[1]Do not confuse the unknown Turkestan Islamic Party with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement [2], writes the New Dominion blogger in their detailed post [3] today on the news today of a Commander Seyfullah reportedly taking responsibility for recent bombing incidents in China [4] and the video accompanying the claims (update: someone mentions that the fact that a threat is made in the video against next month's Olympics is presumably also worth noting):
Yet even with what little information we have, there are a number of eyebrow-raising points to consider…
First, why the delay? Why would such an organization carry out these attacks only wait until now to claim ownership of the violence?
Why would China remain silent on such issues even if they had the slightest inkling that East Turkestan terrorists were responsible for the acts? There’s a trend among the government to exploit every opportunity to justify increased Olympics security and crackdowns in restive minority areas, as evidenced by the glowing report released recently on “busting up terrorist cells”, as well as the intense domestic press coverage of incidents with really spurious, if not entirely fabricated links to religious terrorism.
Here's the video in which the threat to the Olympic Games is made, found via CyberHawk [5] on the LibertyTimes blog:
Update:
YouTube user serindia posts in the comments what appears to be a translation of what's said in the video that also appears on the IntelCenter website [6]:
恐怖份子Turkistan Islamic Party Commander Seyfullah: “Our damullah, Abdul Heq, made his final order to the [person] responsible for the military regarding the issue of severely attacking all central cities in inner China, particularly focusing on eight cities that are going to hold Olympic games. … ask our merciful Allah to allow these brothers and sisters [suicide bombers] to deal a fatal blow in this jihad against Chinese & we ask our merciful Allah to completely stop Olympic Games. … Bomb Chinese government buildings, military barracks, airplanes, airports, railways, hotels, entertainment venues, tourist spots and similar places…You're even permitted to use biological weapons this time.”
Update 2:
Kenneth Tan at Shanghaiist [7] and Kai Pan at CNReviews [8] have also posted on this.