Published by: THE WORLD UYGHUR NETWORK NEWS October 9, 1997

Hong Kong Tung Fang Jih Pao, 10/04/97

"Xinjiang Independence Elements Secretly Plotted Terrorist Bomb

Attacks; Beijing Was in High Alert on National Day"

An informed source in Beijing disclosed that the police of Beijing received information before National Day on 1 October that separatists from Xinjiang would conduct terrorist explosion activities during the National Day period. The police were on high alert, but up to the present, no suspicious character was discovered.

It was disclosed that the police of Beijing received information saying that ethnic separatists from Xinjiang were ready to conduct terrorist explosion activities in the capital during the National Day period in an attempt to damage the auspicious atmosphere there during that period. Even a disco called "Jackson" had been chosen for the explosion, a disco in the neighborhood of the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute where foreigners lived in relatively compact community and where less strict security measures were taken. It was said that among the customers of the disco, many were foreign students studying Chinese in the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute.

After receiving the information, the police of Beijing mobilized all the policemen of the city to be on high alert. Special precautionary measures were taken in areas around the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute. Every day, several hundred plain-clothes officers patrolled those areas and kept a close watch on pedestrians. Public security departments also asked, through local residents committees and other organizations, residents to report suspicious strangers to the police at any time.

NO SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER APPEARS FOR THE TIME BEING

The informed source said that the police had been highly keyed up for about a week. As of now, no relevant suspicious character had been discovered in Beijing's urban area. With the end of the National Day holidays, police authorities believed that the degree of danger had decreased and police units taking part in the action had become more relaxed than before National Day.

The informed source also said that, since the beginning of this year, the police of Beijing had maintained close contacts with Xinjiang's departments concerned. Information once received said that separatists had received training abroad for terrorist activities and had smuggled in large quantities of plastic explosives, remote-control igniters, and other advanced devices for terrorist activities.

However, judging from the separatists arrested up to the present by the police of Beijing and Xinjiang for engaging in terrorist sabotaging activities, most of them were unemployed persons who were poorly educated. There was not tendency of "specialization" in terrorist activities of ethnic separatists.

On the other hand, it was reported that turmoil occurred in some places in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia several weeks ago leading to the death of nine officials and deputies to people's congresses. The Chinese authorities were stepping up work to run down many armed Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia independence elements, of whom some might have gone to Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south to wait for a chance to flee abroad. Xinjing and Inner Mongolia Say the Regions Are Calm [subhead] Upon inquiry yesterday, local officials in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia said that the situation there was calm and stable.