MARCH 3, 2014
KUNMING, China — Even with the objects of his ire in earshot, the landlord barely lowered his voice to describe his Uighur neighbors, who also happened to be his tenants.
“During the day they look like human beings, but at night they are thieves and thugs,” he said as a group of elderly women in traditional head scarves drank tea in the courtyard of his building. “Even the police are afraid of them. We all hate them, but there’s nothing to be done about it.”
It is fair to say that relations have never been easy between the ethnic Han who dominate this vast nation and the Uighur minority whose traditional homeland is in China’s far western borderlands. But in the two days since a group of assailants rampaged through the Kunming Railway Station here in southwestern China, killing at least 29 people and wounding 143, the official narrative of a kaleidoscope of ethnic groups living in harmony is being tested by the news that the killers were from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
Relatives and friends of a victim killed in Saturday’s attack wait outside a funeral home in Kunming on Monday. Credit Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press
On Monday evening, the state-run news agency Xinhua said the police had arrested three more assailants, in addition to a fourth who had already been arrested and four others who were killed at the train station. The Ministry of Public Security said a “terrorist gang of eight members” was responsible for the attack, Xinhua said.
Until the ministry made its announcement, officials had not made any mention of the attackers’ ethnicity, but there seemed to be little doubt here on the streets of Kunming that those responsible for the slaughter were Uighurs.
The authorities have provided scant details about the episode, which represents an alarming escalation of unrest that until now had been largely confined to a distant region best known among Chinese as a land of sweet melons, colorful mosques and an exotic people fond of impromptu song and dance.
But decades of Communist Party propaganda have failed to soothe the distrust and suspicion that color the attitudes of many Han, whose interactions with Uighurs are often limited to fleeting exchanges on the streets of Chinese cities, where Uighurs can be found selling nut-and-fig cakes or grilling lamb kebabs. “Growing up, we all heard that they carry knives and make money as pickpockets,” said Lu Xing, 33, the owner of a clothing store here. “We find them a bit frightening.”
On Monday, censors worked quickly to delete incendiary postings on the country’s most popular microblog sites, and the state news media sought to dissuade people from turning their anger into vigilantism.
“Whatever happens, please hold on to your faith in love and kindness, believe in the power of justice,” the national broadcaster, CCTV, wrote on its microblog account. People’s Daily, the main newspaper for the Communist Party, also urged calm. “Don’t turn your anger for the terrorists into hostility toward an ethnic group,” it urged. “This is exactly what they want!”
Such fears are not unfounded. In 2009, after Uighur mobs rampaged through Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, hacking to death nearly 200 people, most of them Han, a spasm of revenge attacks claimed many Uighur lives, although the exact number has never been published.
On Monday, several official news media outlets directed much of their fury at the foreign news media, which they accused of playing down the attack by failing to unequivocally call it an act of terrorism and by unfairly highlighting the hard-line government policies that many Uighurs say are fueling discontent in Xinjiang. “These media are always the loudest when it comes to antiterrorism, but in the Kunming train station terrorist violence they lost their voice and spoke confusedly, making people angry,” said an opinion article in People’s Daily.
Here in Kunming, many people said they believed that the attack was timed to coincide with the start of China’s annual legislative session, a heavily scripted political spectacle in Beijing that draws thousands of high-ranking party officials. Across the country, security is invariably tightened during the meetings, but in the wake of the attack on Saturday, the authorities appeared to be taking no chances.
