Olympic terror fears as China bus bomb kills two

At least two people were killed by bombs placed on board buses in a southern Chinese city this morning, causing consternation three weeks before the Olympics open.REUTERSThe first explosion happened at 7.05am on board a bus at a stop on People's Road West, one of the main thoroughfares of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. Yunnan borders Vietnam, Burma and Tibet in China's far south.One person was killed and another ten injured, according to local media. Websites showed photographs of the bus with a gaping hole in its side and glass all over the road.The second explosion happened on another bus on the same road about an hour later. Another person was killed and a further four injured.According to some reports, there was a third explosion later in the morning, in which two people were killed and one injured, but this was discounted by some local officials.The motive for the attacks was unclear, but police said they were clearly acts of sabotage."According to preliminary investigations, the explosions were cases of man-made, deliberate sabotage," a spokesman said. Police were using roadblocks and checkpoints in a bid to catch those responsible, according to the state news agency.The authorities have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by terrorism to the Beijing Olympics, using it to justify intense security preparations in the capital.They say there is a particular threat from "Uighur and Tibetan separatism". Uighurs are Muslim, and the main ethnic group in Xinjiang province to the north-west, and police say a Uighur separatist group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement is linked to al-Qaeda.Yunnan is an ethnically diverse province, home to large numbers of both Tibetans and Muslims. But Chinese cities are also occasionally hit by more mundane acts of terror, in which aggrieved citizens take revenge for lack of legal recourse by random acts of violence.At the weekend, there was a violent riot in a Yunnan town close to the Burmese border about the price a state rubber company was paying local farmers. Two people were shot dead by police as they tried to restore order.

Migrant Workers Riot in China

SHANGHAI, China) — Hundreds of migrant workers angry over mistreatment of a fellow worker rioted for three days in eastern China, surrounding a police station and smashing cars and motorbikes, a Hong Kong-based human rights organization said Monday.
The riot began Thursday in Kanmen town in coastal Zhejiang province, said the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Three hundred military police arrived Sunday and 30 migrant workers have been detained, the group said. No injuries were reported.
A woman who answered the telephone at Kanmen's public security bureau denied that workers broke into the police station or burned vehicles, saying they only gathered in the streets and shouted in protest. The woman did not give her name as is common with officials in China.
The Hong Kong-based rights group said the unrest in Kanmen was centered around a migrant worker who was beaten by a security guard while trying to get a temporary residence permit.
The violence comes just weeks after a crowd of 30,000 people in southwest China set fire to a police station, angry over what many believed was a cover-up of the death of a teenage girl by local authorities.
Such incidents are an embarrassment to officials, especially in the run-up to the Aug. 8 Beijing Olympics.
According to the rights group, when the worker went to police with a group of other workers to complain about the man who beat him, he was detained, triggering the protest in which hundreds of workers converged outside the police station, burning police cars and motorcycles and later throwing stones.
The report did not give any other details about the incident, including why the worker was beaten.
A notice posted on the Web site of Yuhuan County, which oversees Kanmen, said the July 10 "incident" was being investigated but did not describe what the incident was.
It "has caused a strong backlash by society, and the public is very concerned about the truth, and about how it was dealt with, and how the local offices have recovered," the notice said.
Thousands of migrant workers have flocked to the area and the situation has put pressure on the government, it said.
Also Monday, the official Xinhua News Agency said police in Guizhou province detained 100 people, including 39 members of local gangs, for involvement in last month's protest over the death of the student.
It quoted Peng Dequan, vice director of provincial public security, as saying they were still looking for other "gangsters" who were in hiding.
Authorities accused local gangs of fomenting the unrest and have urged offenders to surrender, Xinhua said.