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Olympics: Security vs. Terror vs. Protest vs. Fun
The Chinese now have an idea of who was behind the bombings in Kuming on Monday:
A group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video threatening the Beijing Olympic Games and claiming responsibility for recent deadly explosions on two Chinese buses, a terrorism monitoring firm said on Friday.
IntelCenter, a U.S.-based terrorism monitoring firm, said the group had released a video entitled “Our Blessed Jihad in Yunnan,” featuring a statement by the group’s leader, Commander Seyfullah, threatening next month’s Olympics.
“Despite the Turkistan Islamic Party’s repeated warnings to China and international community about stopping the 29th Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese have haughtily ignored our warnings,” IntelCenter quoted Seyfullah as saying.
Mark Magnier in The Los Angeles Times summarizes the impact on the Olympics of both the hard reality of the terrorist threat and the Chinese obsession with security:
The Chinese have worked overtime to get all their checklists ticked, buildings built and security secured in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics. But something seems to have happened on the way to the arena: they forgot the fun. Fearful of political protests or terrorist attacks, Beijing feels increasingly battened down as the Aug. 8 opening ceremony approaches, leading some wags to predict a “fun-free” or “kill-joy” games. Many of the best things about Beijing, the little corners, the characters, the outdoor cafe tables are being nibbled away by omnipresent police and neighborhood snoops in security overdrive.
We can now expect a level of security at the Olympics to rival that at G-8 and NATO summits. And my gut is telling me that whether it’s a terrorist attack or an overzealous security response to a peaceful protest, the end results aren’t going to be pretty.
UPDATE: China is now saying that the Turkistan Islamic Party is not connected to the bombings.
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