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China vows safe Olympics


The authorities have tightened security at the airport in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi [AFP]


Three days from the start of the Olympics and organisers have been forced to reassure athletes and spectators that the games will be safe after an attack in China's Xinjiang province left 16 policemen dead.

The authorities announced sweeping security checks on all transportation in Xinjiang on Tuesday and tightened checks at the airport in the province's capital Urumqi, resulting in long passenger queues waiting to get through security checkpoints.

Chinese state media said the attack on a border police station in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang left 16 policemen dead and 16 injured.

Two armed men drove a lorry into the station and threw two grenades, the Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

Xinhua, citing police, said two suspects were arrested but did not identify them.

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Monday's attack in Kashgar, about 4,000km from Beijing, raised security fears for the games but China's Olympics organising committee said it was prepared for "all possible threats".

"We believe, with the support of the government, with the help of the international community, we have the confidence and the ability to host a safe and secure Olympic games," Sun Weide, a committee spokesman, said.

Transport checks

The Xinjiang transport office announced a region-wide campaign to ensure the security of trucks, buses and transport hubs on Tuesday.

"The whole region's transport network must establish a dense atmosphere of secure transport and production," the region's state media reported, citing an "urgent directive" from the government.

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The Xinjiang transport office met to "make detailed and comprehensive arrangements for the stability and security of the transport system", said the report.

China has gone all out to ensure security for the games, deploying such hardware as surface-to-air missiles near sports venues and more than 100,000 security personnel for the games, which begin on Friday and end on August 24.

Neil Fergus, who was the director of security intelligence at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, said China's security preparation for the games was "second to none".

"At this stage there's no reason to think that the Beijing Olympic games are any less secure than previous games and in fact they may be the most secure games we've ever seen," he said.

Uighurs fear crackdown

Meanwhile, an exiled leader of China's Uighur Muslims condemned the attack but urged the government not to punish the innocent.


State media reported that two suspects were arrested after the attack [Reuters]
"We condemn all acts of violence," Rebiya Kadeer said in Washington, where she has been living in exile since 2005 after spending six years in a Beijing prison.

"The Uighur people do not support acts that engender bloodshed."

Urging the Chinese government "to refrain from using this incident to crack down further upon peaceful Uighurs", Kadeer said the incident "will only serve to increase suppression of the Uighur people and exacerbate tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese".

Kadeer's Uighur American Association said it was seeking independent accounts of the incident and urged caution over unsubstantiated official Chinese accounts.