HYSTERIA OVER a series of mysterious attacks using hypodermic needles has spread to new cities in China’s restive far-western region of Xinjiang, with the government claiming a dastardly plot even though the assaults appear to be a blend of reality and fantasy.
The Xinjiang government press centre said the attacks were in Hotan, Altay and Kashgar – cities in China’s south, north and west.
Panic in the province started after the police in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital, sent a text message to locals saying there had been attacks using syringes. The message urged residents not to panic, but soon thousands of people claimed to have been attacked.
Tensions are high in Urumqi, where native Muslim Uighurs went on the rampage in July after a demonstration and 197 people, mostly ethnic Han Chinese, died in the subsequent violence.
Most of the attacks seem to be imagined. Since last week, nearly 600 people have said they were pricked with needles in Urumqi, but only 106 victims have shown signs of jabs, bumps or rashes, while the others were injured by sewing needles or pins rather than syringes, and some were insect bites. None of the reported victims have suffered from illness, poisoning or other effects.
Rumours are flying around the city and the government has banned people from starting fresh speculation and also stopping people from beating up random Uighurs who they suspect of being syringe attackers.
However, that did not stop the Han Chinese taking to the streets to complain that the government was incapable of protecting them from renegade Uighurs armed with needles.
Five people died in last week’s violence and demonstrators rattled the nerves of the local government by calling for the resignation of powerful regional Communist Party secretary Wang Lequan, a close ally of President Hu Jintao.
Local cadres and state media say the needle attacks are the work of Uighur separatists trying to spread fear and destroy national unity.
Authorities have released few details of how exactly this plot is supposed to function, given that it mostly appears to be the work of drug addicts and sexual deviants.
The government has reported four verified cases: on August 28th, a 19-year-old Uighur followed a fruit seller home and stuck a pin in her buttocks. The next day, two Uighur drug addicts used a syringe to mug a taxi driver, stealing 710 yuan (€70). On August 31st a drug addict, again a Uighur, injured arresting officers by using a heroin-filled syringe. On September 3rd, four men jabbed a woman in the neck with a syringe loaded with an unidentified substance.
Two leading bloggers published accounts of at least two Uighurs being beaten, one of them fatally, by Han Chinese. Tibetan writer and blogger Woeser wrote of the beating to death of Uighur singer Mirzat Alim on September 2nd.
Urumqi has been without external telecommunications or internet coverage since July, and journalists covering the story have been attacked by the military.
A demonstration is planned in Hong Kong tomorrow over the beating and detention of Hong Kong journalists investigating the needle plot.