BEIJING — China said Thursday that it had uncovered a plot by members of a Muslim minority group to sabotage the Beijing Summer Olympics with suicide bombings and kidnappings of foreign visitors.
Chinese officials offered no evidence to back up the allegations, the latest in a series of terrorism charges against ethnic minorities in the run-up to the Games.
China says violent separatists are behind recent unrest in Muslim and Tibetan areas that has drawn increased attention to China’s treatment of minority groups.
Members of the Muslim Turkic Uighur minority in parts of western Xinjiang province have staged a struggle for a breakaway state, accusing Chinese authorities of suppressing their culture and religion.
Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping said at a news conference that 35 people had been arrested in Xinjiang in recent weeks for plotting to kidnap athletes, foreign journalists and other visitors to the Olympics in August.
He identified two of the men as Abdulrahman Tuersun and Kuerban Mutalifu, both traditionally Uighur names.
He said the gang traveled through Xinjiang last month seeking recruits, including those skilled in weapons and explosives production.
They also sought fanatics to carry out suicide-bomb attacks in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, and other Chinese cities, Wu said. He didn’t say whether any volunteers had been found or whether any attacks were imminent. But he said police decided to “neutralize the threat” after collecting sufficient evidence.
Nicholas Bequelin, a Xinjiang expert with Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said Beijing has undercut its credibility by consistently labeling criminal acts, anti-government violence and peaceful dissent as terrorism.
“The experience around the world since the launch of the global war on terrorism has taught the international community how easily threats of terrorism can be manipulated by authoritarian governments for their own purposes,” Bequelin said.
