01:30 pm
Some Unsolicited Advice to China’s “Anti-Terror” Squads
Clearly the ChiComs are concerned about terrorism in the run-up to the Olympics — as well they should be. Terrorism has been a plague on the Olympics, both in terms of actual attacks and in terms of turning the Olympic celebration into a miniature police state. But when a police state starts ratcheting up the repression, things can get a little freaky.
Earlier today, the Chinese announced that they had broken up an “international terrorist group that had planned to attack an Olympic footbal [soccer] preliminary match” in Shanghai. Via Reuters:
“We have staged raids and cracked a group of terrorists,” Xinhua quoted Cheng Jiulong, Shanghai Public Security Bureau deputy director and head of the Shanghai security office for the Olympics, as saying. However, Cheng did not say when the terrorists were first discovered, how many suspects were detained or where they came from, said Xinhua. “We have obtained information that international terrorist organizations would likely launch an attack against an Olympic venue in the city during the Games,” Cheng said.
Why is it that every time I read something like this, my immediate reaction is to assume the Chinese are playing the terrorism card to cover up the arrest of nonviolent political activists? It’s not like they don’t have real terrorism concerns — after all, earlier this week somebody managed to blow up two buses in Kunming.
I think the answer lies in the way the Chinese tend to conflate violent acts with nonviolent expression. You never know whether a particular police action is responding to a genuine threat or merely preventing a bunch of Falung Gong supporters or Tibetan monks from peacefull protesting on the Shanghai soccer pitch.
The Chinese don’t help their case when the state media reports that police have promised to prevent both terrorist attacks and “political incidents” during the Olympics:
“International terrorist forces are itching to strike with terror attacks against the Beijing Games, and hostile domestic forces’ disruption and sabotage activities against the Games are steadily unfolding,” the People’s Armed Police News reported.
Okay guys, let me offer you a little unsolicited advice here: if you want the world to think good thoughts about you, stop equating “international terrorist forces” and “hostile domestic forces.” Preventing the former is a serious issue; were you to demonstrate that you had prevented a real terror attack, the world would be on your side. Having it turn out that all you did was suprpress latter is in all likelihood just going to make you look like even bigger thugs.
Photo: via dragonpreneur, used under a Creative Commons license.