Search Launch for Suspects in Beijing Incident

After five people were killed and dozens injured when a car drove into a pedestrian caught fire in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Monday, Chinese police are now looking for two suspects from the Xinjiang region in connection with a “major incident”, Al Jazeera.net reported.

Al Jazeera.net stated police in the capital are inquiring local hotels about suspicious guests who had checked in since October 1 and named two suspects they said were from Xinjiang in a notice issued on Monday night.

Report said judging by their names, the suspects appeared to be ethnic Uighurs, who are Turkic-speaking Muslims from Xinjiang, a province in the far west of China.

Uighurs chafe at Chinese controls on their culture and religion.

The notice, which was widely circulated on China microblogs, said “To prevent the suspected persons and vehicles from committing further crimes … please notify law enforcement of any discovery of clues regarding these suspects and the vehicles.”

The notice also listed four car-licence plates from Xinjiang.

Report said the Beijing police, contacted by telephone, declined to comment. it added that calls to the Xinjiang government went unanswered.

Al Jazeera.net reported police said on Monday that the car veered off the road at the north of the square, a major tourist attraction, crossed the barriers and caught fire almost directly in front of the main entrance of the Forbidden City, in front of a huge portrait of the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong.

Report said three people in the car died, as well as two tourists. China says it grants Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms and accuses extremists of separatism.

Many rights groups say China has long overplayed the threat posed to justify its tough controls in energy-rich Xinjiang, which lies strategically on the borders of Central Asia, India and Pakistan, Al Jazeera.net reported.

Al Jazeera.net said Monday’s incident, which struck at the symbolic heart of Chinese seat of power, has received muted coverage in Chinese media, as a vast censorship apparatus suppressed unofficial accounts. Newspapers across China carried news of the crash low down on their front pages and ran brief reports from state-run media.

Report added Chinese media outlets are known to receive direct instructions from the government directing their reporting of events deemed threatening by the ruling Communist party, which in recent months, has moved to tighten controls over all forms of media.

The Beijing News, generally an outspoken paper, gave priority to reports of a protest by doctors in eastern China. Like other newspapers, it did not run a report of the event by its own journalists, and republished an account from the official news agency Xinhua, AlJazeera.net report said.

Source: AlJazeera.net