Monday, October 28, 2013

Suicide Jeep Attack Kills 5 At Tiananmen Square in China

Jeep Plows Through Sidewalk At Tiananmen Square in China ---
Asian Victims of Accidents And Crime | Muslim incident , Uighur, Vehicle Drives Through Barrier

5 dead 38 injured Monday October 28, 2013 Jeep Plows Through Sidewalk At Tiananmen Square in China  At about noon in Beijing's Tinanmen Square, a jeep squeezed by the only opening in a barrier, entered a sidewalk and drove nearly 500 yards driving over tourists and police, until it hit a column near the portrait of Mao Tse-tung and caught fire. The driver and two passengers were killed. Casualties were later revised to five dead and 38 injured. It was still not yet obvious whether it was an accident, but the Los Angeles Times speculated that circumstances indicated it could be China's first deliberate suicide attack at one of the most closely guarded locations in China.

In 2009 three people set themselves on fire in a car at the Wangfujing pedestrian mall in protest. Pictures of the incident as well as evidence of fire were soon scrubbed from view, and there was no mention of the evening television news. By the next day, officials had concluded that the vehicle had a banner, they had set the vehicle afire themselves, and it was probably Beijing's first major suicide attack as they had no plan to escape. Police were seeking persons and licence plates of ethnic Uighur suspects persons from the Xinjiang which has been the scene of ethnic / religious riots. By October 30, Beijing identified the incident as the first such vehicle rampage firmly linked to a terrorist motive.

Similar to the vehicle rampage by Iranian student on US college campus, Virginia hiker parade, Venice beach, and Los Angeles farmer's market, none of which have been classified as obvious terrorist attacks

Not terrorist? Sean R. Roberts researches the impact of Chinese state-driven development in Central Asia and Xinjiang "Looking at the crude instruments allegedly used by these people -- gasoline, knives, iron rods, and an SUV, it is difficult to argue that this was the work of any highly organized and well-armed militant group or terrorist network. There were no sophisticated explosives used in the attacks, and the alleged attackers did not even possess guns. Furthermore, although Uyghurs are Muslims, there is no evidence that they have ever been involved substantively in a global Muslim militant movement."
given that this is allegedly the first instance that Uyghurs have carried out such desperate acts outside Xinjiang, and in this case in the very symbolic seat of central power, we may also be witnessing a sharp escalation in the Chinese state's confrontation with the Uyghurs.
In the midst of this escalation, it is also possible that the PRC's long-maintained, but largely unsubstantiated, claims of a Uyghur terrorist threat are perhaps becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2013_Shanshan_riots
On 26 June 2013, terrorists in Lukqun TownshipShanshan County in Xinjiang killed 2 policemen and 22 civilians. 11 of the attackers were also killed. The attack began when a group of people with knives attacked a Chinese police station and a local government building. This attack was one of the bloodiest attacks in Xinjiang since 2009

.Sources 

.Update

Youtube: Tiananmen Square Car Crash Now Deemed China's First Suicide Terror Attack! What was first reported by the Chinese as a simple car accident is now being treated as a terror attack by muslim seperatists, sky news reports: "unusual in fact almost unheard of, and it has to be stressed the Chinese government is not yet describing them as terrorists to strike with a suicide attack anywhere in China. Their theory, and this is not official at the moment but coming from other sources is that this attack yesterday was the work of uighur separatists, Muslims from the Xinjiang province in far western china some 2,000 miles away from Beijing who had traveled to Beijing and driven their vehicle right up to the Tienamen gate at the north end"


11/13/2013

http://shoebat.com/2013/11/13/terrorists-kill-suv-muslims-say-terrorism/#disqus_thread




Terrorists kill with SUV, Muslims say it’s not Terrorism






What would you call driving an SUV through a crowded area, murdering two people with that SUV and then setting it ablaze in a final act of suicide? Most people would call that terrorism

Via AFP (h/t Atlas):
China has blamed a fiery attack in Tiananmen Square on “terrorists” from Xinjiang backed by international militants, but residents say that rather than jihadism, violence is driven by cultural repression, corruption and police abuses.
The dusty city of Hotan on the edge of the Taklamakan desert is 3,300 kilometres (more than 2,000 miles) and a world away from Beijing’s Forbidden City, the symbolic heart of Chinese power.
Armed security personnel in camouflage and police vans patrol the streets in the city whose two million strong population is 96 percent Uighur, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority concentrated in Xinjiang.
China’s state broadcaster CCTV has said that the three people who carried out the Tiananmen attack, which saw their vehicle barrel into crowds and burst into flames, and five others detained in connection, were all from Hotan.
But residents reject the accusation that the deadly Tiananmen incident — the first attributed to Uighurs outside the far western region — and a series of clashes inside Xinjiang this year are the result of terrorism.
“Uighurs are angry that women are not allowed to cover their faces or that they must bribe government officials to get things done,” said a 30-year-old doctor. {emphasis ours}
That ‘do what we say and nobody gets hurt’ meme is indeed a common denominator among Muslims who commit terror and stealth jihadists who like to point to the threat of such acts for the same purpose. Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf did this during an appearance on Larry King back in 2010. He told guest host Soledad O’Brien that if the mosque wasn’t built, “radicals” might commit acts of terror.
As usual, CNN is lending credibility to an absurd premise by entertaining both sides of the argument in an article entitled, “Tiananmen crash: Terrorism or cry of desperation?”


11/7/2013

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/348025-the-uses-of-naming-groups-enemies-in-china/

Car crash on Tiananmen Square will likely be used to justify suppression

Seytoff said he and others fear that history is repeating itself. They believe the CCP will use the incident to create public hatred, and it will use this hatred to justify and increase its suppression of his people.
What Seytoff fears the CCP is doing to the Uyghurs had been done before to other groups.

‘False Fire’

Protests in Tibet in 2008 and the reports of self-immolations by Falun Gong practitioners in 2001 on Tiananmen Square both betrayed signs of stage managing by Chinese authorities. Both were followed by brutal suppression.

An award-winning documentary, False Fire, debunked the Tiananmen Square “self-immolations.” It showed how one “immolator” held a one-liter pop bottle said to be filled with gasoline between his legs while covered in flames. Yet, the gas did not explode or the bottle melt or even show traces of soot.
the official propaganda video was viewed in slow motion, it showed a police officer killing one of those in the incident by striking her head with a small club.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Its teachings strictly forbid killing of any kind, including suicide.

The Label ‘Terrorist’

Following the car careening onto Tiananmen Square on Oct. 28, the CCP demanded that foreign media describe this as a terrorist attack.
According to terrorism researcher Max Abrahms, professor at Northeastern University and member of Council on Foreign Relations, the current evidence coming out of China suggests the crash was not a terrorist attack, but rather an extreme form of protest. Instead, the CCP is likely using the terrorist label to feed its own interests.
 Alim Seytoff, the World Uyghur Congress spokesperson, since Xi Jinping took control of the CCP in November 2012, several hundred Uyghurs have been killed by Chinese authorities
Max Abrahms, a fellow at Stanford University, disputes this conclusion, noting that they focus narrowly on the well-known but rare terrorist victories – while ignoring the much broader, if more obscure, pattern of terrorism's failures. To remedy this deficiency, Abrahms took a close look at each of the 28 terrorist groups so designated by the U.S. Department of State since 2001 and tallied how many of them achieved its objectives.
His study, "Why Terrorism Does Not Work," finds that those 28 groups had 42 different political goals and that they achieved only 3 of those goals, for a measly 7 percent success rate. Those three victories would be: (1) Hezbollah's success at expelling the multinational peacekeepers from Lebanon in 1984, (2) Hezbollah's success at driving Israeli forces out of Lebanon in 1985 and 2000, and (3) the Tamil Tiger's partial success at winning control over areas of Sri Lanka after 1990.


11/6/2013

Dru Gladney, a Xinjiang expert and professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California said the crash did not appear to be an organized attack. "This incident in Beijing doesn't look like a well-orchestrated terrorist attack, but it looks like the acts of an individual," Gladney told Al Jazeera. Chinese authorities have announced that the car was driven by an ethnic Uighur, whom officials have said was part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), what they have called a terrorist organization.

  1. Dru C. Gladney - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dru_C._Gladney
    Dru C. Gladney, recent President of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College, is currently Professor of Anthropology at Pomona College. Gladney is the author of ..
    Dr. Gladney focuses his research on ethnic and cultural nationalism in Asia, specializing in the peoples, politics, and cultures of the Silk Road and Muslim Chinese (or Hui). A two-time Fulbright Research Scholar to China and Turkey, he has conducted long-term field research in Western China, Central Asia, and Turkey, for more than 25 years. His research languages include Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, Uyghur, Uzbek, Kazakh, and Russian. The results of his work have been featured on CNNBBC,[1] Voice of America, National Public Radio,[2] al-Jazeerah, and in NewsweekTime, the Washington Post,International Herald TribuneLos Angeles Times and the New York Times. Dr. Gladney’s publications have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic, Turkish, French, and German.
    Gladney’s most recent book is Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects.[3] He is also the author of: Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic"[4] and Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality;[5] and the editor of Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the U.S.[6] Gladney has held faculty positions and post-doctoral fellowships atHarvard University; the University of Southern California; Kings College, Cambridge, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; the East-West Center, Honolulu; and the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He has been a consultant to the Soros Foundation, Ford Foundation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Getty Museum, National Academy of Sciences, European Center for Conflict Prevention, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and UNESCO.[7.

    quite different than the majority of the Muslims in China. The largest group in China are know as the Hui. And most people just know them as the Chinese speaking Muslims because they live in every city. They speak Chinese. They have been integrated into Chinese society for 1,200 years. Beijing city has 200,000 of them. You can't go anywhere without finding a Muslim-Chinese restaurant. But they're quite distinct from the ones in western China, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and that's the area where we've been having problems.

    with this large diversity of Muslims in China, very few of them support these terrorist actions. Uighurs outside of China have condemned it. 
  2. Dru Gladney | LinkedIn

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  7. Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic ...

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11/4/2013

The Tiananmen Square car attack and Boston Marathon bombing ...

shanghaiist.com/2013/10/30/the_tiananmen_square_car_attack_and.php
Oct 30, 2013 · When the Boston Marathon was bombed last April by two Chechen, separatist-advocating, Muslim, confused, amateur terrorists, there was speculation on 
When the Boston Marathon was bombed last April by two Chechen, separatist-advocating, Muslim, confused, amateur terrorists, there was speculation on the Chinese internet about how China's government would react to a similar situation. From the looks of things, a similar scenario has recently taken place in Beijing: just change two to three (well, with some still on the run) and Chechen to Uighur.
At the time of the Boston bombing, some internet users claimed that China's government is quite hard to terrorize, because censorship would ensure "terrorists would have no proof that they indeed attacked." The government hasn't gone as far as an outright denial of the event, of course, but it is noteworthy that the story has been shuffled into a minor subcategory of the China Daily's homepage, and is entitled "Accident in Tian'anmen kills 5 people," despite a near-uniform shift in the foreign press to describe the event as a "crash," "attack," or the (terribly euphemistic) "incident." Regardless of the actual term used, an "accident" this was not.
Although the American response to the Boston bombing has been occasionally criticized as overkill, there was still a (comparatively) decent level of transparency and responsiveness in regards to the authorities' actions in the hours and days after the attack. In China, the official press still classifies the attack as an "accident," yet leaked documents and some speechesclearly show that the view within the government is that this was an attack linked to the Uyghur separatist movement.
  1. Uighurs dismiss terrorism claim - Worldnews.com

    article.wn.com/view/2013/10/31/Uighurs_dismiss_terrorism_claim
    Oct 31, 2013 · A Uighur group dismissed Beijing’s account of a “terrorist attack” inTiananmen Square as a dubious pretext to repress the ethnic minority yesterday ...

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Xinjiang_military_chief_punished_after_Beijing_attack_report_999.html
Xinjiang military chief punished after Beijing attack: report



by Staff WritersBeijing (AFP) Nov 03, 2013
China's top security official Meng Jianzhu has accused the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement of supporting the attack. The authorities have, however, not provided any evidence to support this assertion, which has raised doubts among experts given the amateurish nature of the attack and the lack of an established Islamic extremist foothold in China.

a statement sent to AFP Sunday, Radio Free Asia (RFA) said the man could have been acting out of personal revenge over a double tragedy.
Citing two anonymous Uighur sources, RFA said Hasan, 33, had lost a family member during the 2009 ethnic riots in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi.
His younger brother had also died in a mysterious car accident which had been blamed on the majority Han Chinese or the authorities.

Uighur organisations dismiss claims of terrorism and separatism as an excuse by Beijing to justify religious and security restrictions.









  • irm …



  • Xinjiang military chief punished after Beijing attack: report ...

    Xinjiang military chief punished after Beijing attack: report
    sg.news.yahoo.com/xinjiang-military-chief-punished-beijing-attack...
    His younger brother had also died in a mysterious car accident which had been blamed on the majority Han Chinese or the authorities. AFP …



  • Oman Tribune - the edge of knowledge

    www.omantribune.com/index.php?page=news&id=1547511 day ago
    His younger brother had also died in a mysterious car accident which had been blamed on the majority Han Chinese or the authorities. Separately, ...



  • Xinjiang military chief punished after Beijing attack: Report ...

    timesofindia.indiatimes.com › World2 days ago
    Nov 03, 2013 · His younger brother had also died in a mysterious car accident which had been blamed on the majority Han Chinese or the authorities. AFP was …



  • Xinjiang military chief punished after Beijing attack | GlobalPost

    www.globalpost.com › Home › AFP
    Nov 03, 2013 · His younger brother had also died in a mysterious car accident which had been blamed on the majority Han Chinese or the authorities. AFP was …



  • Xinjiang military chief punished after Beijing attack - MSN ...

    news.malaysia.msn.com2 days ago
    His younger brother had also died in a mysterious car accident which had been blamed on the majority Han Chinese or the authorities. AFP was unable to confirm …



  • Xinjiang military chief punished after Beijing attack: Report | Siasat

    www.siasat.com/english/news/xinjiang-military-chief-punished-after...
    His younger brother had also died in a mysterious car accident which had been blamed on the majority Han Chinese or the authorities. The agency was unable to

    CNN report told of "a virtual police state" - with monitoring of Uygurs and repression of political and cultural freedoms, including the right to being educated in their own language. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE


  • China Strips Army Official of Position After Attack - NYTimes.com

    www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/asia/china-demotes-a-military...
    Nov 04, 2013 · BEIJING — A senior military commander in China’s restive far west has been stripped of his position on a powerful Communist Party governing body after ...



    • ...Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle through the throngs of tourists and then take their own lives.  
    • [they] set it on fire, sending up a plume of smoke that briefly obscured the iconic portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong. 
    • state news media has sought to portray the episode as an attack by Islamic extremists from Xinjiang,
    • Uighur exile groups and some Western analysts have questioned allegations that blame outside agitators, saying the Chinese government has failed to produce evidence linking the attack to the group, known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement
    • .Chinese authorities are issuing sinister threats against the Uyghur people and making damaging accusations no one can check,” Rebiya Kadeer, the [The World Uyghur Congress ]organization’s president, said in a statement on Friday.
    • Radio Free Asia (American government) quoted a former classmate of Mr. Hasan’s [nov 2] who suggested that Mr. Hasan might have been motivated by vengeance for a brother killed in a mysterious traffic accident several years earlier. The classmate, speaking by phone, said Mr. Hasan blamed the Han Chinese or the Chinese authorities for his brother’s death....[local official counters] “We are not aware of the family having any issue with the government” 

    10/31/2013

    http://www.uyghurcongress.org/en/?p=21246
    In the case of an incident that occurred in Lukchun on June 26, 2013, the Chinese government at first imposed a domestic media embargo, deleted any online references to the events and detained overseas journalists attempting to conduct onsite reporting. The Chinese government subsequently declared the Lukchun incident as terror motivated although otherexplanations were available.
    Doubts over Chinese claims of Uyghur terrorism have been consistently expressed in the overseas media, including by the New York Times’ Ed Wong, the BBC and the New York Times’ Andrew Jacobs.
    In the era of the “war on terror,” the Chinese government has endeavored to link Uyghur dissidents and groups to international terrorism. Chinese authorities continue to defend their crackdowns in East Turkestan in the name of fighting the “three evil forces of separatism, terrorism, and extremism;” however, scholars have cast considerable doubtupon China’s assertion that it faces a concerted terrorist threat.
    The World Uyghur Congress asks overseas media to treat Chinese authorities’ allegations stemming from the October 28, 2013 incident with skepticism and to report on the absence of independently verifiable evidence available to the international community regarding Chinese government claims of Uyghur terrorism, instead of sensationalizing and speculating on a tragic incident.
    including a 42-year-old man, who self-immolated on the square in 2011 over a legal dispute.

    China’s attempt to link Uyghurs with terrorism has resulted in broader societal discrimination against the Uyghur peopl

    regard information originating from Chinese state sources, which cannot be independently verified, with suspicion and to express deep concern if China uses the Beijing incident to exacerbate its crackdown on Uyghurs in East Turkestan


    http://www.smh.com.au/world/china-captures-terrorist-attack-suspects-20131030-2wh8x.html

    China captures terrorist attack suspects

    10/30/2013


    1. Beijing: Muslim family led Tiananmen suicide attack - USA Today

      www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/30/...attack/3312251/
      3 mins ago - Police in China have detained five suspects linked to the Monday crash in Tiananmen Square in what they have described as a.
      China's counter-terrorism capabilities are rudimentary, they lack high-grade, high-quality intelligence to fight terrorism," said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based terrorism expert who has researched terrorism in China.
      attack was done by Usmen Hasan, his mother Kuwanhan Reyim, and his wife Gulkiz. Police said the trio lit gasoline to start the fire that killed them.
      found gasoline, gasoline containers, a steel stick and a flag with "extremist religious content" inside the Jeep, and long knives and "jihad", or "holy war", flags in the temporary residence of five suspects who were detained 10 hours after the incident with the help of police in Xinjiang,
      Xinjiang separatist groups seeking to form an 'East Turkestan' independent of China,

    2. Reports: Chinese Officials Suspect Xinjiang Link to Beijing 'Attack'

      www.voanews.com/content/reports...link...beijing-attack/1779692.html
      15 hours ago - Reports from Beijing say Chinese authorities believe a car crash that killed five people Monday in Beijing's Tiananmen Square was a ...





    Five arrested in Tiananmen Square incident, deemed a terrorist attack

    CNN
    3 minutes ago
    Written by
    Steven Jiang
    Beijing (CNN) -- Five suspects have been detained in Monday's deadly crash in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, which has been identified as a terrorist attack, Beijing police said Wednesday.


    China: 2 dead, 38 injured after Muslim suicide car attack in Tiananmen Square

    by creeping
    via Police focus on Muslim separatists after Tiananmen car attack - CBS News. Chinese police were seeking information Tuesday on two ethnic Uighur suspects believed linked to an apparent suicide car attack near Tiananmen Square in the country's capital that killed five people and injured 38. Police released no word about a possible motive for […]
    Washington Post - ‎52 minutes ago‎
    BEIJING — Authorities are investigating whether ethnic minorities from China's troubled Xinjiang area were involved in a fiery vehicle collision at Tiananmen Square on Monday that killed at least five people. In a notice sent to hotels in Beijing, police ordered ...
    UPI.com - ‎4 minutes ago‎
    The Guardian - ‎16 minutes ago‎
    Enquirerherald - ‎22 minutes ago‎
    9NEWS.com - ‎22 minutes ago‎
    BBC News - ‎25 minutes ago‎

    In Depth

    New York Times - ‎3 minutes ago‎
    BEIJING — A day after a sport utility vehicle mowed down dozens of pedestrians near Tiananmen Square and exploded at the foot of the nation's most hallowed monument, killing five people, the authorities appeared to be focusing on suspects from Xinjiang, ...
    USA TODAY - ‎2 minutes ago‎
    BEIJING — Chinese authorities asked local hotels to watch for a pair of suspects from a majority-Muslim western region of the country as suspicions grew that a deadly car crash and fire near Tiananmen Square was a terror attack. The crash at the center of ...
    Reuters - ‎9 minutes ago‎
    By Benjamin Kang Lim and Ben Blanchard. BEIJING | Tue Oct 29, 2013 8:20am EDT. BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities investigating what could be Beijing's first major suicide attack were searching for two men from Muslim-dominated Xinjiang on ...
    BBC News - ‎11 minutes ago‎
    Police in China have named two suspects linked to a "major incident" in Beijing, after a deadly car crash in Tiananmen Square, state media report. The vehicle crashed into a crowd and burst into flames, killing five people. Police subsequently issued a notice ...
    Christian Science Monitor - ‎1 hour ago‎
    Police investigating a vehicle that plowed through pedestrians and crashed at Beijing's Forbidden City in an apparent suicide rampage searched Tuesday for information on two ethnic Uighur suspects believed linked to the attack, which killed five people and ...
    AFP - ‎10 hours ago‎
    Beijing — Chinese police have named two suspects from the restive Xinjiang region after a car crash on Beijing's Tiananmen Square killed five people, state-run media said Tuesday, as analysts said the incident looked like a premeditated attack. The crash ...
    AFP - ‎Oct 27, 2013‎
    Beijing — Five people including a Philippine tourist were killed and 38 were injured after a vehicle ploughed into crowds in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Monday and caught fire, police said. The blaze sent clouds of smoke billowing into the air near a giant ...

    From China

    Shanghaiist - ‎2 hours ago‎
    There are—so far—very few official comments coming out from the Tiananmen Square car-incident yesterday, but 'sources' have apparently indicated that the crash and fire may have been part of a suicide attack involving Uighur Muslims. There are also ...
    Shanghaiist - ‎3 hours ago‎
    Yesterday afternoon, a car crashed into the main gate at Tiananmen Square and burst into flames. The Beijing police promptly cordoned-off the scene, and Xinhua has been tight-lipped about any details. It's difficult to know what the hell just happened, but ...

    The Tiananmen Square car fire is still a mystery, but here's what we know

    tiananmen-day.jpg
    Yesterday afternoon, a car crashed into the main gate at Tiananmen Square and burst into flames. The Beijing police promptly cordoned-off the scene, and Xinhua has been tight-lipped about any details. It's difficult to know what the hell just happened, but here's what we're looking at so far.

    Who

    Five killed and 38 injured. According to Bloomberg, there were three people in the vehicle—a white SUV (or maybe a jeep)—all of whom died. The additional two deaths were tourists (one from the Philippines, one from Guangdong) who were hit by the truck.
    The car passengers' identities are still unknown (well, unpublished) but a leaked document revealed that Beijing authorities may be searching for "2 Xinjiang suspects with cars." While that could certainly develop into a key part of this story, it hasn't yet developed further than the leaked memo.

    What

    Nobody knows. According to The Guardian:
    Within minutes of the crash, authorities erected high blue and green barriers around the site and temporarily blocked roads to the square. Transport authorities said that the underground station on Tiananmen's east side had also been closed. [...]
    Two reporters from AFP were detained on the scene "with images deleted from their digital equipment", the newswire reported.[...]
    By late afternoon the wreckage had been cleared and parts of the square reopened.
    Information flowing out of Beijing has been severely limited by the police forces' quick cleaning-up of the scene, and many photos were, fortunately, salvaged from Weibo before being deleted.

    Where

    Tiananmen Square, Beijing. This is one of only two things we know 100% for sure.

    When

    Yesterday (October 28th) at 12:05 in the afternoon, give or take a few minutes. This is the other thing that we know 100% for sure.

    How

    With great amounts of gusto, as the LA Times reports:
    [The] white sport utility vehicle entered a sidewalk and drove nearly 500 yards, plowing through tourists and police, until it stopped near the iconic portrait of Mao Tse-tung that hangs over the main gate in front of Tiananmen Square. [...]
    Separating the street from the sidewalk are 5-foot-high white steel barricades—designed to prevent the type of attack that took place Monday.
    However, the white sport utility vehicle appears to have entered at one of the few openings in the barricades, some 500 yards to the east of the square at the intersection of Nanchizi, a street running perpendicular to the main Chang’an Street. The driver then headed along the sidewalk toward the enormous Mao portrait, which hangs over the vermillion-walled "Gate of Heavenly Peace" (or Tiananmen Gate) that leads into the Forbidden City, erstwhile home of China’s emperors.

    Why

    Time will tell, hopefully.
    Contact the author of this article or email tips@shanghaiist.com with further questions, comments or tips.


    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/us-china-tiananmen-idUSBRE99S02R20131029

    China suspects Tiananmen crash a suicide attack: sources

    Official sources are still mum but unofficial sources and police requests show they suspect it was a deliberate suicide attack by  muslims, and they deliberately set the vehicle on fire [evidently to make foe more drama].  Police were looking for two suspects and licence plates of ethnic Uighurs, who are Turkic-speaking Muslims from Xinjiang, the site of previous riots and unrest. An anonymous source close to the government told Reuters "It was no accident. The jeep knocked down barricades and rammed into pedestrians. The three men had no plans to flee from the scene," 

    Chinese government is declining to say whether the Tiananmen Square car accident was a terrorist attack or a political protest similar to the previous self-immolation incidences where people purposefully killed themselves. It’s possible it was just an accident since the vehicle lost control and jumped over security barriers and burst into flames when it hit the square. But one witness reported hearing an explosion before seeing the smoke and flames
    Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1009895/tiananmen-square-car-accident-censored-by-china-was-it-a-terrorist-attack/#scxfsOdFhXEyXpOC.99



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    • sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/3-dead...58 minutes ago
      Oct 28, 2013 · A jeep slammed into pedestrians ... is the symbolic center of political power in China, ... Shortly after noon the jeep turned onto a sidewalk ...
      There was no immediate indication of whether the incident was an accident or a deliberate attack. Shortly after noon, the passenger vehicle turned onto a sidewalk alongside Chang’an Avenue, which runs between the iconic gate and Tiananmen Square, and hit tourists and police officers before slamming into a fence abutting a stone bridge and catching fire, the police said in a statementposted to their account on their Sina Weibo microblog. Xinhua first reportedthree people were killed and 11 police officers and tourists were injured, thenraised that count to five dead and 38 injured later in the day.














    Tiananmen Square Jeep Rampage Blogger Terrorism
    http://ninjapundit.blogspot.com/2013/10/jeep-plows-through-sidewalk-at.html

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