The New Dominion

Over a month ago, the Associated Press released 3 photos depicting the aftermath of the August 4th attack in Kashgar. The official version of events first has a dump truck ploughing into ranks of drilling police officers, followed by two assailants leaving the vehicle to continue the attack with machetes and improvised explosives. The carnage resulted in 16 deaths and 16 injuries - later, the two attackers were IDed as Uyghurs, instantly sucking the attack into the pre-Olympic “War on the 3 Forces” narrative.

The pictures themselves were somewhat of a mystery. On one hand, they verified both the existence and the viciousness of the attack, but on the other hand, the pictures were given no context - who had taken them? Why were they released now? Or allowed to be released, given the tight security and scrutiny that always follows attacks of this nature in China? Blurry, taken from afar, the three pictures hinted of amateur journalism, snapped surreptitiously by an unrelated party who just happened to be in the right (or wrong?) place at the right time.

The on-the-spot photographer has now stepped forward to The New York Times, not only confirming that the photos were examples of citizen journalism that slipped passed the censors, but also revealing himself to be a tourist foreigner - guessing from his accent on the accompanying audio clip/slideshow, an American or a Canadian. Furthermore, the original 3 photos have now been expanded to 27.

Now this is totally out of left field. Let’s take a look at the some of the newer photos and the exhilarating new eyewitness testimony.

The photographer along with another two eyewitnesses were staying in a room at the Barony Hotel conveniently across the street from where the incident occured - a place actually mentioned in the recently discussed China Daily article (”Only the rich stays in Barony,” said a staffer at the Yijin. “A single room there costs 580 yuan per night.” — go figure!). They were alerted to the attack by the loud crash that occurred when the dump truck slammed into a light pole in front of the Yijin hotel.

The photographer said that the truck then hit a telephone or power pole and slammed into the front of the other hotel, the Yiquan, across the street. A man wearing a white short-sleeve shirt tumbled from the driver’s side, he said.

“He was pretty injured,” the photographer said. “He fell onto the ground after opening the door. He wasn’t getting up. He was crawling around for four or five seconds.”

Here we have an eyewitness ID on one of the people to emerge from the truck - severely injured and wearing a white short-sleeve shirt. Let’s keep this in mind. The photographer goes to get his two companions, and so leaves the scene unattended for a short period of time during which this fellow - the driver - disappears from the scene. Now here’s where things get really funky:

“A lot of confusion came when two gentlemen, it looked like they were military officers — they were wearing military uniforms, too — and it looked like they were hitting other military people on the ground with machetes,” the friend said.

“That instantly confused us,” he said. “All three of us were wondering: ‘Why are they hitting other military people?’ ”

Woah, woah woah. And that was the reaction of the photographer, who decided at this point that this was something big and should be photographed. In some of the initial photos we do indeed see a scuffle that appears to involve mostly uniformed individuals - though the view is obscured and blurry.

The eyewitnesses seem pretty certain that the people wielding machetes were uniformed, and the people that they were attacking were also uniformed. This throws up some confusion and suspicion should we believe that one individual who exited the truck was not in uniform and was not mobile after the crash.

Next, the witnesses describe two individuals who appear to have been detained and cuffed:

The photographer said that there had been two men in green uniforms on their knees facing his hotel and their hands seemed to be bound behind their backs. Another uniformed man began hitting one of them with a machete, he said.

After being hit several times by the machete, the uniformed man fell down, and at least one other police officer came over to kick him, the relative said.

Wong, the New York Times reporter, takes time to point out some slight discrepencies between the 3 individuals’ accounts - one says the two detained individuals were prostrate and were being beaten, whereas another claimed an officer walking away from the wreck was attacked by another officer wielding a machete, and a fight between the two ensued.

The key here is that according to eye witnesses fighting ensued between individuals in uniform. So obviously it is no stretch of the imagination that the wily attackers themselves were dressed as paramilitary officers to further confusion after the initial assault. Nor would it be surprising to see officers using machetes to attack detained, bound individuals - this could possibly be an officer understandably venting his fury against the perpetrators using their own weapons. There also is, of course, the third factor of the unreliable of eyewitness accounts, which among the three witnesses already contain significant divergences.

Then there is a question of the machetes. Who brought them, and who used them against who? Other photos provide a clear view of at least two machetes used in some capacity during the attack.

At some point in time the machetes fell into the hands of the officers - that is, if they weren’t the ones who deployed them at the scene in the first place.

It became clear to the tourists that the men with machetes were almost certainly paramilitary officers, and not insurgents, because they mingled freely with other officers on the scene.

Again, there are a number of possibilities that we cannot distil further barring a personal interview with the eyewitnesses, or, better yet, a video of the incident. It’s possible that some of the officers were drilling with machetes and used them in defense against whoever hit them with the truck - after all, witnesses spotted a rifle with a bayonet at the scene, visible in the second photograph above, which Wong notes is rather bizarre but I could easily imagine being used as equipment for training and drilling, and machetes could’ve been there in the same capacity. Again there is the possibility of the machetes being quickly confiscated from the attackers and eventually being used against them.

Then, according to the NYT article, the police focused on clearing witnesses, two of whom we can see in this picture, both Uyghurs (I’m guessing from the dress - there’s also a small possibility that the woman at the top is Hui).

It’s kind of weird how normal the scene is. Except, of course, the shellshocked police officer crossing the street. Anyways, after this, the inevtiable occured and the police did a sweep of the hotel the eyewitnesses were staying in. Miraculously, the photos were not confiscated, though on second thought, Xinjiang police officers not being meticulous is perhaps more mundane than miraculous.

So what do we take from this? First of all, before I unleash an idignant torrent of comments, I make very clear my understanding of how unreliable eyewitness accounts can be, even with pictures. I was actually alerted to this story by a defense attorney acquaintance of mine who I know would do an impeccable job undercutting any attempt to deploy any sort of eyewitness account plus blurry picture combo in court. Despite the framework we are provided by the three eyewitnesses and the pictures, as mediated by Edward Wong of the New York Times (who chose what to include and what not to include), we are still left with ambiguous, blurry, and conflicting descriptions which do little to clarify what actually happened that day.

Nonetheless, I feel that the value of these photos are ironically rooted in the added pall of confusion and uncertainty they cast over events that day. They may not weave a precise story without any doubt or confusion - but there is such a precise, and tight-knight account of events out there, and that is the official account provided by the state - nothing less than a clash of good and evil, between plotting, explosives-wielding Uyghur attackers on one hand, representing terrorism, separatism, and extremism, and the good, righteous armed police on the other. The power of these new factors is variable. At the very least, it throws into question the use of explosives at the site and also adds a period of retaliation during which police officers wielded machetes against the perpetrators - understandbly so. At most, the account could present a challenge to the backgrounds and motivations of the attackers themselves and cast the state’s portrayal of the event into a far more cynical light.