Following Telegraph correspondent Richard Spencer’s blog post about difficulties in reporting the alleged Olympic terrorism plot in Xinjiang, Southern Weekend reporter Ding Bu provides an interesting inside look at the newspaper’s rush to report the story (since suppressed) of a Uighur woman alleged to have secreted a bottle of gasoline onto a China Southern Airlines flight with the apparent intention of bringing the plane down. Translated by ESWN:
…I called that number immediately. The voice over there was hesitant: “How did you find my number? It is not appropriate for me to speak. The relevant authorities will disclose the information. It is not appropriate for me to speak …” I tried emotional and rational appeals for more than ten minutes. This passenger was steel-willed and refused to talk. I hung up the telephone in extreme disappointment.
It was 12:11pm. Half a day had gone by already. Suddenly an unfamiliar telephone number appeared on my mobile telephone. But the person hung up after one ring.
I called back. The other party said: “I was on that airplane. I read your blog.”
Oh my God! I had just published my blog post at 9:04am. In three hours, the person that I was looking for had found me. I was astonished by and grateful for the speed of modern communication methods.
Ding then provides a transcript of “the other party’s” account:
On March 7, the airplane was scheduled to depart at 10:30am. The airplane was delayed for about 10 minutes. At that time, everybody was already on board, so we must be waiting for the permission to take off. The flight was normal thereafter.
After flying for about an hour, a passenger remarked that there was the smell of gasoline. The attendant also smelled it because it was too strong.
We were flying on a Boeing 757 that day. The plane was not big, and the rest rooms were located between the first-class cabin and the economy cabin. There were more than 200 passengers. The airplane was not full, because there were two vacant rows of seats in the rear.
I was seated towards the back, and I heard a quarrel. An Uyghur woman about 20 years old was on her feet. This Uyghur woman was seated towards the front to my right. She was probably in the fourth or fifth row of the economy-class cabin.
A man went over there. My guess was that he was the security guard. He held the woman down and found a bottle. He removed the bottle and then escorted her to the restroom.
We had no idea what was happening. There was no announcement. During the entire process, there was no chaos. It was very calm. At least I felt very calm. Someone in the rear slept through the whole thing without being aware at all.
At past noon, we began to feel that the airplane was descending. An announcement came that there was an emergency situation and the airplane was going to land at Zhongchuan Airport in the city of Lanzhou. A few minutes after that announcement, the airplane touched ground.
Du’s post continues on with a detailed chronicle of the reporting process, explaining at the end that the story “was aborted for reasons everybody knows about” (a phrase, as ESWN notes, commonly used to refer to black-out orders from Chinese propaganda authorities).
See Du’s original post in Chinese here.
