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| Police officers talk near luggages left by victims and have not been claimed outside the Kunming Railway Station where more than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives the night before in Kunming, in western China's Yunnan province, Sunday, March 2, 2014. Authorities blamed a slashing rampage that killed 29 people and wounded 143 at a train station in southern China on separatists from the country's far west and vowed a harsh crackdown Sunday, while residents wondered why their laid-back city was targeted. |
KUNMING, China
(AP) -- Authorities on Sunday blamed a slashing rampage that killed 29
people and wounded 143 at a train station in southern China on
separatists from the country's far west, while local residents said
government crackdowns had taken their toll on the alleged culprits.
Police
fatally shot four of the assailants - putting the overall death toll at
33 - and captured another after the attack late Saturday in Kunming,
the capital of Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
But authorities were searching for at least five more of the black-clad
attackers.
State broadcaster CCTV said two of the assailants were women, including one of the slain and the one detained.
"All-out
efforts should be made to treat the injured people, severely punish
terrorists according to the law, and prevent the occurrence of similar
cases," said China's top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu,
who arrived in Kunming early Sunday, an indication of how seriously
authorities viewed the attack.
The attackers'
identities have not been confirmed, but evidence at the scene showed
that it was "a terrorist attack carried out by Xinjiang separatist
forces," Xinhua said. The far western region of Xinjiang is home to a
simmering rebellion against Chinese rule by some members of the Muslim
Uighur (pronounced WEE'-gur) population, and the government has
responded there with heavy-handed security.
Police
in Kunming on Sunday were rounding up members of the city's small
Uighur community, believed to number no more than several dozen, for
questioning in the attack and information about the assailants.
"How
do we know them?" said a Uighur man who gave only his first name,
Akpar. "We could not tell if the assailants were Uighurs as they were
all dressed in black. We did not like the attack either."
Most
attacks blamed on Uighur separatists take place in Xinjiang, where
clashes between Uighurs and police or members of China's ethnic Han
majority are frequent, but Saturday's assault happened more than 1,500
kilometers (more than 900 miles) to the southeast in Yunnan, which has
not had a history of such unrest.
Kunming residents expressed dismay at both the attack and the conditions within China that could have allowed it to happen.
Restaurant
worker Xie Yulong said the attackers were "worse than animals." But he
also expressed sympathy toward ethnic Uighurs, saying their region has
come under severe security crackdowns in recent months under the
government of President Xi Jinping.
"It's the
pressure," Xie said. "Beijing has put too much pressure on them since Xi
Jinping took over. They are under so much pressure they do not want to
live, and they did that."
Another Kunming resident, Jiang Hua, said the attack has made people scared to go out at night.
"I
think we should chase off the Uighurs and let them be independent,"
Jiang said. "And local authorities
should be held accountable for
providing public safety."
Witnesses described
assailants dressed in black storming the train station late Saturday
evening and slashing people indiscriminately with large knives and
machetes.
Student Qiao Yunao, 16, was waiting
to catch a train at the station when people started crying out and
running, and then saw a man cut another man's neck, drawing blood.
"I
was freaking out, and ran to a fast food store, and many people were
running in there to take refuge," she told The Associated Press via Sina
Weibo, a Chinese microblog. "I saw two attackers, both men, one with a
watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and
chopping whoever they could."
Alarms over a
possible spread of militant attacks to soft targets beyond the borders
of Xinjiang were first raised in October when a suicide car attack
blamed on three ethnic Uighurs killed five people, including the
attackers, at Beijing's Tiananmen Gate.
Sean
Roberts, a cultural anthropologist at George Washington University who
has studied Uighurs and China for two decades, said the Kunming violence
would be a new kind of attack for ethnic Uighurs - premeditated,
well-organized and outside Xinjiang - but still rudimentary in weaponry.
"If it is true that it was carried out by Uighurs, it's much different than anything we've seen to date," Roberts said by phone.
But
he added that it is still unclear whether there is any organized Uighur
militant group, and that attacks so far do not appear linked to any
"global terrorist network, because we're not seeing things like
sophisticated explosives or essentially sophisticated tactics."
The
U.N. Security Council on Sunday issued a press statement that
"condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack" on the train
station. The statement reiterated that "any acts of terrorism are
criminal and unjustifiable regardless of their motivation" and
underlined the need to bring those responsible for the attack to
justice.
The violence in Kunming came at a
sensitive time, with political leaders in Beijing preparing for
Wednesday's opening of the annual legislature, where Xi's government
will deliver its first one-year work report.
Willy
Lam, a political observer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said
the attack coming so close to the National People's Congress dented Xi's
message of a "Chinese Dream" coalescing under his rule.
"Pockets
of dissatisfaction, groups of people with grievances, appear to be
increasing. After 1 1/2 years of more heavy-handed control (in
Xinjiang), the report card does not look good," Lam said.
Xi
called for "all-out efforts" to bring the culprits to justice. The
Security Management Bureau, which is under the Ministry of Public
Security, said in a statement that police would "crack down on the
crimes in accordance with the law without any tolerance."
The
attack was the deadliest violence attributed to Uighur-Han conflicts
since riots in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi in 2009, in which Uighurs
stormed the streets of the city, targeting Han people in seemingly
random violence that included the killing of women and children. A few
days later, Han vigilante mobs armed with sticks and bats attacked
Uighurs in the same city. Nearly 200 people died.
