The Olympic spirit

For better or for worse, it was likely inevitable that dissidents in China would use the occasion of the Olympic games to move aggressively on behalf of their causes, the better being the hope of gaining the attention of the world at a time more eyes would be on China, the worse being increased bloodshed. The BBC says that

[u]nidentified attackers have killed 16 policemen in an attack on a border post in China's restive Muslim region of Xinjiang, state media report.

The attackers drove up to the post at Kashgar and threw two grenades, which also wounded 16 members of the border patrol armed police division.

Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said that attackers used a dump truck to break into the police post Sunday evening, US time.

Xinjiang is home to the Muslim Uighur (also Uyghur) people, who for some time have been subjected to "a crushing campaign of religious repression" according to Human Rights Watch, a campaign that gained both strength and cribbed legitimacy after 9/11, when the Chinese government could present the repression as past of the "worldwide campaign against terrorism."

Still, resistance continues. In April, Chinese officials had to admit that they were facing ethnic unrest in the region. As many as 500 Uighurs had demonstrated in Hotan on March 23, the New York Times reported. The government accused the protesters of "splittism" and while some local sources said the demonstrators called for independence, others said the protest was against cultural restrictions, such as a ban on Islamic scarves.

This is not to say that the long campaign waged by Uighur separatists has not included or at the very least claimed acts of terrorism: A group called the Turkestan Islamic Party claimed responsibility for three explosions on buses, one in Shanghai in May and two more two weeks ago in Yunnan province, that killed a total of five people. Chinese officials denied there was any connection to terrorism, but so far as I've been able to find, have offered no alternative explanation for the explosions.

The Turkestan Islamic Party also has released a video in which it threatens the Olympics, due to start Friday. It can be expected that the Chinese government, having used the War on Terror^{(c)(reg.)(pat.pend.)} as a handy excuse to repress the Uighurs, will now use the "threat to the Olympics" born of the very failure of that effort to redouble its attempts to oppress them into passive submission to their gradual disappearance.

I finally have an excuse to say this: Developing....