In any case, we are moving off topic, so here's getting back on track:
Anxious China steps up security
Bus drivers undergo anti-terror training; screening on Beijing subway upgraded
August 1, 2008
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Bill Schiller
ASIA BUREAU
BEIJINGThe bus bombs exploded in sequence, shattering the Monday morning commute of residents in the Chinese city of Kunming, some 2,100 kilometres southwest of Beijing.
But the reverberations were felt all the way to the capital, where final preparations were underway for the Olympic Games, which begin a week from today.
The first blast occurred at 7:05 a.m., on a bus travelling Route 54. It killed one and injured 10.
The second detonated at 8:10 a.m. on the same route, killing another and wounding four.
The blasts, though small, seemed calculated to send a message.
This was just last week July 21 and back in Beijing China's security establishment got it.
That's why this week Beijing bus driver Liu Xiwu, and thousands like him, found themselves in conference rooms across the city undergoing anti-terror training.
"We've never done anything like this since I've been driving," said Liu, who had just emerged from a training session with 40 other drivers. "And I've been driving for 20 years.
"But it's all in the name of a safe Olympics," Liu explained, "because public transportation is a sensitive area."
Indeed it is: with 18,000 buses carrying 13 million passengers daily, authorities in Beijing saw the Kunming bombings as a tragedy and a warning signal.
The city's Olympic venues may be blanketed with security personnel. And ground-to-air missiles may point skywards near the Bird's Nest National Stadium to fend off air attacks.
But until this week there seemed to be no plan to guard the buses that wind their way along the serpentine routes across the city's highways and bi-ways.
Suddenly buses seemed a soft target, vulnerable to anyone wishing to do China harm.
So beginning today bus drivers, conductors and some 6,000 security personnel will be conducting security checks on all passengers in the city's bus system especially those carrying bags or packages.
"Security staff will observe, sniff and make inquiries," Feng Qingfu, a senior official with the Beijing Bus Company said.
Some staff will also be carrying electronic security scanners, Feng added.
If commuters balk at the checks, they'll be denied boarding.
If they seem suspicious, police will be summoned.
Just yesterday, authorities also announced an upgrade in security checks on Beijing's subway system. Whereas larger bags and knapsacks only were required to be put through airport-style scanners, now all bags, even handbags, will be required to pass through.
And every person entering Tiananmen Square will also have to submit to security checks.
Where Beijing's focus was once on staging the most awesome Olympic celebration the world has ever seen a testament to the country's arrival on the world stage as a major player today the focus is on holding a safe Olympics.
Chinese President Hu Jintao told fellow Communist leaders recently that "the task of hosting a safe Olympic Games" is paramount.
Few would deny the threat of terrorism is real. Interpol, the French-based international policing organization, has said publicly that security for these Games remains a real concern.
Those threats could come from outside or inside the country.
After all, China has had to use force to quell the restive regions of Tibet and Xinjiang in recent years, where some continue to bristle under Chinese rule.
Adding to security anxieties this week, a shadowy group emerged on a video claiming responsibility for the Kunming bombings as well as another bombing in Shanghai in May that killed three.
The three-minute video, obtained under circumstances that have yet to be explained by the Washington-based security firm Intelcenter, begins with Beijing's Olympic logo going up in flames as a rocket hits an Olympic venue.
Then a turbaned man dressed in military fatigues, flanked by two gunmen, introduces himself as Seyfullah and identifies his group as the Turkestan Islamic Party, a group that sounds like the outlawed East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
He promises to carry out further attacks during the Olympics.
The video has been met with some skepticism by some long-time China observers. "Seyfullah" his face obscured as are those of his gun-toting comrades plainly gets some dates wrong relating to events, and mentions an attack in Guangdong of which no one seems to have ever heard.
It could be real. And maybe not.
Although the Chinese government has taken great pains to say they do not believe the Kunming bombings were perpetrated by terrorists the rationale being that it might prove too embarrassing to admit a security lapse during the countdown to the Olympics the government's preparations tell a different story.
"The training has made us much more alert now," says bus driver Liu Xiwu. "There will be worldwide attention on us. We're confident we can hold a successful Games."
Toronto Star
