The reasoning by a municipal court in the city of Rui’an, laid out in a five-page ruling dated March 7 but that the victim’s family said they received only on Friday, hinted at the lingering sensitivity of the Cultural Revolution, a period fueled by the ruthless politics of Mao Zedong, the father of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

The court said the defendant, Qiu Riren, had acknowledged murdering a man named Hong Yunke, a village doctor who was captured by a militia in December 1967, a time when the nation was being terrorized by competing Red Guard factions bent on punishing those not deemed sufficiently revolutionary.

Accused of being a spy, Hong was detained in a barn and then taken to an ad hoc execution ground where Qiu and another man were assigned to strangle him with a rope, the court said. Afterward, Qiu hacked at Hong’s legs with a farming tool to make it easier to push his body down into a hole, according to the document.

The historical aspect of the murder, along with other factors, including Qiu’s confession and the fact that the crime happened before the adoption of the nation’s criminal procedure law in 1979, argued for a lenient sentence, the court said.

As the generation that was most active during the Cultural Revolution grows older, some participants are publicly reflecting on their role in the violence and chaos of the era. The Guardian’s Tania Branigan recently profiled a man trying to make amends for his denunciation of his mother which led to her execution.

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[...]These tragedies have nothing to do with the system, there are evil people in the world, that’s all. Sooner or later, you’re bound to come into contact with the evil of humanity. My grandfather told me, before he passed, that not all people you see walking along the streets are human: some are demons wearing human clothes.

[...]I truly don’t think it has anything to do with the system. Although China has always had this or that problem with protecting women and children, this is the result of the level of development in the economy and society. I have also done some research and found that in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, a woman who was only 20 years old put her newborn infant in the refrigerator, where the baby died. The autopsy showed that the poor child was still alive when she was put in the fridge.

[...]It’s clear that such cruel murders of infants occur in China and abroad. They just do not believe in hell. The act of killing a baby is not related to the system or education. The “human evil” of the individual is the source of violent acts.[...]

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Post tags: children, crime, Li Chengpeng, murder, online public opinion, Yueyue
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The baby’s unintended abduction captivated China and led to one of the largest manhunts in recent memory. By 7:30 Monday morning, provincial radio had broadcast a notice asking listeners to watch out for the family’s gray Toyota RAV4 and the infant. The search lasted into the next day, with taxi drivers joining a police search that stretched into neighboring provinces.

“We night drivers have all come out, we’re calling each other, we were out with the day shift,” a taxi driver was quoted telling the provincial television station Monday night.

Other media outlets described citizens driving around Changchun with their breastfeeding wives to provide for the infant in case he was found.

On Tuesday morning, police reported, inspectors identified the stolen car in a residential parking lot 20 miles outside the city. The infant’s clothing was found nearby.

Soon the thief turned himself into police and admitted strangling Haobo. Chinese netizens have compared the case to a similar case in New York, in which the thief left the child unharmed and called the police to report his whereabouts. From the NPR blog:

In two different countries, two grey SUVs were stolen with babies still inside, while the parents popped into supermarkets. There’s an uncanny similarity between the two cases, even though one happened in Changchun in northeastern China, the other in the Bronx. But how the cases played out is very different.

In the American case, which happened last month, as The New York Post puts it, “The silver Jeep was found abandoned just over an hour later with the child unharmed — after the perp phoned in the car’s location to police.”

[...]

The grisly fate of 2-month-old Haobo has led to an outpouring of shock and grief online. “The difference between China and the U.S. is not just the crime rate,” commented a young writer named Sun Yuchen, who works for the outspoken Southern Weekly newspaper, “The fractured Chinese reality has made people lose their basic morality. We are becoming a nation with no bottom line, no humanity.”

The Washington Post blog has more on the reaction to the crime by netizens and residents of Changchun, where Baby Haobo was killed:

As thousands turned out for a candlelight vigil in Changchun, sorrow online turned to hand-wringing and even anger over the money-crazed values of China’s new society.

“How did the social security become this bad? How did man lose all his humanity?” posted one mother named Che Xiaoyan.

And the Guardian reports on the way story has been controlled by propaganda authorities, and used by commercial enterprises:

Other posts held a mirror up to the intense government control and crass commercialism that define life in China. Journalists leaked a circular from the Changchun propaganda department instructing local media on how to report on the crisis. “No frontpage coverage allowed,” it said. “There shall be no questioning of the police’s work.” Posts containing the instructions have since been deleted by internet censors.

A Buick dealership in a neighbouring province used a picture of the baby in a microblog post advertising a GPS system that would guarantee customers “peace of mind” in similar circumstances. The dealership was skewered by netizens – “go die” wrote one – and subsequently issued an apology.

Jalopnik.com has more about the Buick ad.

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Supporters say a reprieve for Li Yan would send the message that authorities are serious about confronting domestic violence. The 41-year-old from Sichuan had repeatedly begged for protection from her spouse.

According to Amnesty International, Li’s husband, Tan Yong, stubbed out cigarettes on her face, cut off part of her finger and locked her out on the balcony of their home in wintertime while she was only partially clothed.

She killed him in November 2010 by repeatedly hitting him over the head with an airgun to stop him from beating her. More than 100 legal experts and academics have signed an open letter calling for her sentence to be commuted.

The supreme people’s court has reportedly upheld Li’s death sentence, but her lawyer, Guo Jianmei, a well-known women’s rights advocate, said the defence team had not received formal notification. “Even if there is only a little hope, we want to fight for her to have a chance to live,” she said. “She killed her husband in fear that her life was seriously threatened.”

According to the South China Morning Post, more than 400 lawyers and women’s rights activists have called for a re-examination of the case against Li Yan in a petition sent to the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate:

Teng Biao, director of China Against Death Penalty who launched the petition campaign, said they were calling on the judiciary to re-examine the domestic violence that led to the killing and take it into full account in a new decision showing due respect for human life.

He said the death sentence was flawed because it failed to take account of complaints Li had lodged with the local women’s federation and statements she gave to police in the months before the killing, as well as testimony from her neighbours, which all pointed to her having been a victim of domestic violence since the couple married about two years prior to the fatal incident.

“She had no excuse to kill her husband, but she’s nothing like a cold-blooded killer who planned the killing,” Teng said.

Human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig translated an article by lawyer Zhang Peihong in which he argued that there are sufficient legal grounds to reconsider Li’s punishment.

Li’s case has raised concerns about the criminal treatment of abused women who injure or kill their spouses in self-defense. The New York Times reports on the extent of the problem:

Women’s jails are filled with women who have injured or killed abusive husbands, according to the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, citing studies by local women’s federations and scholars. They account for 60 percent of inmates in one jail in Anshan, in Liaoning Province, and 80 percent of women serving heavy sentences in a jail in Fuzhou, in Fujian Province.

In a study by Xing Hongmei of China Women’s University, of 121 female inmates in a Sichuan jail who were serving time for attacking or killing abusive partners, 71 were originally sentenced to life in prison or to death (sometimes commuted, delayed or overturned on appeal), and 28 more were sentenced to at least 10 years. This means more than 80 percent received the heaviest possible sentences for murder or bodily harm, the study said.

For months before she killed Mr. Tan, Ms. Li sought help from the authorities in Anyue County, in Sichuan Province, where they lived, her brother said.

“She telephoned the police in, I think, May 2010, after a beating, but they said it was an affair between married people and hung up,” he said.

Women’s rights advocates have long fought for a domestic violence law to protect abused women. With a draft law now in the works, 12,000 people have signed a petition to the National People’s Congress which calls for transparency in the drafting process. From the New York Times blog:

Fed up with being excluded from the decision-making process, Chinese feminists not only want a law against domestic violence, they also want to know exactly what’s going into it, in a new push for accountability from their opaque government. The petition, “Asking for Openness and Transparency in the Process of the Anti-Domestic Violence Law,” spells that out.

Bai Fei, a university student from Shanghai, is one of three women behind the petition. Signatures were gathered online, the Yunnan Information News reported.

Ms. Bai grew up in a family where her father beat her mother. She wanted to know if the new law would help people like her mother, the newspaper wrote.

“When the law comes out, will my mother be able to get legal protection?” asked Ms. Bai. “What level of protection will the law afford her? If I can’t know what’s going into it, I won’t feel at all safe.”

Domestic violence was thrust into the national spotlight last year when the American wife of celebrity English teacher Li Yang posted gruesome photos on weibo of her injuries from his abuse.

Read more about domestic violence in China.

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After the Newtown attack, a Chinese commentator with a nationalist bent wrote, “When I see these democratic elites pretending to condemn the murderer, it seems absurd. You are the people who sustain the gun policy. You are also the people who condemn the shooter.” And another:

As the ‘free, democratic, human-rights-based’ land of heaven, the one that has lectured other countries everyday for a hundred years about ‘freedom, democracy, and human rights,’ even to the point of armed intervention, America should calm down and examine its own gun-control policy.

It takes a lot to make China’s government—beset, as it is, by corruption and opacity and the paralyzing effects of special interests—look good, by comparison, in the eyes of its people these days. But we’ve done it. When Chinese viewers looked at the two attacks side by side, more than a few of them concluded, as this one did that, “from the look of it, there’s no difference between a ‘developed’ country and a ‘developing’ country. And there’s no such thing as human rights. People are the most violent creatures on earth, and China, with its ban on guns, is doing pretty well!”

The Chinese government has taken the opportunity to urge the Obama administration to enact stricter gun laws, through an editorial in Xinhua News Agency:

Obama said of the latest tragedy the country had “been through this too many times,” and it was time to put aside political differences and “take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.”

Some people have noticed Obama’s tougher tone this time, compared to the Colorado shooting, when he called for “prayer and reflection.”

Action speaks louder than words. If Obama wants to take practical measures to control guns, he has to make preparation for a protracted war and considerable political cost.

But online comments translated by chinaSMACK show a different side of Chinese responses, with many comparing the government reactions to the two incidents:

The United States have lowered their flags to half-mast, I want to know what China has done.

我抵制日货：

Democracy is a very complicated thing, so complicated that it is the only thing Chinese people have not been successful in shanzhai‘ing.

Sunder_Coo：

We’re unable to treat the elderly well and we’re also unable to keep our children safe. We have no past and we’ve lost the future as well…

[...]

JACKIE梦里不知身是客：

Yesterday, I watched an entire day’s worth of CCTV4 news. I watched how America is in chaos and an abyss of suffering, with guns spreading unchecked, and had no idea whatsoever about the extremely tragic crime in Henan! May the children rest in peace.

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Post tags: children, crime, gun culture, Gun laws, school shootings, violence
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Local police said they had seized the suspect, a 36-year-old villager named Min Yingjun.

The attack happened at around 7:40 a.m. at the entrance of Chenpeng Village Primary School in Wenshu Township of Guangshan County in the city of Xinyang, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

China is no stranger to acts of mass violence against children –  In September, a man entered a childcare center in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and killed three children with an axe. Similar attacks occurred on the streets of Gongyi in Henan Province and at a childcare center for migrant workers in Shanghai in 2011.

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Local residents in Shuangliu and Longchang, two counties located in southwest China’s Sichuan province, have almost cleared shops there of candles and matches after speculation spread online that there would be three straight days of darkness starting Dec. 21, according to state-run Xinhua news agency. Vendors in both places are also selling supply packages and self-help manuals, according to the report.

[…] Worries about the world coming to an end are driving the Chinese to other drastic measures, including getting married. Xinhua reported that marriage registry offices in Xi’an, Hefei, Guangzhou and Shanghai have already maxed out their quota for approving marriages on Dec. 21.

[…] Surprising as it may be, the apocalypse panic in Sichuan pales in comparison to a salt-buying panic in 2011, triggered by more reasonable (though ultimately unfounded) fears over nuclear radiation spilling from Japan’s quake-damaged reactors. Chinese authorities arrested a 31-year old Internet user for “spreading salt rumors” via an online posting that urged people to stock up because radiation from Japan had polluted the sea off of China’s coast. Some Chinese citizens even demand refunds for their salt after finding themselves with more than they could use.

Both spates of hysteria have roots in more general anxieties, according to Peking University sociologist Lu Jiehua, who told Global Times that “this panic buying not only shows people’s fear of an upcoming apocalypse, but also reflects their sense of uncertainty toward life and society.”

Many other retailers have also seen commercial potential in mankind’s looming destruction, to the despair of Global Times’ Xuyang Jingjing:

Stores are […] hyping up their year-end promotions, capitalizing on an “end of the world” marketing opportunity. As the old saying goes, “when life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.” In this case, when the universe gives you a doomsday, cash in on others’ fear!

I’m hardly surprised by such business gimmicks anymore. Over the past few decades of rapid development, we’ve fostered the amazing ability to not just see the silver lining in every cloud; rather, we’ve managed to squeeze silver out of every cloud.

[…] They say money can’t buy you love or happiness. Well, maybe with the money you get from selling your kidney, you can buy that latest gadget that you perceive will make your life complete.

Sure, when the end comes we might die short of a kidney or some other vital organ. But at least we’ll be a lot happier.

(This refers to the case of an Anhui teenager who sold a kidney to buy an iPad and iPhone. The leader of the gang which arranged the operation was sentenced last month to five years in prison, while nine people involved have paid 1.48 million yuan in compensation.)

If retailers have pushed things too far, others have tried even shadier ways of cashing in on the looming cataclysm. From Chen Xiaoru, also at Global Times:

Shanghai police received 25 complaints about people prognosticating doomsday prophecies outside of residents’ homes in eight districts Wednesday and Thursday, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau said on its official microblog.

The complaints, which police received over a 24-hour period, illustrate how serious some residents are taking the Mayan prophecies about the end of the world, which authorities fear might be exploited. “Police made the announcement because there might be people trying to take advantage of the prophecy to scam residents out of money,” said Zhu Liang, a press officer with Huangpu police.

[…] Other reports have emerged about scammers trying to cash in on people’s beliefs. In Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, two con artists tried to persuade residents to donate all their money to escape the end of the world, according to the Zhejiang Province police’s official microblog.

While impending doom has brought out the worst in some, it has inspired others to impressive feats of inventiveness and engineering. In Urumqi, Lu Zhenghai has invested his life’s savings in the construction of an ark. Should the end not come to pass, the half-finished vessel may have some potential as a tourist attraction. Yang Zongfu, meanwhile, has developed a 1.5 million yuan spherical life-pod capable of holding three people and a year’s supplies. Yang claims to have sold over a dozen of the capsules, though The Wall Street Journal was unable to verify this. The eve of reckoning also moved one Chengdu company to generously grant its staff two extra days of vacation.

Adam Minter examined the 2012 phenomenon at Bloomberg View last week, describing its debt to Hollywood and how it has become a channel for some subtly barbed political commentary.

City Express, a popular, state-owned evening newspaper in Zhejiang province, tweeted photos of the collapses with this commentary:

“Today three major collapses happened nationwide. 1. A sink hole opened near the Palace Station of the Nanjing Metro Line 3 and a bus filled with passengers fell into it … 2. In Xiamen, the Jiangjun Temple Road collapsed and four cars were destroyed; 3. At the Guangzhou headquarters of Hainan Airlines a portion of the construction collapsed, burying alive a father of twins. PS: This convinces one to believe in the Mayans!”

The intent of this tweet is a matter of some controversy. Some netizens see it as an attempt to shake off blame for poor infrastructure. “This is a man-made disaster,” wrote one user in the comment thread beneath the City Express tweet. A second expressed outrage that the Mayans would even be invoked under such circumstances: “Taking this kind of thing as an excuse for shoddy engineering?”

More likely, though, the comments are over-interpreting what is actually intended as a pointed critique of the local governments and contractors thought to be responsible for China’s shoddy buildings. As a state-run newspaper, City Express wouldn’t really dare to criticize so directly (or generally), so it has used the most convenient platform available: Mayan prophecy.

Minter later tweeted:

Anybody taking bets on whether/when Chinese microblogs ban doomsday/Maya/Apocalypse-related search terms? I say Dec 15.

— Adam Minter (@AdamMinter) December 11, 2012

Also on Sina Weibo, a widely shared spoof video of Australian prime minister Julia Gillard comforting her people in the face of “flesh eating zombies, demonic hell beasts or […] the total triumph of K-pop” sparked a clash of political cultures. From Monica Tan at Daily Life:

The video of Prime Minister “Ji La De”, as Gillard is called in Chinese, along with these reactions by Chinese web users says just as much about Chinese politics as it does Australian. The vast majority of Australians might react to such a video with mild amusement, but hardly consider it shocking stuff. In contrast, for Chinese audiences this kind of “larrikin” behaviour coming from the country’s most powerful leader is literally too strange to be believed, with partial credit surely due to Gillard’s deadpan delivery.

User sleepeat said: “This can’t be possible, that a head of state is talking this way.” [Gillard is not, in fact, a head of state.] While another called Sum Shudong wrote, “How many glasses or bottles has Sister Prime Minister drunk?” A few even accused Gillard of being crazy and irresponsible, with user Chen Yue Cyanni writing earnestly, “Why has the Prime Minister of Australia been convinced that all this end of the world business is true when this type of thing has no scientific basis? She’s misleading her country.”

Some sceptics do maintain that life will carry on as usual. Sina Weibo’s explanation of the candle panic-buying when it trended last week concluded (via Tea Leaf Nation) that: “Experts have stated: Anyone with a bit of scientific common sense knows that there will not be three days of consecutive darkness.” Xinhua consulted a range of authoritative figures who assured the public that there is no need to panic—at least, not about the Mayan calendar.

Science fiction author Wang Jinkang believes those convinced by the rumors would do well to focus more on the here and now, stating that they should be more wary of disasters caused by climate change, a possible shortage of freshwater and deadly pathogens.

“The rumors are a misinterpretation of the Maya calendar and are still going on,” said Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist for China’s lunar orbiter project, adding that he believes Dec. 21 will be a peaceful and safe day.

“The sun will still rise on Dec. 21. All reactions to the doomsday prophecy show a strong recognition of the crisis of human existence. However, these reactions should be rooted in science,” said Wang Sichao, an astronomer at the Nanjing Purple Mountain Observatory.

He explained that when the sun transforms from its current stable state into a red giant, its expansion will devour Earth, signaling the end for the human race and the very planet itself.

“However, that won’t happen for another 5 billion years. At that time, humans will have to be able to find a new home,” Wang Sichao said, adding that the best reaction to the rumors should be to cherish one’s life and loved ones.

A weary NASA has assembled a Frequently Asked Questions page debunking the 2012 Doomsday prophecies, while astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson addressed the issue in a 2009 video at Fora.TV:

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Post tags: Anhui, commercialism, consumerism, crime, fraud, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Hefei, hoaxes, jokes, NASA, Peking University, rumors, scientists, Shanghai, Sichuan, sina weibo, tofu construction, Urumqi, xian, Zhejiang
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The man rushed into the centre in the autonomous region of Guangxi Zhuang in the middle of the day and began slashing the children, Xinhua said.

The age of the victims has not yet been reported.

A man identified only as Wu was later arrested by police in Pingnan county in connection with the attack.

A police investigation is now under way.

A similar incident occurred in a kindergarten in Wuhan in 2010.

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The foreigner, whose nationality remains unknown, was stabbed by an unidentified assailant at 3:20 p.m. at the entrance to Qudeng Alley in Xicheng district, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said.

The assailant has been apprehended by police officers who were on patrol near the scene of the attack.

See also a report from AFP. Read more about foreigners in China via CDT.

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Beijing makes no secret of its secrecy. While the government has become much less controlling than it used to be, information that doesn’t suit Beijing’s larger purposes still gets withheld, while information that doesn’t quite suit its purposes is often polished until it does. Only last month, an op-ed in the state-run newspaper Beijing Daily exposed local reporters displaying a shameful inclination towards balanced journalism. “Chinese media interested in negative news have been seduced into wrongdoing by Western concepts,” it fumed.

China’s sensitivity about its control of the bad-news agenda was highlighted once again this week when Beijing publicly chided the U.S. embassy for measuring Beijing’s sometimes “crazy bad” air pollution and publishing the data on Twitter. The damage is limited: although many expats and web savvy Chinese can still access it, Twitter is blocked in China. Nonetheless, the U.S. embassy smog readings are embarrassing for the Chinese government, whose own pollution measures tend to be much more favourable.

But pollution is just one of the items on the propaganda hit list. Anything that might shed some light on policy failures, social ills, or even the personalities of the country’s leaders is liable to be altered or suppressed. Here, then, are six of Beijing’s bad-news taboos.

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 The Ministry of Public Security said in a statement Sunday that 56-year-old Zhang Yongming was arrested by police in Yunnan province on murder charges.

It said Zhang is suspected of attacking male victims who were walking alone on a quiet road near his home in Jinning county.

The case is believed to be related to media reports this past week that at least eight young people had gone missing in the county.

The reports sparked a public outcry because they cited relatives of the missing as saying that police ignored their pleas for help and prevented them from contacting the media.

Other reports are calling the suspect the ‘cannibal monster.’ The Daily Telegraph adds:

 It said Zhang, a loner who never talked to his neighbours, had previously served almost 20 years in jail for murder and was known in the village as the “cannibal monster”.

And it quoted residents as saying they had seen green plastic bags hanging from his home, with what appeared to be white bones protruding from the top.

Hong Kong newspaper The Standard said police discovered human eyeballs preserved inside wine bottles – “like snake wine” – and pieces of what appeared to be human flesh hanging up to dry when they entered Zhang’s home.

Police feared that Zhang had fed human flesh to his three dogs, while selling other parts on the market, calling it “ostrich meat”, according to The Standard.

According to AFP, reports on nonpolitical crimes hardly face restrictions, but cannibalism seems to be a sensitive subject:

 Almost all last week’s reports on the grisly case — which made headlines around the world — were later removed from Chinese websites and online searches for the words “missing in Yunnan” were also blocked.

Cannibalism is a particularly sensitive subject in China, where it was practised as a survival tactic during periods of mass starvation, for example in the wake of a failed industrialisation drive launched in the late 1950s.

“A large amount of physical evidence and DNA comparisons show that Zhang Yongming from Nanmen village, Jinning county, killed the 11 males,” Sunday’s report said, citing the ministry of public security.

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Police arrested an ex-Communist Party official in central China on suspicion of raping at least 10 underage girls, authorities said Sunday, in a case that has sparked a storm of Internet anger.

The news prompted thousands of outraged comments from Chinese web users, who are increasingly confident in voicing anger about alleged wrongdoing by officials from China’s ruling Communist Party.

“Fine party cadre. Good leader of the people,” said Wang Delong on Sina’s weibo, a microblog similar to Twitter.

On the same site, Yawen posted: “An official again!”

According to CNN, Li Xingong has confessed to the crimes:

Li Xingong confessed to the crimes during police questioning and will face “swift and severe punishment,” according to the Xinhua news agency.

Li was the party’s deputy director in Yongcheng city, Xinhua said.

The report did not offer additional details, such as the victims’ ages or where the alleged crimes took place.

See also previous coverage on Sina Weibo and Microblogging, via CDT.

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Two international students from China were shot dead on Wednesday in a “gang-infested” area near the University of Southern California, Los Angeles police said.

Police described the students as a man and woman, both Chinese USC students in their 20s, and said they found the woman shot dead inside a BMW parked at a curb in a Los Angeles neighborhood not far from the private university. The man was found outside the car.

“Apparently he tried to get out of the car,” police spokesman Richard French said. He described the area as “gang-infested.”

The Los Angeles Times reported carjacking as a possible motive, but police said the motive was under investigation.

An AP has more details from the scene of the crime:

Ying Wu and Ming Qu were sitting in the luxury car at about 1 a.m. when the gunman fired, shattering the windows. Qu was wounded but managed to run to a nearby home, where he pounded on the door pleading for help, police said.

 [...]Police said the shooting may have been a robbery or a carjacking attempt of the dark-colored, $60,000 BMW. Witnesses said the car was in the roadway, not at the curb, at the time of the shooting.

[...]Qu managed to get out of the car and run to a nearby home, where he pounded on the door, police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said. It wasn’t known if anyone answered the door before the man collapsed.

[...]Beatriz Moreno, who lives across the street with her family from where the shooting occurred, said the neighborhood has been cleaned up. She said the last shooting she could remember on her street was in 2003.”We used to see this every day,” she said. “There are mostly families here. This is not normal.”

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The claim of responsibility is likely to alarm both the Pakistani government and China, which is a close of ally of Pakistan and has considerable investment in its south Asian neighbour.

The Chinese woman was shot on Tuesday in a market in the northwestern city of Peshawar along with a Pakistani man. Police at the time said they did not know the motive.

“Our comrades carried out the attack in Peshawar which killed the Chinese tourist,” Mohammed Afridi, a spokesman for a faction of the Pakistani Taliban from the Darra Adam Khel area, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“This was revenge for the Chinese government killing our Muslim brothers in their Xinjiang province.”

In recent years there have been a number of violent incidents between Uighurs and Hans in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. Most recently, a riot in Yecheng, Xinjiang left up to 20 dead. Read more about Uighurs and Xinjiang via CDT.

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Local police said that it is not known yet why the two people were killed, but they believed that it was not a robbery-intended crime as one laptop and two bags of the killed woman were found intact in the car.

Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, at about 5:00 pm local time, two unknown gunmen coming on a motorbike opened fire at two people sitting in a car at a market place in the downtown area of Peshawar.

The gunmen fled the scene after the shooting, they said.

According to a IANS report on NewKerala.com, the Chinese woman was visiting Pakistan on vacation.

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