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.

Interestingly, buried in the swelling posts on the anticipated post-Olympic crackdown was an AP article covering the same topic yet incredibly also included quite graphic pictures allegedly depicting the aftermath of the attack. While at this day and age a picture can no longer immediately count as evidence, these pictures are quite convincing. I’ll let them speak for themselves:

And there you have it. As can be seen in the second picture, this location is indeed in front of the Yiquan Hotel (see movie in this post), the place where the attack is said to have occurred, and the utter carnage is quite plain. In the second picture we apparently can see the dump truck used during the attack, burrowed into the entrance of the hotel which is now famously tarped over. Where these pictures came from (I’m guessing crime scene photographer or passerby with cellphone), how they became public (leaked), and why AP journalist William Foreman decided to tack them onto an article on a less relevant topic rather than making his own sensational article all about it, these are the questions of the moment.

Information released in English continues to stay one pace ahead of information released in Chinese as Xinhua’s English language website releases more details on the attack, including the suspects’ names as well as what appear to be results from initial questioning of the subjects. The 33 year-old vegetable seller is Abdurahman Azat and the 28 year-old taxi driver is Kurbanjan Hemit. According to Liu Yaohua, head of Xinjiang’s Public Security Department, the two suspects have confessed, have admitted to observing the jogging routes of the soldiers for over a month, and even quite conveniently had prepared documents beforehand declaring with jihadist gusto the conviction that “the attack was more important than their lives or those of their mothers, so they had to wage ‘holy war.’”

Furthermore, the truck they had used for the attack was stolen and was parked in front of the police station the night before the attack. One of the suspects apparently played the lookout and informed the other, in the truck, of the emergence of the police joggers. On receiving this information the truck driver attacked and the man on the ground joined him.

On one hand, Shi Dagang, the communist party secretary, asserts his belief that “For these two people, it is very clear that they are part of violent terrorist forces, and they have carried out a terrorist attack.” According to Liu, however, “No sufficient evidence has been found to say for sure that ETIM was behind Monday’s deadly attack.” This is key. Whether or not the authorities conclude the suspects acted alone or are part of a vast network is the foundation for sweeping “security actions” across Xinjiang. If the authorities conclude there are other threats out there, the Public Security Department will obviously react accordingly. Already, buses in cities throughout Xinjiang bear an additional employee who checks the bags of all who board. Stricter measures will very likely be implemented in the near future.

Not much can be said until we have an opportunity to view the video. The last time there was a buzz about an East Turkestan Islamic movement produced video, the resultant surprise and concern were quickly quashed by the content of the actual video itself which, as we covered here at The New Dominion, contained a number of inconsistencies and puzzling questions, all but ruling out the authenticity of the video’s claims.

Yet even with what little information we have, there are a number of eyebrow-raising points to consider…

First, why the delay? Why would such an organization carry out these attacks only wait until now to claim ownership of the violence?

Why would China remain silent on such issues even if they had the slightest inkling that East Turkestan terrorists were responsible for the acts? There’s a trend among the government to exploit every opportunity to justify increased Olympics security and crackdowns in restive minority areas, as evidenced by the glowing report released recently on “busting up terrorist cells”, as well as the intense domestic press coverage of incidents with really spurious, if not entirely fabricated links to religious terrorism. One would assume that these bus bombing incidents would also be revealed to the public as the machinations of Muslim terrorists, and thus further justify both iron security at the Olympics and massive crackdowns in Xinjiang – though I also acknowledge the possibility of a face issue, where the CCP is willing to acknowledge the threat itself but not actual instances where terrorists slipped through cracks in the Great Security Wall. It remains a fact, however, that the official government word on both the Kunming and Shanghai bus incidents is that while they definitely weren’t accidents, they aren’t linked to terrorism or the Olympics. Obviously the CCP and Seyfullah can’t both be correct.

Who is Seyfullah? What is the Turkestan Islamic Party? Much scholastic criticism concerning Chinese and American policy towards the East Turkestan Islamic Party (which apparently also goes by Turkestan Islamic Party, which also happens to be another possible name for the successor of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which may or may not have been eradicated) centers around the question of whether or not such an organization even exists on a structurally significant level. I’m willing to wager that if we were actually see this video we could ascertain just from the content whether or not there are genuine links to Uyghur-related unrest or if it is a deliberate but sloppy attempt to agitate, as the last video appeared to be. I would be interested to see what kind of background Seyfullah delivers his statement in front of, what language he speaks in, what kind of attire he wears.

What are the abilities of this shadowy movement? Violence attributed to Uyghurs has been on the decline for the past decade, yet suddenly there’s a Uyghur movement that is capable of striking in places as distant as Wenzhou, Kunming, Shanghai, and Guangzhou? Just as I believe the Chinese government is not beyond attributing Islamic, terroristic motives to secular hooligan gang violence in Urumqi, I wouldn’t put it past international agitators to attempt to weave a pattern between various violent occurrences, a pattern with no real basis in reality.

So basically, as is the case for most information coming out of China concerning Xinjiang or the Uyghurs – it’s time to suspend judgement. There are reasons this could be legit, and there are (probably far more) reasons this could be just troublemakers throwing fuel onto the pre-Olympic fire. But until we can see some primary sources on our own – rather than receiving information filtered through layer after layer of various news organizations – it’s hard to say what’s what. Trying to report on the facts about Xinjiang reminds me of what terrorism and “the war on terrorism” is all about – in the end, much of it is information warfare – it’s out-mis-informing the misinformation of the other side, until nobody knows what the hell is going on. That’s basically the situation we’re looking at when we try to analyze East Turkestani terrorism.

For now, we’ll just try to point out what we can and encourage a critical analysis and discussion beyond what reliable is simplly verbatim repitition of either Xinhua or “the terrorists” on the parts of the major news agencies. And in that spirit, if anyone has any comments, observations, or better yet, links to the alleged video, please do share in the comments below or in the contact form above.

The International Herald Tribune spotted a Chinese language press release in which Chinese authorities fascinatingly attribute the protests in Khotan as well as various forms of unrest and troublemaking in Kashgar, Urumqi, and Kizilsu Prefecture to the international Islamic political organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, or the “Party of Liberation.” Hizb ut-Tahrir, or HUT (kind of like Jabba) has garnered quite the reputation in Central Asian nations as a rallying point for Muslims bearing religious grievances against oppressive, secularist governments. HUT has an elaborate set of written guiding principles, and allegedly one of these embraces non-violent means as the only proper means to attain the group’s goal of restoring the Caliphate, thus, their main methods remain limited, on the surface, at least, to the propagation of the “right ideas” through lectures, sermons, booklets, and pamphlets. There have been several instances where violent activities were attributed by governmental authorities to HUT, but as usual the facts surrounding the case always get sucked into the abyss of propaganda and ulterior motives so the extent of the actual involvement on the part of the accused in the incidents remains nebulous at best – a situation quite familiar to anyone who has been following unrest in the West of China over the past month.

I managed to find the article mentioned by the Herald Tribune here at Tianshan net. It’s quite brief, so here’s a quick translation under the break.

Illegal Demonstrations in Khotan, lawfully dispersed by authorities, were planned by Hizb ut-Tahrir

From the evening of March 22nd to March 23rd, Hizb ut-Tahrir distributed and posted reactionary leaflets in an integrated operation occurring in Khotan, Kashgar, Urumqi, Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture, and other areas, with the goal of inciting the masses into demonstrating on the streets. The three successive, illegal demonstrations which occurred in Khotan from 2:50 to 4:15 on the afternoon of the 23rd were planned by Hizb ut-Tahrir and were swiftly halted by authorities within the scope of the law.

The relevant governmental departments are presently investigating the splittest elements who masterminded the incident.

The guiding principles of Hizb ut-Tahrir include the elimination of secular regimes, and the establishment of a unified, religious governmental structure, and the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate under sharia law. The world publicly recognizes Hizb ut-Tahrir as an extremist organization, a significant number of countries have designated it as a terrorist organization, and countries across the globe have adopted active measures to combat their activities. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s efforts to instigate and bewitch the masses into establishing a sharia-law Caliphate are against Chinese law.

Nice and to the point, eh?

This is the first attempt by the Chinese government to link unrest to Hizb ut-Tahrir that I’m aware of. It represents a significant and curious clarification of previous allegations of international involvement in Xinjiang incidents, the vast majority of which have involved a hazy specter of “international terrorism” or exile Uyghur organizations whose goals and aspirations remain quite distant from those of religious organizations. Authorities in China may be coming to the realization that in order to lend a greater air of credibility to their place in the global war on terror, they need a more well-defined enemy to point to, and as EurasiaNet’s archives amply demonstrate, HUT is an organization that leaves enough of a paper trail to be accused of seditious activities and also has a set of religious guiding principles extremist enough to convincingly sell them as a threat to national security – which is what practically every Central Asian country has done and what China appears to be doing right now.

By pointing a finger at distinctly Central Asian Islamic extremist group (HUT didn’t start in Central Asia, but it has received the most traction there), China also is framing its local War on Terror as a phenomenon belonging quite clearly to the realm of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a mutual-security organization a la NATO whose two big players are Russia and China and whose remaining members are located cozily in between the two behemoths in Central Asia. Accusing HUT, legitimately or otherwise, of stability threatening activity is an exercise that has already been practiced several times in the ‘stans, and by participating in that discussion China is not only lending credibility to the former claims of Central Asia’s despots but also is energizing the core message of SCO joint military operations such as the annual “Peace Missions”, which have all been conducted quite unambiguously against a fictional “terrorist/separatist” enemy.

I think this represents a significant change of course in the way China talks to the world about its “Islam” problem. Let’s keep an eye on whether or not this shiny, new bad guy will reorient China away from Western forces, engaged with Middle Eastern, “Al Qaeda” style extremism, towards Russia and Central Asia, who are dealing with Central Asian “flavored” extremism.