Kunming attack shouldn't be treated as ethnic issue – China official

BEIJING - A deadly knife attack at a Chinese train station last week should not be linked to ethnicity, a senior government official said, days after authorities blamed the incident on separatists from the country's troubled far western region of Xinjiang.

 

China says militants from Xinjiang, home to a large Muslim Uighur minority, launched a terrorist attack in the southwestern city of Kunming, killing at least 29 people and injuring about 140.

 

It was one of the worst bouts of violence to spill out of the restive region, where more than 100 people, including several policemen, have been killed in unrest since last April.

 

Fear and resentment between majority Han Chinese and Uighurs had spread since the attack, said Zhu Weiqun, the chairman of the ethnic and religious affairs panel of the top advisory body to parliament, which meets this week in Beijing.

 

"Such sentiments - although not widespread - deserve our attention," Zhu told the official China Daily, adding that the "overwhelming majority" of the migrant Uighurs from Xinjiang were "good people".

 

"Most Uighurs are with us in the fight against separatism and violent terrorism," he said in an interview in the English-language newspaper published on Thursday. "They sincerely support the central government.

 

"...We should not relate such cases to an ethnic issue in a casual way."

 

The comments highlight Beijing's concern over the growing frictions between Uighurs and Han Chinese and the potential for further unrest.

 

After the Kunming attack, many residents voiced ethnic concerns to Reuters reporters and some businesses and hotels displayed signs turning away Uighurs.

 

Online accounts have described growing discrimination against Uighurs, ranging from their evictions from apartments to refusals by taxi drivers to give them rides.

 

Beijing has not explicitly accused Uighurs of carrying out the Kunming attack, but by calling the perpetrators Xinjiang extremists the implication is clear.

 

State media have reported that a female suspect was injured and captured in the attack in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, which is hundreds of miles southeast of Xinjiang, and that three suspects, including another woman, had been caught. Four were shot dead.

 

Chinese authorities should stop using the attack to carry out "extreme propaganda" and "incite racism", Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for key exile group the World Uyghur Congress, said in an emailed statement late on Wednesday. — Reuters