China issues first oral history report on 2012 Xinjiang terrorist attack victims

A Chinese university on Thursday released a research report based on face-to-face interviews with witnesses of a terrorist attack in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The report is the first of its kind in China.

Titled "Victims and Survivors of Terrorism in China: An Oral History," the 52-page report was published at a seminar by the Institute for Communication and Borderland Governance at Jinan University in south China's Guangdong Province.

Based on the narration of five victims and survivors, the report aims to reconstruct events from the terrorist attack that occurred in Yecheng, southern Xinjiang's Kashgar Prefecture, on February 28, 2012.

Nine terrorists hacked and killed 13 innocent people in the Xingfu Road market, including pedestrians, shopkeepers, and other people, and injuring 16, according to media reports.

According to the Jinan University report, thousands of terrorist attacks occured from 1990 to 2016 in Xinjiang, a great number of innocent people were killed during the attacks, along with hundreds of police officers. 

The report was the outcome of a research project launched by the institute starting in 2021. The researchers have collected the oral histories of victims and survivors of the terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and revisited the sites of the attacks.

More than 60 victims and survivors in different places of Xinjiang have so far been interviewed, and the research group will issue other reports of oral histories by these interviewees in the future, according to the report.

(Cover:  A seminar issuing the report "Victims and Survivors of Terrorism in China: An Oral History" is held by the Institute for Communication and Borderland Governance at Jinan University in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, January 18, 2024. /Institute for Communication and Borderland Governance at Jinan University)