weibo microblogs, China's equivalent of Twitter, taken by eyewitnesses appeared to show the attack taking place at one end of a busy market street lined with vegetable stalls. One of the two vehicles exploded. "Witnesses said two cross-country vehicles driving from north to south plowed into people in the market at 07:50. Explosives were thrown out of the vehicles," the Xinhua report said. One photo showed flames engulfing a junction. Others showed at least three fire engines mobilized to put out the fire.
Local media said eyewitnesses heard multiple explosions. The injured were taken to several hospitals, Xinhua said.
Separately, the authorities in the Chinese capital of Beijing announced new security measures in fourteen key areas.
Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims; they make up about forty-five percent of the region's population; forty percent are Han Chinese.
China re-established control in 1949, after crushing the short-lived state of East Turkestan. Since then, there has been large-scale immigration of Han Chinese.
Uighurs fear erosion of their traditional culture.
Xinjiang lies in China's far west, bordering Central Asia. China says it is pouring money into the region to improve livelihoods, but some Uighurs say their traditions, including religious freedom, are being crushed by tight Chinese control. Tensions between the two communities erupted into violence in 2009. Riots in Urumqi left some two hundred people dead. There has also been a series of violent incidents that Beijing has blamed on Uighur separatists. They include:
October of 2013: Car plows into pedestrians in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing five - the three people in the car were Uighurs, Chinese authorities said.
March of 2014: Knife attack at Kunming station in southern China; 29 people killed in an attack blamed on Uighur extremists.
April of 2014: Bomb and knife attack at Urumqi station killed three, just after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the region.
This latest incident comes days after Chinese courts jailed forty people as part of what the authorities called an operation to curb the spread of audio and video materials inciting terrorism. Those jailed included a 25-year old who had incited hatred in comments made in chat rooms, and a father who had preached extremism to his son, the Xinjiang Supreme Court said.
Rico says they got their problems...

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