Xinhua Version of Kashgar Attack Addresses NYT Doubts
This is the second sentencing we’ve covered at The New Dominion (the other being the sentencing of conspiracists captured in January 2007) and both have been quite informative because sentencing is when the authorites release to state media networks the official version of events as established by the trial. And so when it was brought to my attention via a few Western networks plus the China Daily, I sought out the Chinese version of the story thinking there would be more information and sure enough, I found it and it indeed has a relatively detailed account of what the court thinks happened in Kashgar on August 4th. Reuters, AFP, and China Daily – whose articles I linked to in the last post- continued the time-honored tradition of English language publications of merely touching on Xinjiang-related events provided its not hot at the moment, and at least for Reuters and AFP the capital punishment of two separatists in China is far more humdrum than the actual unrest itself, when it occurs. Personally, I think that’s part of the reason authorities always wait until sentencing before releasing details – the stories aren’t as interesting to most of the ADD networks at that point. These are the rare instances where Chinese language state press tends to be more detailed than Western media – as for what the New York Times said about it, we’ll get to that later. But first, let’s take a look at what Xinhua has to say.
Here’s a summary of the article:
Kurban Hemit and Abdurahman Azat were found guilty of illegally manufacturing firearms, ammunition, and explosive devices, and of intentional homicide. For these crimes the two defendents were sentenced to death and permanent deprivation of legal rights.
According to case proceedings, Hemit and Azat were incited by extremist religious propaganda to carry out the attacks. In February and March of 2008 the two bought the materials necessary to manufacture guns, ammunition, and explosive devices. They also at this time began searching for targets and eventually settled on the officers of the Kashgar Frontier Defense Support Unit of the People’s Armed Police.
On August 4th, the two suspects used a stolen self-loading truck to transport all the materials they had created to a site near the police station. Then, at 8, when the police began their morning jog, Azat drove the truck into the soldiers, killing 15 and injuring 13. The vehicle lost control and crashed into the side of the road before flipping – as can be seen in this picture taken from the New York Times witness.
The official court account countinues: Azat then exited the truck, attempting to use the firearm he had created but to no effect – he then used oned of the explosives which successfully detonated and killed another individual. Hemit was not in the vehicle. Apparently, after the truck crashed, Hemit emerged from somewhere else wearing a summer uniform of the People’s Armed Police and began by throwing an explosive at the sentinel guarding the gate of the police station. Then he took out two knives and used them to hack at the soldiers injured from the truck collision, causing yet another death and two injuries. At this time, the surviving soldiers managed to apprehend both the perpetrators and a total of 17 people were killed and 12 injured.
Reading the Xinhua account immediately prompted me to go back and reread the only other existing account of events, the eyewitness testimony and pictures provided to the New York Times by a tourist who was across the street at the moment of the incident. The admittedly hot scoop hit the New York Times with a lot of fanfare, as indicated by the deliberately worded title “Doubt Arises in Account of Attack in China.” The point of the story, other than providing some amazing visuals and a surprising eyewitness account, was to sharply question the official version of events at the time, which then was still quite vague.
Among other discrepancies, the witnesses said that they heard no loud explosions and that the men wielding the machetes appeared to be paramilitary officers who were attacking other uniformed men.
That raises several questions: Why were the police wielding machetes? Were they retaliating against assailants who had managed to obtain official uniforms? Had the attackers infiltrated the police unit, or was this a conflict between police officers?
Quite interestingly I found that the terse yet nonetheless descriptive version of events put forward by Xinhua just yesterday meshes quite well with eyewitness testimony, which I believe is in one sense more reliable given the source (a bunch of tourists over a state run propaganda mouthpiece) but in a different way is more unreliable given the circumstances of the observation (unexpected, sudden eyewitness and reliance on human memory).
For example, the tourists noted that a non-uniformed individual staggered out of the truck after it crashed, greatly injured. This, we can postulate, was Azat. According to the Xinhua account most victims were indeed killed by the impact of the vehicle itself, and even if Azat were extremely incapacited on exiting the truck it is no stretch imagining him successfully using an explosive device after leaving.
The NYT account then says the scene turned even “more bizarre” when fighting started breaking out between uniformed officers. Should we look to the Xinhua account, this likely was when Hemit dashed into the scene wearing the same uniform as the other officers which would understandbly cause some confusion, both to the survivors and the eye witnesses. Enough confusion that the testimonies of the three eyewitnesses get a little muddled and contradictory at this point. The number of uniformed individuals doing the attacking is unclear among the eyewitnesses but is always “one or two,” which I would venture to say is within the margin of error for “one Kurbanjan Hemit wearing a police uniform plus the possibility of uniformed survivors retaliating.” I call attention to one of the eyewitness accounts in particular:
He said a man in a green uniform walked from the direction of the truck. “A policeman who wasn’t injured ran over and started hitting him with a machete,” the relative said. “He hit him a few times, then this guy started fighting him back.”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.
An uninjured policemen suddenly appearing on the scene and attacking one officer with a machete until other policemen figure out what’s going on and take him down – it fits the Xinhua description. I feel that other discrepancies revealed by the New York Times account could also be explained by one of the perpetrators wearing a uniform – for example, why did officers carrying machetes freely mingle with other officers in the aftermath? Presumably after the attackers were subdued some of the surviving officers would be carrying the weapons of the perpetrators. Why were there uniformed officers hacking at bound individuals on the ground? Either they were seeing Hemit attacking prostrate, injured individuals, or possibly furious survivors using the perpetrators weapons against the suspects after they had been bound or detained. The bottom line is, if we take for granted that one of the attackers was indeed wearing a uniform, the ensuing chaos is enough to ensure that eyewitness testimonies would have their mental boundaries between “attackers and victims” quite mixed up.
I’ll take a moment to call out the New York Times on sloppy – or rather, greedy journalism. Interestingly, in the article written yesterday by the New York Times covering the sentencing was the only one that I saw that showed any evidence that they had someone look over the Chinese language press release. Unlike the AFP or Reuters, which simply mentions the whole deal in passing, the New York Times includes details from the press release. However, what they fail to mention at all is the Xinhua account’s claim that Hemit was wearing a police uniform.
At the same time, the Xinhua account said, Mr. Hemit tossed explosives toward the gate of the security compound and brandished a knife at the police officers who had been felled by the truck. Mr. Hemit killed one officer and wounded another, Xinhua said.
Shame on you, New York Times. By failing to mention that Xinhua at least alleges Hemit was wearing a uniform, the rather ungraciously decide not to acknowledge the state version of events steals some thunder from their exclusive eyewitness piece, which they in fact quite smugly link in yesterday’s article as still “at odds with aspects of the official version.” That may be true – the eyewitnesses didn’t hear explosions after the truck crash – but describing the press release while omitting the one major detail of the incident which would in many ways reconcile the eyewitness accounts with the state accounts was just bad journalism.
So, what of it? While the Xinhua version of events does mesh quite well with the only existing independent account of events, I still hesitate to go so far and say its the real deal. After all, if you want to ascribe really sinister motives to the PR machine of the CCP – and why wouldn’t we? – it’s completely possible that the story was fabricated precisely to be compatible with the one eyewitness account that “got away” and hit the Western press. Or, the Xinhua version, which was the product of a trial proceedings which probably included the interrogation of the suspects and a lengthy investigation, may indeed by exactly what happened on August 4th. Or it could be somewhere in between. I have to come to the conclusion that, sadly, as with most things Xinjiang, in spite of this extremely detailed account of events, independent observers still can’t make a solid call on what really went down, and why.
Regardless of how well the state version and the one independent testimony mesh together, there is still one magic ingredient missing, and that is transparency. A smoothly knit story does not a truthful one make. And again, the fault rests with the Chinese authorities. The fact of the matter is, if events occurred precisely as the authorities are now describing it, there is very little to lose, if not nothing at all, to be transparent with the global community about the evidence and the results of investigations related to the case itself. Coming forward with genuine evidence linking these two to greater Islamic extremism – after all, the article does mention the two to be victims of extremist propaganda – would provide more credibility to the PRC and their own domestic war on terror. By sharing with the Chinese public and the globe at large a 9/11 Commission report style document detailing all the relationships, preparations, and ideological motivations relevant to the attack, the authorities can finally provide a solid foundation to claims that they have been making for years – that the threat is real and must be dealt with. And while being open will assuredly draw in credibility, the opposite – jealously keeping all evidence and investigations under tight lock and only releasing court documents that must be accepted as truth – only damages credibility and causes critics, both domestic and abroad, what could possibly need hiding. Until the policy towards criminal investigations of terrorist incidents changes, people interesting in knowing what happened are only left with potentially compromised governmental accounts, and, if they’re lucky, a hapless tourist who ended up being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
A translation of the Xinhua article follows.
The 2 Perpetrators of the August 4th Violent Terrorist Attack Against Police in Kashgar Receive Death Penalty
The Intermediate Level People’s Court of the Kashgar Prefecture in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region recently conducted, in accordance with the law, hearings regarding the August 4th violent terrorist attack against the police on in Kashgar, and has pronounced defendants Kurbanjan Hemit and Abdurahman Azat guilty of illegally manufacturing firearms, ammunition, and explosive devices, as well as first degree murder, sentencing them to death and lifelong deprivation of legal rights.
During proceedings at the Kashgar Prefecture Intermediate Level People’s Court it was revealed that the defendants Kurbanjan Hemit and Abdurahman Azat, over a long period of time, received religious extremist ideological propaganda and were incited to, on many occasions, premeditate and plan the theft of firearms, surprise attacks against military police forces, and violent terrorist activities such as explosions and assassinations. On February and March of 2008, the two defendants purchased materials to produce firearms, ammunition, and explosives, illegally manufacturing 11 explosive devices, 2 firearms and much ammunition, and furthermore designated officers of the Kashgar Frontier Defense Support Unit of the People’s Armed Police as the target of their terrorist surprise attack. On August 4th, at around 6 in the morning, the two defendants used a stolen, heavy self-loading truck to bring their self-manufactured guns, ammunition, explosive devices and purchased knives and hatchets to an area near the Kashgar Prefecture Frontier Defense Support Unit station. At around 8, when the Armed Police officers were exiting the front gate of the Frontier Defense Support Unit station for their morning run, Abdurahman Azat, immediately drove in a mad dash towards the rear of the assembled soldiers, plowing into them and causing 15 deaths and 13 injuries before the truck lost control, collided into the side of the road, and flipped over. Abdurahman Azat exited the car and attempted to use his homemade firearm without success, and then proceeded to detonate one of the homemade explosive devices causing one death. Kurbanjan Hemit, wearing a People’s Armed Police summer uniform, first threw a homemade explosive device towards the sentinel posted at the front gate of the Frontier Defense Support Unit station, then went on to use two knives to hack at the soldiers injured by the truck, leading to one death and two injuries. The two defendants were arrested on the scene.
The Kashgar Prefecture Intermediate Level People’s Court maintains that the defendants Kurbanjan Hemit and Abdurahman Azat carried out violent terrorist activities, the illegal manufacture of 11 explosive devices, 2 firearms and ammunition, seriously harmed public security, and that the actions of these two individuals thus violate laws against the illegal production of firearms, ammunition, and explosives. The two defendants, with the aim of sabotaging the otherwise smooth opening of the Beijing Olympics and producing internationally felt adverse repercussions, carried out preparatory measures by observing several times when and where the Armed Police exercised, prepared the necessary criminal implements, using a vehicle, knives, and explosives to kill officers of the Armed Police, which is tantamount to the crime of intentional homicide. The actions of the two individuals resulted in 17 deaths and 15 injuries. It was a particularly vile plot, its methods particularly merciless, its harm on society extremely significant, and it ought to be punished according to the full extent of the law. The Kashgar Prefecture Intermediate Level People’s Court therefore passes the above described sentence in accordance with the law.
Transparency will never come from the government alone. In a criminal case, transparency comes from the constitutional right to counsel, impartial jury, the principle of innocent until proven guilty and the fact that most of the motion hearings and trials are open to the public, and the court opinions are published. Oh, I forgot to mention also that the media is free to comment or doubt the court’s rulings. In a country where the government controls both the legislature and judiciary, and what media can and cannot say, there is no need and no possibility for transparency. Even the very meaning of transparency can be defined by the government. Remember, there are dissidents jailed for leaking “national secrets.” The “secrets” they leaked are things like the statistics of HIV positive cases, and instructions from the government to the media on how to (and mostly how not to) cover anniversaries of Tiananmen massacre. Clearly the government can get away with those interpretations of “national secret.” I would be very surprised if this time, the government somehow fails to define “transparency.”
Thank you for your thoughts on the Kashgar incident- your postings always provide some of the best insight around into Uyghur/Xinjiang happenings. Your dedication to objectivity in this and other instances is admirable, as are the questions you have raised regarding all available accounts of the Kashgar incident. However, I think there are a few important points that you missed. For instance, in one of the photos that were released in the NYT report that detailed the witnesses’ accounts of the attack, there were clearly two men standing side-by-side wearing PAP uniforms, wielding machetes (at least one of them is wielding machetes, and the other appears to be holding at least one machete or another type of weapon on his left-hand side). The man closer to the camera appears to be the same one from an earlier photo, and appears to be Uyghur (though I’ll concede this is impossible to confirm). The other man in the photo I mentioned first also appears to be Uyghur (again, impossible to confirm, of course.) But if we presume that either one of these men is Uyghur and is probably one of the alleged attackers, and the man standing next to him is also one of the alleged attackers, then it wouldn’t make sense to say that Azat was a non-uniformed individual who fell out of the truck after it crashed. Even more questionable to me is the premise that, assuming one of the alleged attackers drove the truck and was one of the aforementioned two men who was wearing a uniform, would bother to put on a uniform in an attempt to blend in with the PAP officers if he had just revealed himself to be an attacker by running people over with a truck. Of course, yesterday’s Xinhua report does not say both attackers were wearing uniforms, and Chinese embassy spokesman Wang Baodong explicitly said in October that only one of the alleged attackers was wearing a uniform (listen to this NPR interview for his remarks: http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/10/21.php). Granted, I’m making assumptions here, but I think this is an important point.
I also don’t think it is bad journalism for the NYT to have omitted the fact, in its latest report, that Xinhua said at least one of the men was wearing a uniform, when the official Chinese press did not make this claim in its original reporting. Surely THAT was the time that the Chinese press should have made such a claim, and not months later when it was convenient to do so. And the NYT rightly pointed this out at the time. Of course, it would be easy for Xinhua to tailor its claims to address the doubts put forth by the NYT- nobody can prove this is the case, but I think the very possibility renders Xinhua’s December 17 statement on this point rather moot.
But the most important thing to keep in mind is not piece-meal discrepancies or conflicting accounts, but rather the Chinese government’s complete lack of transparency, its track record of failing to report the truth, and its lack of credibility, which you have also referred to. The NYT may be motivated by “greed”, as you say, but the Chinese government’s motivations may be much more ominous. Serious questions remain about the official allegations made against the two alleged attackers, who will now be executed, and these questions must be explored, even if we will never know for certain what happened in Kashgar.
It’s “permanent deprivation of *political* rights”, not “legal rights”.
Hi Weegur,
Without more details from the photographer himself, we can speculate in all sorts of directions about the photos – and unfortunately there’s no way we can get in touch with the guy. The underlying assumption behind the scenario you put forward is that the people wielding the weapons in the pictures are the attackers – but that shouldn’t be taken for granted, I think. The eyewitness admits he started taking pictures as the incident was subsiding; the individuals wielding the weapons could easily be police officers who had confiscated the weapons from the attackers; after all, in one of the pictures there’s another soldier sitting on the curb quite unalarmed, which is understandable if the two people with weapons are compatriots who had disarmed the attackers. As to people who look Uyghur – the individual carrying the two machetes does indeed look very Uyghur to me; as for my own opinion the person with the rifle does not strike me as definitively Uyghur. But I want to point out that even if these individuals are Uyghur (which as you mentioned is an unprovable point) it doesn’t establish anything, simply because Uyghurs can be members of the People’s Armed Police. One of these guys being Uyghurs is not the automatic equivalent of him not being a member of the jogging officers.
Finally, I still call bad journalism on the part of the NYT. You’re right – they didn’t release details when the New York Times wrote the first article. But the purpose of the second New York Times article was to report on the press release, which it did, but it omitted one of the new pieces of information that came from the press release. In that capacity, I think Wong really fell short in the task of reporting on this new development on the case. Non-Chinese readers deserve to know at least that the government claims one individual was uniformed, but they would not get that from reading this article. And I think if we are going to evaluate the Times article, whether or not an English speaking reader would know this fact is a good criteria.
But overall, we come to the same conclusion. There needs to be more transparency, otherwise, there’s no way to be sure the state isn’t making this all up.
I second Weeger’s comments that you have provided a very thoughtful and somewhat thought-provoking analysis of the August 4 attacks in Kashgar.
I would go further and say that Weeger brings up a good point about the photographs and your response to Weeger on this point merely highlights the lack of clarity surrounding the case. The apparent lack of definitive evidence means that two men have been sentenced to death on some very shaky grounds.
I understand that questioning the New York Times article is important in terms of free speech, but the New York Times article also raises serious questions regarding the official version of events – questions which have not been sufficiently answered by the Chinese authorities, which then proceeded to hand down its harsh sentences.
I believe that the scrutiny being cast on the New York Times story by your post was never exercised on the official version of events during any hearing Kurbanjan Hemit and Abdurahman Azat may have received. It is also very clear that the Chinese media, XInhua in this case, never presented any of the doubt surrounding the case. Of course, in its role as government mouthpiece, Xinhua would not have raised any questions, but to compare the New York Times story to Xinhua’s appears to be not comparing like for like. There is simply a more robust editorial process which takes place when the New York Times releases a story than when Xinhua does.
Weeger also raises a point about the wearing of uniforms by the attackers. Although the point is speculation, it does seem unnecessary for the two attackers to be wearing PAP uniforms if the attack happened as the Chinese authorities say it did.
Lastly, and I realize that your post specifically addresses the events and not the sentence, but I’d like to add that the sentences appear to be a show of force and intimidation against Uyghurs. Surely, this was a key motivator in Kurbanjan Hemit and Abdurahman Azat’s sentencing and not the possible lack of clarity in the questions raised by the New York Times about the official version of events.
Another mystery solved… or is it?
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA.
The question is, why didn’t the NYT say that Xinhua has stated/alleged that one of the perpetrators was wearing a uniform? Why did it skip this part?