So Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer says the whole supposed hijacking incident over the weekend was a sham:
“It’s completely untrue. All these allegations are falsified,” the separatist figurehead, who joined her US-based husband in 2005 after six years in a Chinese jail, told AFP through an interpreter. “The real goal of the Chinese government is to organize a terrorist attack so that it can increase its crackdown on the Uighur people,” the 61-year-old head of the Uyghur American Association said.
(Channel News Asia)
It’s the latest voice to question the bizarre and murky events of March 7th, one of which was ours. (I forgot to post a link to our story so here it is.)
As ever the case in China, the total lack of transparency means we’ll probably never know what really happened. Either a suicide bomber (or a team of them) got on board and nearly blew up the plane, which would be a horrible reflection on the state of the airline industry’s security. Or the whole thing was an exaggeration by a media-hungry cadre, conveniently whacking an available scapegoat, which has equally negative implications. Coming soon after the kidnapping of 10 Australian tour guides in Xi’an a couple of weeks ago (will we ever find out what the kidnapper’s motives were? or any other details? unlikely.) by a man with a bomb strapped to his body, it adds up to a worrying picture. And in case anyone missed it, there are less than five months to go before those Games….