【来源】
【链接】
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/sports/olympics/10beijing.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
【标题】Chinese Man Kills Relative of U.S. Olympic Coach
【正文】
By
EDWARD WONG
Published: August 9, 2008
BEIJING — A Chinese man wielding a knife attackedtwo American tourists related to an American Olympic coach on Saturday,killing one of the tourists and wounding the other and their Chinesetour guide while the three were visiting an ancient tower in centralBeijing. The attacker then killed himself by leaping from the tower,Chinese officials said.
The Drum Tower in Beijing was the site of the attack on Saturday.
The attack came on the first day of the Olympic Games in Beijing,after a dazzling opening ceremony the previous night in which Chinasought to project an image of power and strength while welcomingthousands of foreign visitors. As news of the killing spread, it castan instant pall over the city, from the warrens of old alleyways whereChinese are eager to open their arms to foreigners, to the stadiumswhere visitors waited in line for events like
swimming and
gymnastics.
Thedead American was a man, and the injured American tourist and Chineseguide are both women, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. TheUnited State Olympic Committee issued a statement giving broad detailsof the attack, but did not release the names of the victims. Aspokesman for the committee, Darryl Seibel, said the survivingAmerican’s injuries were “serious.”
A spokesman for the AmericanEmbassy also declined to give any names on Saturday afternoon, sayingthe embassy was working with the victims’ families.
The woundedvictims were being treated at the Peking Union Medical CollegeHospital, one of Beijing’s best medical centers, located in theWangfujing shopping district. In the late afternoon, Olympic andChinese officials and American visitors could be seen walking throughthe hallways and holding meetings in rooms.
Violence againstforeigners is extremely rare in Beijing and throughout China, and allthrough preparations for the Games, Chinese leaders have taken pains tosay that, more than anything else, these Olympics would be safe. TheChinese government has faced enormous challenges this year, notablyduring the Tibetan riots in March and the deadly earthquake in May, andis determined to show people both here in China and abroad that it canmaintain strict control of the country under any circumstances.
Theattack took place at noon on the second floor of the ancient DrumTower, which lies on the north-south axis that runs from the ForbiddenCity to the main Olympic venue. The tower, a red dynastic-era buildingthat was once used in conjunction with the nearby Bell Tower to signalthe time of day, draws for tourists who climb up it for a sweeping viewof one of the best preserved ancient neighborhoods in Beijing. Theprevious night, during the opening ceremony, foreigners and Chinese hadmingled in the neighborhood and crowded into bars at nearby Houhai Laketo watch the televised festivities.
Xinhua identified theattacker as Tang Yongming, 47, from the city of Hangzhou in ZhejiangProvince. The news agency did not provide further details.
Chinesefrom across the country have made their way to Beijing for theOlympics, but there are also many long-term residents here fromZhejiang, which provides a steady supply of migrant workers forconstruction projects and other hard-labor jobs.
In recent weeks,the Chinese government has tightened security throughout the capital,reinforcing the usual police units with paramilitary police officersand soldiers. Surveillance cameras have been installed on lampposts,and tens of thousands of residents, most of them elderly, arevolunteering as neighborhood sentries. They sit on curbsides and inalleys looking for any suspicious act or person.
Chineseofficials had said they their greatest threat of violence came fromterrorism, especially from militants seeking an independent state inthe western region of Xinjiang.
Chinese generally do not exhibitviolent hostilities toward Americans or the United States. During theopening ceremony on Friday night, the American delegation drewthunderous applause when it marched into the Bird’s Nest, from Chinesewatching inside and outside the stadium. American sports stars inparticular are admired by many Chinese.
The victims were notwearing any clothes that would identify them as American or visitorswho had a connection to a U.S. team, Mr. Seibel said.
The
volleyballteam had been notified soon after the events occurred, and they arestaying in the athletes’ village, he said. He did not know whether theywould still compete in a match scheduled for Sunday.
President Bush and
Laura Bushwere both still in Beijing on Saturday. Ms. Bush toured the ForbiddenCity in the morning, and Mr. Bush had plans to watch a women’svolleyball match.
“Laura and I were also saddened by the attack on an American family andtheir Chinese tour guide today in Beijing,” Mr. Bush said in his hotelafter making a brief statement about the fighting in Georgia. “Ourthoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. And theUnited States government has offered to provide any assistance thefamily needs.”
Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press
Chinese officers investigated the crime site on the Drum Tower.
Spectators at Olympic venues began hearing about the attack shortly after it took place.
“Totell you the truth, this is really a shock because there’s so muchsecurity here,” said Annette Busateri, 31, a communications managerfrom Salt Lake City who was watching men’s gymnastics qualificationswhen she heard the news. “We were told that even at the public markets,there was a lot of security in plainclothes. There are guardseverywhere and cameras. So I’m not sure how something like this couldhappen.”
She and her husband, Kirt Busateri, were travelingaround China with a tour group, and they both said they would not benervous on the tour. But when asked if they would still wear clotheswith “U.S.A.” on them, they paused.
“I would, I think, becausethere is still national pride there,” Annette Busateri said. “You can’tlet something like this change the way you live or make you shy awayfrom being American.”
Tina Jacobson, 55, of Atlanta, was wearinga shirt with the American flag on it as she waited with her 19-year-olddaughter Jackie to get into the
fencingvenue. They were in Beijing to cheer on Ms. Jacobson’s other daughter,Sada, who is competing in the women’s saber final Saturday night.
“I feel safe; we do a lot of traveling,” Tina Jacobson said. “This is a very big city and there are people who do bad things.”
Jackie said, “There are crazy people on every corner on the globe.”
A number of Americans interviewed in and around the Olympic venues all said they have been made to feel welcome by the Chinese.
Inthe afternoon, the Drum Tower itself remained sealed off by the police,but people were allowed to walk around the area and cars drove past ona wide street that runs along the tower’s south side. Peopleinterviewed in the area said they were shocked by the attack, and noone admitted to seeing or hearing anything earlier.
Facing theDrum Tower on its north side is the gray stone edifice of the BellTower. Both rise from a sea of ancient alleyways, called hutongs, thatgive much of Beijing its character. Few sights in the capital are moreevocative than a glimpse of one of the towers from those alleys or fromthe shore of Houhai Lake. The terrace of the Drum Tower has a stunningview of the tiled rooftops of old courtyard homes nestled within thehutongs, and it is this panorama that would have drawn the two Americantourists and their guide up into the tower on Saturday.
Thoughrare, violence has marred several Olympic Games. The deadliest incidenttook place during the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, when 11 Israeliathletes and coaches were killed by a
Palestinian group calling itself Black September.
Atthe 1996 Atlanta Games, a pipe bomb exploded in Centennial Park,killing one woman who had traveled to the Olympics with her daughterand injuring more than 100 others. A Turkish cameraman died of a heartattack while responding to the blast.
In 2005,
Eric Robert Rudolph,who had been a fugitive in the North Carolina wilderness for fiveyears, pleaded guilty to the Atlanta bombing and three others, claimingthey were motivated, in part, by his opposition to legalized abortion.
Murdersof foreigners in China are almost as rare. The latest reported incidentoccurred last month in Shanghai, where a 23-year-old Canadian model,Diana O’Brien, was stabbed to death in an apartment complex. Chineseofficials later said the police had arrested a young Chinese man whoconfessed to killing Ms. O’Brien during a botched robbery.
In2006, an Italian woman, Sandri Paola, was stabbed to death on a streetsouth of Chaoyang Park, in eastern Beijing. Ms. Paola had been in Chinamore than a month on that trip, during which she was teaching Chineseat a French university. She had worked in the Italian embassy’scultural department in 2004.
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本帖最后由 Nicolle 于 2008-8-9 21:59 编辑 ]
