The World Uyghur Network
News
An electronic newsletter
Produced by the Eastern Turkistan Information Center
No: 103
March 9. 1999
| In this issue: (1) CHRONOLOGY OF BOMBS, UNEXPLAINED BLASTS Source: Agence France Presse (2) CHINA PARLIAMENT MULLS CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES (3) CHINA PM MAKES PITCH TO SLOW-GROWING HINTERLAND (4) PM ZHU ORDERS CRACKDOWN ON XINJIANG SEPARATISM (5) CHINA DETAINS CONTROVERSIAL WRITER (6) CHINA PLANTING TREES TO HOLD BACK DESERT IN NORTHWEST (7) EIGHT MUSLIMS EXECUTED IN XINJIANG (8) MUSLIM SEPARATIST ACCUSED OF COMMUNIST PARTY SECRETARY
MURDER *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* (1) CHRONOLOGY OF BOMBS, UNEXPLAINED BLASTS BEIJING - A rash of recent bombings has surrounded China's efforts to boost reform efforts and maintain social stability. The following is a chronology of previous bombs and unexplained blasts reported in China: Sept. 1986: An explosion in a bus in southern Fujian province killed six and injured 17. April 1987: A bomb on a train in northeastern Heilongjiang province killed 12 and injured 45, including the 21-year-old man who planted the bomb in order to kill himself. July 18, 1987: A bomb exploded in Tiananmen Square, close to the Mao Zedong mausoleum, but no deaths or injuries were reported. A 25-year-old man was executed two months later for the bombing. Dec. 7, 1990: More than 10 died and many were injured when a packed bus exploded in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. Feb. 25, 1997: Three blasts were reported in Urumuqi, capital of Xinjiang province, that killed nine and injured 74. March 6, 1997: A bomb exploded at a busy Beijing intersection, without casualties. March 7, 1997: A blast aboard a Beijing bus that injured 10 was carried out by criminals using a homemade bomb. May 13, 1997: A bomb exploded in a Beijing park next to the Forbidden City, without casualties. July 31, 1997: A 26-year-old jilted lover in southern Guangdong province strapped five ilograms of explosives around his chest, triggering a blast that killed eight. Sept. 8, 1997: At least 13 people were injured in an explosion inside a hotel bar in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Sept. 26, 1997: Eighteen people, including three babies, were killed in an explosion which destroyed a three story house in the eastern province of Zhejiang. Jan. 14, 1998: A suicide bomber killed four people and seriously wounded five others when he blew himself up outside the Beijing railway ministry. Feb. 14, 1998: A blast on a Wuhan city bridge that killed 16 was blamed on two peasants with marital problems. April 23, 1998: A jilted lover set off a homemade bomb at a Fujian province railway station, killing three and injuring two. July 2, 1998: a bomb exploded in a public security building in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, possibly injuring four. Aug. 1998: a handful of bomb blasts were reported in Xinjiang province, possibly detonated by Muslim separatists. Jan. 8, 1999: A bomb killed 19 bus passengers in a botched robbery attempt in northeast Liaoning province. Jan. 14, 1999: A bomb blast that injured four in a south China bus station was linked to Portuguese triads. Jan. 14, 1999: A homemade bomb was detonated outside a Tibetan clinic in a botched extortion campaign. Jan. 17, 1999: A bus explosion in Changsha injured 37 passengers. Jan. 22, 1999: A man who tied explosives round his waist and detonated them in a crowded cinema in Sichuan province died, injuring five others. Jan. 23, 1999: An explosion in Hebei province destroyed a stretch of the Beijing-Guangzhou railway line, without casualties. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* (2) CHINA PARLIAMENT MULLS CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES By Matt Pottinger BEIJING. China's parliament began deliberating landmark constitutional amendments Tuesday, including provisions to boost the private sector and enshrine the rule of law. The legislative body also began formal consideration of China's first unified contracts law, which is intended to ease foreign investment and technological cooperation with China. The National People's Congress (NPC) is expected to pass next week the contract law and all six amendments put forward by the ruling Communist Party, amounting to one of the boldest revisions to the constitution, first promulgated in 1954. Foremost are provisions on the status of the private sector and the rule of law. The NPC, officially the highest organ of government, has never rejected a Communist Party proposal. The Party, gearing up to celebrate this year the 50th anniversary of its capture of power after a long civil war, has proposed rewording the constitution's description of the private sector. Instead of being a ``complement'' to the socialist economy, it will become an ``important component'' of it. Another amendment will add a line to the constitution stating that China ``will carry out rule of law.'' They are important changes as China moves from rigid central planning to a market economy and tries to tackle flourishing corruption and crime. ``The government is moving in the direction of according more respect to laws and the onstitution,'' said one Western diplomat. ``While in the past maybe this could be dismissed as purely a cynical exercise, that would be less fair to say this time around.'' NPC delegates said the amendments would provide an ideological boost to private business and bolster the protection of legal rights. Entrepreneurs hope they will translate into easier access to capital. Private enterprises, which accounted for almost 20 percent of national output in 1997, are discriminated against by the state's banking system. Ordinary Chinese hope the amendments will also mean less arbitrary rule by minor officials and less corruption. In addition, a top legislator argued before the NPC that the contracts law would replace a jumble of regulations that have hampered foreign investment and technological cooperation. ``The draft contracts law tabled today has an enlarged regulated scope,'' said Gu Angran a member of the NPC's powerful 20-member standing committee. Other amendments include elevating ``Deng Xiaoping Theory'' -- a euphemism for the late patriarch's market reforms -- to the level of state ideology, putting it on a par with Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought in the Chinese Communist pantheon. Another clause would eliminate ``counter-revolutionary'' crimes, considered a relic of the Maoist era. That would be replaced, however, with a safeguard against ''activities endangering state security'' -- a broadly interpreted law that has already been used to jail pro-democracy activists. Amendments need the approval of two-thirds of the parliament's 2,978 deputies. Communist China's first constitution was adopted in 1954, five years after the end of the Chinese Civil War. The NPC has since promulgated three new constitutions, the most recent in 1982. Amendments were made in 1988 and 1993 to reflect changes in an economy fueled by sweeping reforms unleashed by Deng. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* (3) CHINA PM MAKES PITCH TO SLOW-GROWING HINTERLAND BEIJING. Premier Zhu Rongji called on China's underdeveloped central and western regions on Monday to ``seize opportunities and tap potentials'' to catch up with the far wealthier eastern coast, Xinhua news agency reported. Zhu was quoted as telling lawmakers from the landlocked norhwestern regions of Xinjiang and Qinghai the Communist party and cabinet had ``always attached great importance to the conomic and social development in the central and western regions.'' He also called on the delegates to stress social and political stability in Xinjiang and Qinghai, home to independence-minded ethnic minorities. ``We must resolutely oppose ethnic splittist activities in any forms,'' Xinhua quoted Zhu as saying in a reiteration of a theme he raised in parliament last week. In a discussion with the region's delegates to the annual session of the National People's Congress, Zhu said the Chinese hinterland had received the bulk of state money earmarked last year for infrastructure projects to boost growth, Xinhua said. He said as much as 62 percent of increased government investment went to the central and western regions, lifting their annual growth rate of fixed assets investment to almost twice the average of the eastern coastal regions. ``This is something unprecedented,'' Zhu said, citing Beijing's spending on water conservation, transportation and environmental protection projects in the central and western regions. Officials have expressed concern at a widening east-west development gap that has left China's poor interior fall way behind coastal areas. Coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Fujian, Shandong and Jiangsu have received the lion's share of state spending and foreign investment in the 20 years since Beijing began to seek market-driven economic growth. According to state media reports, Xinjiang reported economic growth of 7.3 percent and Qinghai 9.0 percent last year, against a national growth rate of 7.8 percent. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* (4) PM ZHU ORDERS CRACKDOWN ON XINJIANG
SEPARATISM BEIJING. Prime Minister Zhu Rongji urged parliament delegates from the troubled Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang Monday to crack down on separatist activities there. "We must resolutely oppose ethnic splittist activities in any form," Zhu told the Xinjiang delegates to the National People's Congress (NPC). "People of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang should unite and make new contributions to maintaining social stability and the lasting tranquility of China," he added, according to a Xinhua report. Northeast Xinjiang, with a population of some 17 million, is gripped by tension between the region's Uighur Muslim majority and Han Chinese settlers, who make up 38 percent of the population, according to official figures. Several violent clashes in past months have led to government crackdowns and a series of death penalties for those involved in activities aimed at undermining the authorities. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* (5) CHINA DETAINS CONTROVERSIAL WRITER BEIJING (AP) -- An author of books banned by the Communist Party has been detained in China's restive Muslim northwest, where he was researching his latest project, family and friends said today. Police notified Wang Lixiong's relatives in Beijing last Tuesday that he was being held at an undisclosed location in Xinjiang on suspicion of leaking state secrets, said Hao Weizhen, his adoptive aunt. The next day, police searched his apartment in western Beijing, scoured his computer files and took away handwritten manuscripts and copies of some of his books, she said. She claimed to know nothing more about Wang's latest research. But a fellow author, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed one source gave Wang local government documents and the author may have been trying to interview separatist groups in Xinjiang. Armed rebellion against Chinese rule by Turkic-speaking Muslims has flared anew in recent years. Despite a three-year crackdown against separatists and the Islamic study groups believed to support them, the conflict has become the government's most violent internal threat. Wang has waded into controversies before. His 1991 political novel ``Yellow Peril'' published under the pseudonym Bao Mi, or ``Keep Secret,'' predicted civil war in China and a nuclear conflict that ended with hordes of Chinese fleeing into neighboring countries. Authorities banned the book, presumably because it foretold the end of Communist Party rule. Last year, Wang published ``Sky Burial,'' a non-fiction work that trenchantly criticized the government's and the exiled Dalai Lama's policies on Tibet. Both works, published by a Toronto-based company, won wide followings in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other parts of the Chinese-speaking world. Pirated copies surfaced inside China. Wang began researching Xinjiang last year. Postal workers installed a special large-sized letter box on the ground floor entrance of his apartment block to handle all the newspapers and publications on Xinjiang he subscribed to, his adoptive aunt said. The 45-year-old author set out for Xinjiang on Jan. 10 and was originally due back in Beijing around Feb. 3, she said. He called Feb. 16 to say he was fine. Then, eight days later, he phoned again and said he had ``run into some trouble,'' Hao said. He had been in Hami, an oasis town, and was being ``taken back,'' presumably to Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, she said. ``We were really nervous. We didn't know if he had been beaten by ruffians or robbed,'' Hao said. ``I'll only be at ease when he comes back and I see him standing before me.'' Her husband was a colleague of Wang's father, one of China's pioneering automotive engineers. The couple helped raise Wang after his father was beaten to death by radicals during the Cultural Revolution. Police, meanwhile, have detained and questioned three members of the outlawed China Democracy Party, two of them apparently for trying to leave their hometown in northeastern China, a Hong Kong-based human rights group reported today. The nine hours Wang Zechen and Wang Wenjiang spent under interrogation Sunday appeared to confirm that police have been ordered to keep dissidents out of Beijing during the annual session of the national legislature, the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement reported. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* (6) CHINA PLANTING TREES TO HOLD BACK
DESERT IN NORTHWEST SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- China plans to plant thousands of acres (hectares) of trees in its arid northwest in an attempt to reverse the loss of land to desert, state media said Wednesday. Plans call for planting poplar trees, grasses and other plants on 330,000 hectares (825,000 acres) along the Tarim River in Xinjiang province at a cost of 1.5 billion yuan ($180 million), the Xinhua News Agency said. The result will be a "man-made oasis" stretching 1,000 kms (600 miles) along the river, Prof. Xu Peng of Xinjiang Agricultural University, who is in charge of the project, was quoted as saying. China has tried for years to fight the advance of desert in ist northwest by carefully maintaining barriers of trees around farming areas. In some areas, authorities are trying to convert desert into fertile land. Xinjiang covers one-sixth of China's land area, but much of it is desert. The Tarim River flows for 1,321 kms (825 miles) along the rim of the barren Tarim Basin, a sparsely populated area the size of Poland. In Xinjiang, area covered by poplar forests in the lower reaches of the Tarim have declined to 7,500 hectares (18,500 acres) from 54,000 hectares (135,000 acres) in the 1950s. An additional 65,000 hectares (165,000 acres) is to be planted as cotton fields or pasture land, Xinhua said. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* (7) EIGHT MUSLIMS EXECUTED IN XINJIANG The Chinese authorities say eight people have been executed in the mainly Muslim north-western province of Xinjiang for taking part in what they called illegal religious terrorist activities. Another forty-five other people were given suspended death sentences, life imprisonment or lesser prison sentences.The executions come at a time of tension between the majority Uighur Moslem population in Xinjiang, which China acccuses of separatist activities, and Chinese who have moved into Xinjiang from elsewhere. Correspondents say that separatist activity by Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang has been increasing in recent years, often encouraged by ethnic Uighurs among their newly independent Central Asian neighbours. (8) MUSLIM SEPARATIST ACCUSED OF COMMUNIST PARTY SECRETARY
MURDER BEIJING. Police in China's turbulent Xinjiang region have detained a Muslim separatist for the murder of a local Communist Party secretary, media reports received Thursday in Beijing said. Authorities accuse Wupur Ait, of the Uighur ethnic minority, of heading an "action team of violent terrorists" which broke into the home of the Awat Alik village party secretary and stabbed the man to death last year, the Xinjiang Legal News reported in its Feb. 15 edition. Police were dispatched to the home of Aliqiong Bozli, 48, in the early hours of Oct. 29, where they found the man lying in a pool of blood. He died on his way to hospital. The newspaper reported Wupur Ait admitted to plotting to assassinate the party secretary who had been charged with family planning and religious management in the village. Eleven other suspects implicated with the "action team" have been detained by police, it reported. Xinjiang, with a population of some 17 million, is gripped by tension between the province's Uighur Moslem majority and Han Chinese settlers, who make up 38 percent of the population, according to official figures. Several violent clashes in past months have led to crackdowns that often include the handing down of the death penalty for violent transgressors. *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* EASTERN TURKISTAN INFORMATION CENTER |