Olympics' Distant Worry: Seven More Chinese Die in Violence

While tourists and sports enthusiasts from sround the world enjoy the Olympic competition in beijing, a long way away in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, violence continues to be used to express a reaction to repression, imprisonment, and other human rights abuses at the hands of China.

 A predawn assault on a police station spaked a Sunday that saw at least seven killed in Xinjiang.

The state media of China, Xinhua, is reporting these incidents but in such muted tones that the news is easily buried amid the din of blaring Olympics hype.  And with China leading the U.S. in Olympic gold medals, it is easy to forget here in beijing that there are any other topics on the planet.

Here is some of the report by Jim Yardley of the International Herald Tribune:

The violence in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang rose sharply Sunday morning with the deaths of a security guard and at least 10 suspects after a daring series of bombings that began with a predawn assault on a police station, the state news media reported.

The attacks, coinciding with the first weekend of the Beijing Olympics, occurred less than a week after what the Chinese authorities had described as China's worst terrorist assault in recent memory, in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar. Last Monday, two Uighur Muslims rammed a truck into a group of paramilitary officers who were doing their morning exercises, then attacked with explosives and knives, the authorities say. Sixteen officers were killed and several more were wounded.

Xinhua, the country's official news agency, described the suspects in Sunday's attack as "terrorists," though the authorities have not attributed the attack to any terrorist group. In recent weeks, the Chinese authorities have accused the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, of plotting terrorist attacks against the Olympics. The Chinese government and the United States State Department list the group as a terrorist organization, though some specialists on Xinjiang question its scope and potency. Some human rights groups have accused China of exaggerating the threat to justify its crackdown against Uighurs.

More recently, an obscure militant group, the Turkestan Islamic Party, released videos claiming responsibility for recent bus bombings in southwestern China and threatened to carry out attacks on the Olympics. Last week, IntelCenter, a private American group that monitors terrorism, concluded that this group was the same as ETIM.

The violence on Sunday erupted in Kuqa, a city of 400,000 people in the southern part of Xinjiang. None of the details could be independently confirmed, though witnesses in Kuqa said they had heard explosions. In all, the authorities said, 12 explosive devices were detonated in attacks on at least four local government buildings, a supermarket and hotels, state media reported.