Unrest in China's West

Not sure hot much press this got back in North America, but there was a pretty serious bus bombing in Kunming (capital city of Yunnan Province in SW China) last Monday. Two died and fourteen more were injured. Rumours that a text message warning of potential danger was circulated earlier that day have been flying for days now, but the government has officially denied it.

It's the second incident involving buses exploding in China since I've gotten here, the first being here in Shanghai in May (3 dead, 12 injured). I happened upon the bus's remains the day after, and though the police officially called it an accident, there were always speculation that it was a terrorist attack.

Now a Uighur separatist group calling themselves the Turkestan Islamic Party is claiming responsibility for these two attacks, as well as one other bombing in Guangzhou, an attack on police in Wenzhou, and another unnamed attack in Shanghai. They're also promising more to come during the Olympics.

"Through this blessed jihad in Yunnan this time, the Turkestan Islamic Party warns China one more time." "Our aim is to target the most critical points related to the Olympics. We will try to attack Chinese central cities severely using the tactics that have never been employed."

Again, the government is downplaying it, denying that all those events were terrorist attacks. Pretty safe way to go, considering you're about to host a major international event, but curious given that these guys could have unwittingly provided the government with free reign to crack down on any and all suspicious activities. This Turkestan Islamic Party has never been heard from before and yields no search results on Google, but according to the AFP report detailing the video, "the Turkestan Islamic Party is [likely] another name used by the Islamic Party of East Turkestan (ETIM), an ethnic Uighur and Muslim separatist group seeking to create an independent state out of China's westernmost, heavily Muslim Xinjiang province."

Either way, however, Olympic security is going to be tight. The visa crackdowns are a big part of that, as are the tanks that the government brought in to form a protective shield around Beijing. The Chinese Air Force and Navy are out in full effect too: I'm told that there are/will be 100,000 Chinese soldiers posted in and around Beijing for the Games. By comparison, the US "only" has 130,000 soldiers in Iraq right now.