Attackers with home-made bombs and knives killed 16 police in a restive western region of China on Monday, state media said, in just the sort of violence Beijing had hoped to avoid four days before the Olympics.
The attack, which occurred about 4 000km from the capital in the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, was a reminder of internal tensions in China, especially in its ethnically mixed and largely Muslim west.
Police said they had information separatists from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement had been planning attacks in the run-up to the Games.
But the organising committee of the Games said it was sure athletes and spectators would be safe. ”We have been preparing the Olympic Games for seven years. We are confident and capable of hosting a peaceful Olympics,” said spokesperson Sun Weide.
About 100 000 police and soldiers are on standby ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony, and security has already been stepped up in Tiananmen Square, scene of pro-democracy protests in 1989, with all visitors’ bags being screened.
American swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps slipped into town to begin an Olympic adventure that could end with him breaking Mark Spitz’s record of seven golds in a single Olympics.
The lanky 23-year-old eluded female fans and a media scrum in the arrivals hall at Beijing’s vast new international airport terminal, entering the country through a side door.
Phelps won six gold and two bronze medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics and will get a $1-million bonus from sponsor Speedo if he can equal compatriot Spitz’s haul from the 1972 Munich Games.
There is a strong sense of excitement in the city, but the number of foreign visitors has been disappointing. Hotels said they were slashing room prices by as much as half because reservations have fallen far short of expectations.
Ticket scam
People are thought to have shied away because of visa restrictions and bad publicity about China. Thousands more fans had their hopes of coming dashed after being swindled by an international Internet scam offering bogus tickets.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it was taking action to shut down the websites, but the move came too late to help the victims from countries including the United States, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Norway and Britain.
The IOC said it had filed a lawsuit in California against six websites last Friday, but a US lawyer who said he had lost $12 000 in the scam, accused Olympic officials of complacency.
”They have known about these sites for months and months and did nothing,” said Jim Moriarty, partner of a Houston-based law firm which is looking to represent fellow victims.
Those who have arrived were disappointed to find Beijing’s customary pollution-fuelled haze back on Monday. That followed a rare run of three blue-sky days that brought foreigners and residents on to the streets in shorts and T-shirts at the weekend, enjoying parks and taking photos of Olympic venues.
The Communist government says drastic anti-pollution measures — like ordering nearly two million of the city’s cars off the road and closing smoke-belching factories — have guaranteed safety for athletes during the competition.
Sun, spokesperson for the Games’ organising committee, attributed Monday’s return of the smog to a drop in wind and the bowl effect of nearby mountains. The government said air quality was fairly good despite the haze.
”We hope it is fine on Friday,” Sun said. ”That depends not only on human endeavour but on Mother Nature too.”
Chinese leaders hope the Games will showcase the economic progress and new global clout of the world’s most populous nation. But in a turbulent build-up, they have had worse clouds than just the Beijing smog to deal with, not least global protests against the Olympic torch relay.
The Games have galvanised critics of China on a range of issues from treatment of internal dissidents, particularly in Tibet, censorship of the internet, and Beijing’s close ties with Sudan’s government despite the Darfur conflict.
On Monday in the remote Xinjiang region, home to a Muslim separatist movement, attackers drove up and tossed home-made bombs at a group of police jogging through the street on their morning exercises, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
They then attacked with knives. In addition to the 16 police killed, 16 officers were wounded.
Nicholas Bequelin, of Human Rights Watch, said it was the most serious incident in the region in years.
”Ahead of the Olympics, it is a very powerful symbolic attack because security in Xinjiang is at an all-time high,” he said.
Xinjiang is home to about eight million Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of them resentful of Chinese controls on religion and the big ethnic Han Chinese presence.
But the people of Beijing are determined to make the Games a success. Several hundred thousand smiling volunteers, mainly students, man every street corner to shepherd visitors around.
”You see, we are not as nasty as some of you in the Western media say we are,” said one 21-year-old female engineering student, handing coffee to visiting reporters. – Reuters