Alleged terrorist group has not claimed responsibility and critics accuse China of using its name to excuse repression of Uighurs

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

China's top security official has blamed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement for organising the suicidal vehicle attack that killed five people in the heart of Beijing this week.

Meng Jianzhu, chief of the commission for political and legal affairs of the ruling Communist party, named the group in an interview with Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television when he was in the capital of Uzbekistan attending a regional security summit and seeking co-operation on counter-terrorism.

"The violent terrorist incident that happened in Beijing is an organised and plotted act. Behind the instigation is the terrorist group East Turkestan Islamic Movement entrenched in central and west Asian regions," Meng said, in video footage aired on Thursday by Phoenix.

Meng gave no further detail, and the alleged terrorist group has not claimed responsibility.

China believes the East Turkestan Islamic Movement aims to establish an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang, and blames the group for the low-intensity insurgency in the region.

The United States placed the movement on a terrorist watch list after the September 11, 2001, attacks, but quietly removed it amid doubts that it existed in any organised manner.

An four-wheel-drive ploughed through bystanders, crashed and burst into flames near the Tiananmen Gate on Monday, killing three in the car and two tourists, including a Filipino woman, and injuring dozens.

Beijing police said the perpetrators were a man with an ethnic Uighur name, his wife and his mother. Police have arrested five people on suspicion of conspiring in the attack and called it a planned terrorism strike – the city's first in recent history.

Knives, iron rods, petrol and a flag imprinted with religious slogans were found in the vehicle, police said.

Uighurs live mainly in China's north-west region of Xinjiang and have close cultural and language ties to Turkic peoples of central Asia.

Human rights groups have questioned whether China uses the security threat as an excuse to suppress the Uighurs and say Uighur extremism has been fuelled by China's heavy-handed policies in Xinjiang and discrimination against Uighurs by the country's ethnic Han majorities.

Uighurs say they have seen little benefit from the exploitation of Xinjiang's natural resources while good jobs tend to flow to ethnic Han migrants. The 9 million Uighurs now make up about 43% of the population in a region where they used to dominate.

Since Monday's attack police have set up checkpoints and stepped up security in Xinjiang , according to various reports.