An Afghan plane bound for Xinjiang was sent back to Afghanistan after a bomb threat, Chinese media said yesterday, but the airline rebutted the report.
Kam Air deputy chief Feda Mohammad Fedawi said the plane, carrying 160 passengers, left Kabul and was crossing Kyrgyzstan on its way to the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi when it was told to turn back on Sunday.
Xinhua news agency said there had been a bomb threat and Urumqi airport authorities were told not to let the plane land.
Kyrgyz authorities told the crew that Chinese authorities would not allow them into their airspace, Fedawi said.
The plane could not return to the Afghan capital because of windy weather and was diverted to the southern city of Kandahar, he said, adding that there had not been a bomb threat.
Fedawi said the plane’s passengers and crew were fine and the plane was expected to return to Kabul yesterday.
He said the plane had been inspected by Afghan officers and a foreign security company before departure in a security check he described as unusually thorough.
A press officer for NATO forces in Afghanistan, which control Kandahar airport, said the alliance had received no report of a plane forced to land there.
A Xinjiang regional government duty officer who declined to be named said he had no information about the incident. Calls to the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau rang unanswered. Calls to the Urumqi airport information desk also rang unanswered.
Meanwhile, police in Kyrgyzstan yesterday arrested two leading Uighur activists after an unauthorized protest against Chinese oppression of Uighurs in Xinjiang.
More than 1,000 people, waving banners with slogans such as “Free Uighurstan,” turned out for the protest in the center of Bishkek before police dispersed the crowd, a reporter witnessed.
Uighur community leader Dilmurat Akbarov and his deputy Zhamaldin Nasiyrov were detained in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek for holding an “unsanctioned” meeting, the former Soviet state’s human rights ombudsman Tursunbek Akun said.
“In Bishkek after the carrying out of an unsanctioned demonstration in support of Uighurs in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region the heads of the Uighur diaspora community ... were detained,” he said.
Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished Central Asian state bordering China, is home to a sizeable population of Uighurs.
The unrest in Xinjiang last month and China’s crackdown sparked unprecedented protests among Uighurs in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS