Beijing Olympic organisers on Monday sought to play down security concerns looming over the Games, a day after authorities said two “terrorist” plots from its Muslim-majority north-west had been foiled.
“We are confident that we will be able to have a safe Olympics,” said Sun Weide, a spokesperson from Beijing’s Olympic Organising Committee.
Sun gave no indication as to whether any new measures had been put in place since the announcement on Sunday of the apparent terror threats, which critics of the Chinese government said may have been drastically overstated.
Wang Lequan, Communist Party chief in the north-western Xinjiang region, said on Sunday that a January raid on “terrorists”, which resulted in the deaths of two militants and 15 arrests, had foiled a planned attack directed at the Games.
It was the first specific threat against this summer’s Olympics to be reported by authorities, although Chinese officials had previously warned that terrorism was the biggest threat to the Games.
The alleged plot was the second foiled attack linked to Muslim separatists in Xinjiang to be announced over the weekend.
Passengers on a China Southern Airlines flight attempted to crash a Chinese airliner on Friday flying to Beijing from Urumqi, capital of the region, an official from the region said on Sunday.
As in the first case, few details have emerged except for a brief statement on Monday from the national aviation authority that passengers on the flight had been carrying “suspicious liquids”.
The plane was subsequently diverted to the city of Lanzhou in Gansu province, where the substances were removed, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said.
The chairperson of the Xinjiang regional government said on Sunday the plane plot was carried out by people “attempting to create an air disaster”.
Lanzhou police and Communist Party authorities refused to comment on the incident when contacted by Agence France-Press on Monday.
China regularly accuses the independence-minded East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), listed by the United Nations and the United States as a terrorist organisation, of being the most significant threat in Xinjiang.
The majority of the population in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan and Central Asia, are Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of whom bridle at what they say has been 60 years of repressive communist Chinese rule. — AFP