Terrorism showing new characteristics, says Chinese official

The recent series of terrorist attacks show that terrorism has new characteristics, said a Chinese official in Beijing on September 5 when addressing a penal of the ongoing 22nd Congress on the Law of the World.

"Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, terrorist threat has been in existence and evolved with time and great changes have also taken place in the composition of terrorists, terrorist activity and the targets of terrorist attacks," said Zhao Yongchen, deputy director of the Anti-Terrorism Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security.

According to him, terrorism in different ways is spreading all over the world, in particular the terrorist activities advocating "separatism and extremism" are rampant.

"No country can shield itself away from terrorism as different terrorist groups have reached out their talon in any direction," he said.

Zhao said one of the characteristics of terrorism is that massive terrorist events with serious consequences have broken out continuously.

"To disseminate their extreme political ideas and ideology, terrorists not only try to kill more people with extremely crucial means, but also to have more people witness such bloody scenes," he said.

Vulnerable regions, he said, have become areas with heated terrorist activity.

"This is an obvious trend that the specific terrorist attack targets have changed from 'hard targets' -- government or military facilities-- to 'soft targets', namely those less defended public places," he said.

He also noted that terrorist methods are diversifying, with the number of suicide-murder bombs using car bombs or bombs attached to persons increasing and chain explosions becoming common.

At the same time, trans-border activities have become one of the basic operation modes of terrorism, said Zhao, who said easily accessible network technology allows more collusion and communication between different terrorist groups in different countries.

In Zhao's view, the fact that terrorism coexists with and closely connects to transnational organized crime, particularly drug trafficking and secret transnational financing, is another trait.

There is still a long way to go for the international community to fight against terrorism, he said.

Source: Xinhua