This appears to be Urumqi — there is a red banner inside the mosque with Chinese characters. As for the scene outside with the men getting shot, there appears to be China Telecom advertising style signage on the side of the road, Chinese character banners, and the ubiquitous white barrier that separates the roads.

More analysis to come.

Is it normal for the police to fire warning shots of live ammunition inside of a city? Moreover, why are the Chinese police not equipped with less-lethal weapons as means of detainment, such as Tasers?

Update: The Jakarta Post reports disconcerting details about the events:

Photos taken at the time show one policeman raising his rifle to strike a man. Beaten, the man in a blue shirt with blood on his right leg lay on the ground. Police formed a ring around him, pointing their guns up at surrounding buildings.

If what the Daily Mail reports is true, then it sounds possible that these men were shot at point blank range.

Police said the three men attacked them when they tried to pull them off a fourth Uighur, whom they had attacked with knives and rods. (Emphasis added)

One witness, Zhang Ming, a construction worker at a building site near the incident, said he saw three men with knives come out of a mosque and attack a group of paramilitary police standing in a cluster along the road. Riot police then chased them, beat them and fired shots, he said. (Emphasis added)

If this claim is true, and that the men were armed when exiting the mosques, then we can only expect more crackdowns on Islamic institutions in Urumqi and the whole of Xinjiang. Unfortunately, this man’s statement is impossible to verify, and given the current situation, there are numerous reasons why such a statement could be fabricated for propaganda purposes, or distorted for international media consumption.

Posts on Chinese-language message boards describe the protesters at People’s Square as around a thousand Uyghurs shouting slogans in both Uyghur and Chinese. There are also reports of explosions in the Döngköwrük area.

The protest may have been broken up. Reports from Uyghur activists in Japan suggest that about 400 people are trying to reignite them. We will keep you updated.

RFA’s report, linked below, includes a photograph of the riots.

News agencies cite a report from the PRC’s official Xinhua news agency, but TND has been unable to locate the report.

See the map below for the locations of the protests.

View Urumchi Protests, 5 July 2009 in a larger map

Sources:

5 July 2009, BBC: China’s Xinjiang hit by violence

5 July 2009, Reuters: Riot hits China’s Xinjiang region capital – Xinhua

5 July 2009, Times of India: Violence erupts in China’s Xinjiang region, 2 killed

5 July 2009, Radio Free Asia: ﺋﯜﺭﯛﻣﭽﯩﺪﻩ ﺷﺎﯞﮔﯜﻩﻥ ﯞﻩﻗﻪﺳﯩﮕﻪ ﻧﺎﺭﺍﺯﯨﻠﯩﻖ ﺑﯩﻠﺪﯛﺭﯛﺵ ﻧﺎﻣﺎﻳﯩﺸﻰ ﺑﻮﻟﯘﯞﺍﺗﯩﺪﯗ

According to statements by a Säpo Chief Inspector, the suspect’s activities, conducted from January 2008 through June 2009, were not limited to Sweden. In Sweden, he is accused of being responsible for collecting information on Uyghur immigrants on behalf of the Chinese government. Sweden is home to a vibrant Uyghur community, including Küresh Kösen, who passed away in 2006, and more recently Adel Hakimjan, formerly a Guantánamo detainee and resident of Albania, who received asylum earlier this year. The historical connections between Sweden and Xinjiang run long and deep, and knowledge about Xinjiang is widespread in Sweden.

Formal charges must be leveled against the suspect by 18 June, at which time we should know more about the situation. In the meantime, Radio Free Asia, which makes a point of the suspect’s fluent Chinese, has been receiving calls from members of the Swedish Uyghur community reporting various unspecified suspicions about the man’s identity.

We may speculate more sympathetically, perhaps, about the man’s motives. It is, of course, entirely possible that this individual was sent by the PRC some years ago to keep tabs on members of the Uyghur community, that he is a mole and a shill for the Chinese state. I wonder, though, if he does not have family in Xinjiang, family who may be unable to follow him and whom the Public Security Bureau might harm if he does not follow their orders. It would be remarkable, I suppose, for someone who has spied in several countries to be a minor player in a larger game. It is worth noting, however, that he is accused of spying only over the course of the past year and six months. Do people usually begin their intelligence careers at the age of 59 or 60? Rather, I think that he is a typical example of “refugee espionage”: someone who is blackmailed into spying for their home country. It seems that this is a common problem in Sweden, and it is sad to see that a country that has accepted so many people in need has also taken on so many security risks, as well.

The New Dominion will keep you updated.

Sources:

8 June 2009 (Radio Free Asia) “Sweden arrests Uyghur who spied for China”

6 June 2009 (The Local) “‘Refugee spy’ remanded into custody”

4 June 2009 (The Local) “Security police arrest ‘refugee spy’“

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 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.

This situation, of course, is not from neglect or lack of trying – journalists and academics come to Xinjiang frequently with the express purpose of ferreting out elusive Uyghur commentary on various subjects – the Olympics, the Uyghur way of life, terrorism, inter-ethnic relations, etc.  Naturally, there is no one Uyghur voice on these topics, and we can hold as axiomatic the fact that across the millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang there are a wide range of stances, from one extreme to the other and everything in between. However, a robust network of rules,(some written, some not), surveillance, and punishments works quite efficiently in curtailing access to Uyghur opinions on a significant scale. Thus we are left with isolated, anonymous, and often furtive voices that crop up in media reports and academic treatises, to stand alongside the very vocal and hardly unchecked accusations of diasporic Uyghur activist groups. Furthermore, those voices are mediated – delivered to us through a writer who despite even the best efforts to be objective nonetheless has an agenda in writing the report or thesis, one that may differ from the objectives of the Uyghur source referenced.

But the exposé linked in the last post is notable because it includes surprisingly frank, critical, and penetrating commentary by Uyghur members of the Uighur Biz online community. This, of course, is not “unmediated” Uyghur opinion nor can we call it representative. Searching for opinions on the internet unleashes a whole separate type of skepticism – who can own a computer, who navigates online BBS’, who is willing to put forward their ideas, what does anonymity do to peoples’ self-expression. Nonetheless, it is, I believe, an untapped source for ascertaining Uyghur thoughts on these issues and it is far more direct and open than what comes out of an encounter with a journalist in a Kashgar alleyway. And so what is said in the commentary accompanying the notice is a lot more substantial and eye-opening than the usual one-liner delivered in a press release. And this is what I’d like to share with our readers today.

An important disclaimer – my Mandarin has lots of limitations. I welcome corrections.

Son of the West (西域的子) tells us how these policies personally effect people by describing the arrival of two PhD holding Uyghurs from Germany to watch the Olympics.

I had two friends from Germany come over, originally to watch the Olympics, they arrived at Beijing at noon on August the 6th, I went to pick them up, they received extra scrutiny when they passed through security, I had to sit around and wait at the airport for two hours until they came out, furthermore, I received a call from the police, and they made me report their travel arrangements, and they called me every two hours to ask about their every action, I brought them to an office run by Xinjiang folks to arrange lodging, but mysteriously the charge per night was 980RMB (usually it doesn’t approach 200RMB), but they thought that was too expensive, so they started looking for a place to stay, they went to several hotels but were rejected by all of them, and by the time it started getting dark they still hadn’t found a place to stay, originally they were planning on calling 110, but that was too much trouble and they didn’t call, and they had no choice but to buy a ticket for that day to go back home to Urumqi. These two got their doctorates in Germany, they both got scholarships, and have participated in important research projects. They’ve lived in Germany for four years now, and when I met them the first words they said were, “It’s great to be back home, and it’s really exciting to hear again the sounds we were used to hearing.” But they were very disappointed in Beijing, even in their own country they weren’t able to find a place to stay.

The notice posted on the wall in Beijing required inn owners to report Tibetan and Uyghur lodgers to the police, but we may speculate from the story above, and from other stories on Uyghurs being refused lodging, that hotel owners may have decided to circumvent the inconvenience simply by refusing Uyghur and Tibetan guests or charging unreasonable prices.

Several commentators observed the legal significance of this situation. This is first indicated by the rhetorically challenging title of the article itself, “Netizen Takes Picture of Notice Below, Reminding Us of Former Times in South Africa.” While the reference to apartheid obviously is meant to draw attention to the inherent racism of the police policy, one assumes that it also is a reference to the gradual and peaceful legal evolution which ultimately resulted in a fairer South Africa. Even more vexing to some commentators is the fact that technically the legal framework that renders these kinds of policy illegal already exist, and simply are just being flouted by the police. One solution, according to Gulzar, is making public knowledge of the law more widespread and available.

Even the police are issuing these kinds of emergency notices, so who’s left to protect our legal rights? With this kind of police notice, what kind of inn would be willing to take in Uyghurs or Tibetans? Whatever happened to the essence of the State Council’s document no. 33?

Actually these so-called “national regulations” are simply excuses certain departments have found for their local policies. National lawmakers should make the law publicly available to the masses, ensure that all people are aware of it, and resolve what it stands for and what it doesn’t stand for. So obviously, this statement of “national regulations” is absolutely an excuse, a strategic decision ejected from the ass of some public servant. It simply doesn’t have any legal foundation.

Of particular interest in Gulzar’s words is the insistence that these civil rights incidents are the work of corrupt and evil local officials who are ignoring and flouting a national legal framework and the edicts flowing forth from the centralized government. This is actually a growing theme in China that extends far beyond the Uyghurs – even in cases like the Sanlu Milk scandal and shoddy architecture in Wenchuan, “evil local despots” are decried by the people in contrast to the wiser rules at the center.

Other commentators pointed out that an entire ethnicity should not be punished for the actions of a small, violent minority – a rather poignant point since official documents regarding terrorism in Xinjiang always insist that the discontent is confined to an extreme and isolated group of people (极少数). Should this be the case, two different users named Azamat ask, why should all be punished?

Government measures have a direct influence on society. In any given country, inter-ethnic relations are a very sensitive and complicated issue. Criminal elements and terrorist extremists when all is said and done are an extremely small minority, if you can’t distinguish between these individuals and everyone else, you’re only going to proliferate the negative sentiments among the people. If a terrorist really wants to wreak havoc, he’s not going to check into a hotel and do business as usual. And as for these panicky prevention measures being carried out by the police, I’m afraid the only thing that’s being harmed are the sentiments of minorities. The police can ask hotels to strengthen safety measures in general but shouldn’t draw attention to ethnicity.

It’s the job of the government to combat criminal elements, but this absolutely must not come at the price of violating the rights of the people, and you simply can’t make an entire people the target of one’s suspicions, by doing it this way you’ll just strengthen the mistrust among certain sectors of society, create an even deeper chasm between peoples, to go from combating individual criminals to fomenting the mistrust of an entire people, this actually shows the incompetence of local governments and various departments.

Not only is the policy a type of collective punishment, the two Azamats observe, but it also has a very high chance of backfiring and simply increasing resentment among Uyghurs and Tibetans.

A user named Unique (唯一) points out that these types of policies are completely missing their target and are failing to address the fundamental problems behind the unrest in Xinjiang, interestingly invoking the Yang Jia, a 28-year old who walked into a Shanghai police station and killed 6 police officers. Interestingly, Yang Jia has become somewhat of an internet phenomena, receiving an outpouring of sympathy as a victim of circumstance, and later, of police shenanigans, despite his gruesome crime. Yang Jia expectedly got the death sentence, but Unique asks if the reasons compelling him to the crime in the first place were addressed.

The problem simply is not addressed by these kinds of methods.

It’s just like the Yang Jia incident. You kill someone, you pay with your own life. Otherwise the law is nothing but words. But the key here is why he resorted to murder.

And so the crux of the matter remains unresolved. You can’t keep on covering it up. The tension brought about by suppression will accumulate day by day, society itself will feel its effects, the feeling among the people will become more and more widespread until it spills over. And when the time comes the problem won’t be that of “a tiny cabal” or a few “unenlightened groups.”

Lastly, I’d like to end with the words of Yilihamu (伊力哈木), whose insightful analysis of history, various vested interests in Xinjiang, the “minzu” system, and the rise of a Uyghur ethnic consciousness is rendered even more powerful in that it is an authentic Uyghur voice. Yilihamu’s eloquent language for me evokes the powerful ideas explored by Ralph Waldo Ellison in The Invisible Man, a literary masterpiece on what it means to be a racially and ethnically marginalized stranger.

Both history and the present cycle of unpleasant disputes make it very difficult to resolve the complications that exist among Han Chinese and Uyghurs. During the times of authoritarian rule, the Uyghurs had the highest population and also the status of “autonomous ethnicity,” but because the resources they were able to take advantage of were relatively few, they continued to play the role of the “invisible people,” to retreat behind their own bodies. Further vexed by the so-called “East Turkestan” movement, Uyghurs wouldn’t dare come forward and hold their heads high, and gradually, they became the “unseen masses” and because of this the spirit of the Uyghur people faltered.  With further democratization, pluralization, and a growing feeling that their culture was gradually seeping away, Uyghurs started to acknowledge with ever-increasing awareness the presence of a crisis, and greatly inspired by the rise of the “human rights defense” movement, formed an ethnic Uyghur group consciousness. This, for the Uyghurs, is actually ethnic dignity and this self-awareness is actually a form of self-defense.  Society in modern Xinjiang is a fragmented society, and the antagonism among ethnic groups has caused a widespread crisis of confidence among the people of Xinjiang, on one hand everyone is a “person of Xinjiang” but each ethnic group has various, conflicting interests, each group disdains and quarrels with the other. Let’s think about this – Xinjiang has over 20 million people and it has been divided into several antagonistic ethnic categories, and at the same time within each ethnicity there are different groups, in this kind of situation anyone can be taken advantage of, oppressed, or sold out by someone else, in this kind of situation who else can someone from Xinjiang trust? On top of that in today’s Xinjiang various groups with vested interests are jostling with each other, the different administrative regions, the XPCC, centralized industries, the common people, these groups often clash for the sake of their own interest and often are antagonistic towards one another, in this type of situation both among ethnic groups and among groups with vested interests there is absolutely no trust, and there is a universal lack of confidence among the people.

I express my admiration to these individuals, not only for the insights they have put forward, but also for the courage to publish them on a website based in the PRC when similar sites have been closed before.

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.

There are, however, a few details about the latest incident which has caught my attention. First of all is the surprising and most obvious detail of violence by Uyghurs against Uyghurs. This situation is gaining new dimensions… or perhaps it is more appropriate to say that the conflict has always been far more nuanced than the “simmering Uyghurs” summary that is most often put forward by Western media outlets touching base with the region. The fact of the matter is, the Uyghurs’ involvement in Han develoment/colonization on one hand and East Turkestan freedom fighting/terrorism on the other hand is far from black and white. In an area is remote as this one we can expect both a strong anti-Han sentiment, as rural areas tend to be predominantly Uyghur and mostly more traditional, and a local party/government structure that is mostly Uyghur, since, well, there are less Han around to run things. So we see loyal Uyghur police officers falling in the line of duty, and who I believe inevitably will be put forward by the CCP as model minorities and to further reinforce the “extremists on the fringes” model of Uyghur discontent. But we also see this interest quote from the RFA article:

“After the Yamanya incident, we organized large public gatherings and asked people to help us find the suspects. We also said we would offer a 50,000-yuan reward to anyone who helped. But still nobody has come forward,” Omerjan said.

The Uyghur authorities in the region, representing the government and the party, was asking for help to resolve the Yamanya incident. But nobody stepped forward – this is a big deal. The silence is a form of support for what happened. And the support for the recent violence goes beyond tacit agreement – individuals of all stripes, from the young, female Anargul, to the presumably older community leader and cleric Shukur (who was apprehended earlier) are actively pitching in, in either the violence itself, which seems to be the case with Anargul, or sheltering and aiding the vigilantes like Shukur. Inadvertently, and thanks to the efforts of the RFA, the attacks are giving us a tiny, fleeting opportunity to see how Uyghurs can and do get directly or peripherally involved with this new type of violent, proactive resistance that has come out in recent weeks.

But again, its never that simple, and the agreement and support of action against the government is obviously not total as the reason the police were searching the field was they were tipped off, and although I’m certain there may well be Han families in the area, statistically and realistically speaking it was probably a Uyghur who called in. And this introduces the contrasting realization that some Uyghurs are willing to fight in the other direction – for what reasons, we cannot know now, but it could either be out of patriotism towards the CCP, or the more sinister (and in my opinion more likely) possibility that in Xinjiang a system of incentives and punishments is creating an “informant” environment among the Uyghurs.

And finally, although there is undeniably a trend of rising violence that cannot be ignored, the most recent violence in some ways adds more conviction to my belief that the spree of attacks are situational and comparatively crude rather than an indicator of suddenly cascading discontent and of increasing sophistication/international involvement. I mentioned in my thoughts on the Yamanya attack that it can be legitimately suspected that the attackers were pressured, in that situation and in that moment, to attack the inspectors because of something they were hiding, either on their person or in their thoughts. Similarly, this latest violence wasn’t a sophisticated, Al-Qaeda style attack that was planned and sends a deep ideological message of intimidation, rather, this was the inevitable result of fugitives doing what they do when they get cornered – they attack, and its both savage and uncoordinated. It seems that Anargul’s middle-aged mother and young son were hiding in the fields that day as well.

As usual, Xinjiang watchers must continue to play “wait and see,” forced to deal with only ephemeral glimpses into the reality in the area – but I definitely feel that in this situation we’ve been given a window much bigger than the glimpses we’re usually handed.

From the Xinhua article, it seems that Kucha is under lockdown, with businesses shut and security checks everywhere. This sounds a great deal similar to what was said to have happened in Qitai, north of Urumchi, on 25 June: according to rumor, ten soldiers had been killed in a raid on a munitions depot at the headquarters of the 102 Regiment of the People’s Liberation Army, 6 km from Qitai proper. Following this incident, the city’s businesses and institutions were closed or open on a limited basis for several days after, while armed police patrolled the streets at regular intervals, frequently performing identification checks. Although the veracity of this rumor cannot be verified, the circumstances and reaction seem very similar.

The IHT’s report also quotes IntelCenter, which conducted some analysis of the first video released by the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), as saying that that organization is, in fact, the same as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the terrorist group blamed by the PRC for most dissident activity in Xinjiang, the existence of which has not been independently verified. The evidence from IntelCenter as put forth in the article, based primarily on the organizations’ names, seems sketchy. We had a look at the relationship between Xinjiang separatism and radical Islam in Xinjiang at the TIP back in April, when a video of an execution of Chinese workers in Peshawar, Pakistan, distributed in the name of the TIP, was released.