Communist China leader Xi Jinping recently issued an order to crack down potential suspects of the knife attack that happened at a Kunming train station that left 29 people dead with many injured, Bloomberg said. Several government officials had put the blame in the ethnic Uighur separatist movement due to the fact that evidence of East Turkestan Islamic Movement flags were found on the scene of the crime. Last year, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had touted the group as the mainland's most direct security threat.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said yesterday about Xi's order, "No matter who they are or what group they belong to, no matter where or what time the incident took place, the Chinese government will severely crack down on them in accordance with the law."
Bloomberg said Xi's order effectively put him in control of the new security council and a committee on the restive western province of Xinjiang. The news agency said that the area is considered home to the majority of the Muslim Uighurs.
Director Zheng Yongnian of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore that despite viewing Xi's move as a strategy to place himself into more powerful positions in the military and domestic security agencies, the move was just simply an attempt to curb growing political violence in the mainland. The attack is "a blow to the Chinese security system. At the central level and the local level they are trying to set up a good system to keep society safe but this means the system doesn't work. So they have to rethink."
Bloomberg cited an official Xinhua News Agency report published yesterday that three suspects are now in custody of the Chinese police, with four killed during seizure. Among the ones captured was an injured woman, the Chinese news agency said.
