Col R Hariharan
Indians who have been facing terrorist attacks for decades will condemn
the dastardly attack at Kunming railway station in the early hours on March 2
that took 29 innocent lives. Over 100 people were reported injured in the
attack. The masked terrorists wielding fruit knives struck wildly at the people
crowding the station. Xinhua reported that a gang of eight “appeared to
be expert at hacking people” took part in the attack.
The same agency also reported
that the Kunming Public Security Bureau’s four-man SWAT team patrolling the city responding to the alert reached the
station in ten minutes and in the midst of all the chaos managed to shoot and
kill four of the five terrorists including a masked woman. The fifth member was
wounded. It said the terrorists dressed in black when challenged stood
their ground and the SWAT team leader managed to shoot a woman attacker who threw
a knife at him.
China’s security forces including PLA, Special Forces, Border troops,
Public Security forces, and the police have been honing their counter terrorist
operational skills during the last few years. Counter terrorism has been the
focus their joint training programmes with the forces of other countries
including Russia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The public security forces
response to Kunming attack has shown their
training has paid off. Their operational
readiness – to react and respond in real time - and the professional competency
demonstrated in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, far away from
Xinjiang which had been the focus of militant attacks is really commendable.
The Kunming attack brings back
the unpleasant memories of Mumbai police’s clumsy response and utter lack of
preparedness despite prior intelligence during the 26/11 terrorist attacks carried
out on 12 targets by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (LeT) terrorists who
infiltrated into the city and held it to ransom for four days from November 26,
2008. They killed in all 164 people and injured 308 others. Two LeT terrorists who reached the
Chhatrapati Sivaji Terminus (the Victoria Terminus) station opened AK-47 fire
on passengers waiting there, killing 58 of them and wounding 104. The
policemen on duty at the station opened fire with their obsolete rifles and
managed to kill one terrorist. The efforts of the Union Home Ministry to
streamline and coordinate the state’s readiness to respond to terrorist attacks
that started immediately thereafter are yet to be completed!
The alleged mastermind behind the
Kunming attack was identified as Abdurehim Kurban, which is probably a Uyghur
name. Though the State media blamed Saturday night's attack on "Xinjiang
separatist forces" they did not mention the Uighur connection to such
attacks. Evidently they were following President Xi Jinping’s call for resolute
opposition against any words and actions that damage the country's ethnic unity
while referring to the attack.
As things happen in China’s
controlled media environment, the local
newspapers did not report the Kunming attack immediately on occurrence.
But they preferred the safer option of leading with the news of the 12th
National Peoples Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative
Conference (NC-CPPCC ) at Beijing rather than the terrorist attack. They
carried the news only the when micro blog messages about the attack flooded the
internet. This contrasts sharply with
our free media which vied with each other to provide real time coverage of the
security forces operations that benefitted the attackers more than the public!
The President taking part in a
plenum discussion with the members of the NC-CPPCC said, "we
will build a 'wall of bronze and iron' for the ethnic unity, social stability
and the national unity.” But unfortunately this is not being reflected in the
state’s heavy handed response meted out to public protests by Uyghur and
Tibetan minority in Xinjiang and Tibet respectively.
Kunming has a small Uyghur community confined to Dashuying
village. According to locals
they had come to Kunming to make a living. Kunming also has Uyghur eateries,
which serve Naan like rotis in the evening, a treat for Indian visitors. Obviously, local Uyghurs will be facing the
brunt of the fall out of the terrorist attack. So Xi Jinping’s point is well
taken. President Xi is fully conscious of the threats to ethnic unity as the
Uyghur and Tibetan minority communities are unhappy at the threat to their
distinct identity, culture and languages as Han colonisation has been
continuing relentlessly.
So the disturbed social environment within the two regions
cannot be wished away when the state
considers action against the “terrorists, extremists and separatists “
(as Chinese seem to distinguish the various shades of Uyghur activists)
infiltrating across the international borders.
India’s own experience has shown in the Northeast that lasting solutions
for insurgency have to be found through political measures in tandem with
military operations to make the militants and insurgents wither away without
popular support.
Unfortunately this does not seem
to be happening in Xinjiang. The Xinhua interview with the deputy commander of
the Xinjiang Military Area Command Major General Saimati Muhammat an ethnic
Uyghur attending the NC-CPPCC at Bejjing as a member reflects it. He is
reported to have said “Counter-terrorism arrangements are in place to prevent
serious incidents in Xinjiang." He added that the armed forces in Xinjiang
would never ease border controls, implying all the attackers do not belong to
the country.
It is obvious that there is more than ethnic or religious
background to the ‘Xinjiang separatist strikes’ (as they are officially
termed). Many Uyghurs including the moderate ones have a grouse against the Han
colonisers who had been inducted into the Province for over six decades. They
threaten not only to subsume Uyghur identity but monopolise development and
employment opportunities which are tilted in favour of Han population. Some of
their complaints relating to ban on keeping a beard or wearing a headscarf by
women are common to Muslims of various ethnicity in China. The state has
responded to these grievances in a highhanded manner. For in instance the medium of instruction in
school is Mandarin Chinese and very few books are published in Uyghur.
According to China Daily, the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region’s is
doubling the allocation for its Public Security Bureau to Yuan 2 million
($330,420) to strengthen the counter terrorism effort as per the government's
draft budget report released at the annual session of Xinjiang Regional
People's Congress. But that alone is not going to improve the situation. There
has to be greater understanding from the state to involve the minority
population in the mainstream, rather than segregating them in ghettoes.
Col R Hariharan a retired MI
officer, is associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies and the South
Asia Analysis Group. E-mail: colhari@yahoo.com. Blog: www.colhariharan.org]
Courtesy:
Chennai Centre for China Studies (C3S) Paper No.2077 dated March 6, 2014
