Beijing police are searching for information on two men from a restive region near the Central Asian border, after a Jeep ploughed into a crowd of tourists waiting to go into the Forbidden City and burst into flames on Monday. Two tourists and the three people in the car were killed, and 38 bystanders injured in the high-profile attack at the symbolic heart of the Chinese capital.
A circular sent by Beijing police to city hotels and later posted online lists the identity card numbers and names of two men from Pishan and Shanshan counties, which lie 800 miles apart from each other in the Xinjiang region. The names given in the notice appear to be Uighur, a Turkic ethnicity native to Xinjiang who often chafe against Chinese rule.
The Beijing police did not immediately confirm that they issued the notice.
Motives for the attack are unknown, although Tiananmen Square, just south of the entrance to the Forbidden City, is a magnet for protests against government policy, including a student and worker protest for democracy that ended in a bloody crackdown in 1989. In 1976, crowds of Chinese flocked to the square to mourn Premier Zhou Enlai, helping bring down the radical leftist Gang of Four.
Pishan county, near the ancient Uighur jade trading city of Hotan, is one of the poorest areas in China. In 2011, eight people died in Pishan when a group of Uighurs apparently trying to cross the border to Pakistan clashed with border police. In June, 35 people died in Shanshan county, during clashes between locals and police at a paramilitary base, government offices and a construction site.
Online photos showed the flaming vehicle crashed against the marble bridges that lead to the Forbidden City. Police cleared the area but reopened the square to tourists later.
A Filipino man and a Chinese man from the southern province of Guangdong died, while among the injured were tourists from the Philippines and Japan.
Access to the square is filtered to keep out potential protesters, but some do manage to unfurl banners or perform other activities. In 2009, three people protesting against forced land seizures in Xinjiang set their car on fire at Wangfujing, the glitzy shopping street in central Beijing, after they were pulled over by police on their way to Tiananmen Square.
Additional reporting by Gu Yu
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A circular sent by Beijing police to city hotels and later posted online lists the identity card numbers and names of two men from Pishan and Shanshan counties, which lie 800 miles apart from each other in the Xinjiang region. The names given in the notice appear to be Uighur, a Turkic ethnicity native to Xinjiang who often chafe against Chinese rule.
The Beijing police did not immediately confirm that they issued the notice.
Motives for the attack are unknown, although Tiananmen Square, just south of the entrance to the Forbidden City, is a magnet for protests against government policy, including a student and worker protest for democracy that ended in a bloody crackdown in 1989. In 1976, crowds of Chinese flocked to the square to mourn Premier Zhou Enlai, helping bring down the radical leftist Gang of Four.
Pishan county, near the ancient Uighur jade trading city of Hotan, is one of the poorest areas in China. In 2011, eight people died in Pishan when a group of Uighurs apparently trying to cross the border to Pakistan clashed with border police. In June, 35 people died in Shanshan county, during clashes between locals and police at a paramilitary base, government offices and a construction site.
Online photos showed the flaming vehicle crashed against the marble bridges that lead to the Forbidden City. Police cleared the area but reopened the square to tourists later.
A Filipino man and a Chinese man from the southern province of Guangdong died, while among the injured were tourists from the Philippines and Japan.
Access to the square is filtered to keep out potential protesters, but some do manage to unfurl banners or perform other activities. In 2009, three people protesting against forced land seizures in Xinjiang set their car on fire at Wangfujing, the glitzy shopping street in central Beijing, after they were pulled over by police on their way to Tiananmen Square.
Additional reporting by Gu Yu
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.