Kremlin says it will not 'leave unnoticed' request by prime minister of Ukrainian region for Moscow's assistance

The prospect of a full-scale Russian military intervention in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula mounted on Saturday, as the region's new prime minister asked for Vladimir Putin's assistance and a Kremlin source said it would "not leave unnoticed" the request.

The pro-Russian prime minister of the region asked for Moscow's assistance in keeping the peace and claimed he had control of all military, police and other security services.

The call by Sergei Aksenov came after armed men described as Russian troops took control of key airports and a communications centre in Crimea on Friday, and Ukraine accused Russia of a "military invasion and occupation".

In the reply the Russian foreign ministry said it was "extremely concerned" about the recent developments in Crimea, which it said confirmed the desire of Kiev's politicians to destabilise the situation on the peninsula.

The foreign ministry also accused pro-Kiev gunmen of attempting to take over the interior ministry headquarters in the region, claiming several injuries had occurred.

"In Russia, we are extremely concerned about the recent developments in Crimea," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "We believe it is extremely irresponsible to further pressure the already tense situation in the Crimea."

In the escalating war of words between Kiev and Moscow, Ukraine's defence minister, Ihor Tenyukh, accused Russia of having "recently" brought 6,000 additional personnel into Ukraine and that the Ukrainian military were on high alert in the Crimea region.

The Crimean peninsula is home to a key Russian strategic naval base for the Black Sea fleet which it leases from Ukraine under an agreement.

Russian officials claimed on Friday that military movements in the region were covered by that agreement – a claim denied by Kiev.

The latest statements from both sides in the crisis follow mounting concern in the west, which on Friday prompted a statement from the US president, Barack Obama. Obama warned Moscow on Friday "there will be costs" if it intervenes militarily.

His comments came after the British foreign secretary, William Hague, announced he would travel to Kiev on Sunday for talks with the new government there.

The latest escalation of tension in Ukraine, where Viktor Yunukovych was deposed as president a week ago following mass demonstrations in whicvh more than 80 people died, came after armed men described as Russian troops took control of key airports and a communications centre in Crimea on Friday.

Ukraine's population is divided in loyalties between Russia and the west, with much of western Ukraine advocating closer ties with the European Union while eastern and southern regions look to Russia for support.

Crimea, a south-eastern peninsula of Ukraine that has semi-autonomous status, was seized by Russian forces in the 18th century under Catherine the Great. It became part of Ukraine in 1954 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred jurisdiction from Russia, a move that was a mere formality until the 1991 Soviet collapse meant Crimea landed in an independent Ukraine.

Moscow has taken a confrontational stance toward its southern neighbour after pro-Russian Yanukovych fled the country.

Aksenov, the head of the main pro-Russia party on the peninsula, said in his statement that he appealed to Putin "for assistance in guaranteeing peace and calmness on the territory of the autonomous republic of Crimea."

Aksenov was appointed by the Crimean parliament on Thursday after pro-Russian gunmen seized the building and as tensions soared over Crimea's resistance to the new authorities in Kiev, who took power last week.

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Priests say investigation into allegations of sexual abuse are being blocked by 'formidable church machine'

Three priests and one ex-priest whose allegations of sexual misconduct against the archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, led to his resignation a year ago, have appealed directly to Pope Francis for a meeting in a last-ditch bid for justice.

Describing the church as a "formidable machine" that had blocked any investigation, one told the Observer: "The abuse we received at the hands of Keith O'Brien is dwarfed by the systematic abuse we have received from church officials. They have passed the buck, misrepresented the truth, engaged in cover-up and, having asked for our trust and co-operation, shamelessly procrastinated and hidden behind a veneer of diplomacy and charm. I want to ask Pope Francis, can you sort this out?"

Secret negotiations have been going on between the men and the cardinal's successor, Archbishop Leo Cushley, since last November. The archbishop insists that only Rome can initiate an inquiry into O'Brien's sexual behaviour, but he has agreed to an investigation of the cardinal's financial transactions. In an email to the complainants last December, the archbishop's vicar general, Philip Kerr, confirmed: "The archdiocesan auditors have been asked to examine the financial accounts which Keith O'Brien personally operated."

"Lenny", an ex-priest who rebuffed O'Brien's advances at a seminary, says that the diocese is a charity and he would have contacted the charity regulator if Cushley had refused the audit. "Keith O'Brien was essentially the CEO of a £9m charity. We want to assure ourselves that this institution is not totally corrupt."

The group know that the cardinal bought a priest friend a jet ski for his birthday. "Jet skis cost thousands of pounds. How can a man who was an archbishop have the money to pay for a jet ski for his pal? Catholics should not give a penny more until they know the church is spending it on something they intend to pay for."

The complainants tabled a formal paper at a meeting with Cushley in Edinburgh last November, repeating the need for a formal investigation and proposing a number of initiatives. These included a public apology for "the victims of O'Brien and all those affected by abuse throughout the church", but also an investigation into governance in the diocese. They wanted to know how O'Brien had come to be appointed, the extent of his predatory behaviour and whether those close to him had been manoeuvred into positions of power under his leadership.

Most damaging for the church was a request to examine potential sacramental abuse by O'Brien. The complainants have asked if the cardinal sought absolution in confession from anyone he had committed a sexual sin against. This offence is regarded as so serious that the penalty is automatic excommunication. In church eyes, any sacraments the cardinal had subsequently administered would be illicit.

Cushley, a former Vatican diplomat, insisted he could not take action independently, but would pass requests to the Vatican. He offered a private apology to the men for their suffering, but said a public apology required Rome's approval. A spokesman for the archbishop said: "Archbishop Cushley has listened to the parties concerned and will transmit any information to the Holy See. Any decision on further action will rest with the Holy See as jurisdiction in the matter rests with the pope."

For the four men, the last year has been traumatic. They have been accused of seeking vengeance, while Bishop Stephen Robson, a close friend of O'Brien, has called publicly for forgiveness for the cardinal. For those involved, such calls are simply another church mechanism to silence them. "Denial is deep," says one. "They are so lacking in compassion. Why have we been waiting so long?"

The Vatican ordered O'Brien to undertake an unspecified period of "prayer and penance". In recent months, however, he has sent out personal cards with a photograph of himself, still in his cardinal's red robes. It is, say the complainants, a sign of both his inability to confront his actions and the church's inability to deal with him. "Keith was power hungry," says one. "Now he is a wounded lion, but I'd like to see them remove his teeth and claws. That might mean removing his red hat."

Lenny said that the past year had cost him "physically and emotionally". Watching O'Brien's elevation led to his decision to leave the priesthood, costing him his vocation and a crisis of personal faith. He is now married.

But speaking out has had one positive effect. "It has been the most authentic decision of my life and I know my motive was not hatred. I have had a sense of God over the last year that I haven't had for a long time. I have felt a bit of a guiding presence."

Last week Archbishop Cushley travelled to Rome, assuring the complainants that their requests would be personally delivered. However, he suggested justice had a better chance if "discussion of the case in public is avoided".

"They always demand silence," says Lenny, "which is ironic given the church has been spinning relentlessly all year.""

In an email to Lenny, the archbishop wrote: "Please be assured that I will transmit your request for an audience with the Holy Father and the Secretary of State. As with all such requests, I warn you not to hold your breath for a reply, but you never know."

Lenny said: "If even Francis won't talk to victims of abuse because the abuser is a cardinal, then that will be disappointing – and very telling."

Poverty pay on tea estates in Assam fuels a modern slave trade ensnaring thousands of young girls. A Guardian/Observer investigation follows the slave route from an estate owned by a consortium, including the owners of the best-selling Tetley brand, through to the homes of Delhi's booming middle classes, exposing the reality of the 21st-century slave trade

The military cannot defeat Boko Haram alone. We also need political leaders to reach across the divide, unite, and co-operate

Once again, Nigerians have faced further attacks in the northern part of the country, which have left more than 43 school children dead. It is another great loss of innocent lives at the hands of Boko Haram, this time in the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi.

This month alone we have lost more than 300 lives to the activities of these militants. As a father, I feel personally every condolence message that is sent to grieving mothers, fathers or siblings on this wanton spate of killings.

As with all insurgencies, fighting Boko Haram is not just a task for the military. The success for Nigeria in fighting Boko Haram and terrorism in general is largely dependent upon two key issues: leadership and political co-operation.

The first, leadership, lies squarely in the hands of president Goodluck Jonathan, who says the situation will improve– but this isn't instilling confidence in the rest of his countrymen. He must now urgently provide all the necessary resources allocated by our government to help ensure our nation's security. He must also work with the governors of the state to ensure a unified approach to combatting this menace.

The second issue, political co-operation, is the responsibility of all politicians. We all must understand our duties as elected representatives of our people, and co-operate politically to bridge region and religion. We must also appeal to the governors of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe; to all leaders from the region; and to all opposition leaders to co-operate with federal government. We have to fully support the military and provide all funds required by the security agencies. This must also be a priority for both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I believe that with the continued attacks in northern Nigeria, the support from each and every Nigerian is vitally important for combating violent extremism.

Nigeria will soon be approaching a presidential election period, but in my opinion the fight to protect people should be prioritised over domestic politics. Disputes between the central government and local governors will not help an already desperate situation.

As the scale of the problem in northern Nigeria is only just being grasped, we should welcome the offers of support and expertise for outside the country. The United States and other international partners have pledged support and assistance, but this will only work if we are unified. For the sake of innocent lives our political resolve must be as strong as the military option.

The demands of Boko Haram can never be met because Nigeria is a multicultural, open and welcoming country. The military can fight them, but defeating them will take more than guns and bombs. Success will only happen when every leader, governor, senator and the president sit together and combine their political will to put an end to these senseless killings.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed 11 officers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province

Two bombs, detonated minutes apart, struck tribal police assigned to guard polio workers in north-west Pakistan on Saturday, killing 11, police said. The first struck an escort vehicle in the Lashora village of Jamrud tribal region in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Police official Nawabzada Khan said another roadside bomb struck a convoy of tribal police officers dispatched to transport victims of the first attack. He said gunmen also opened fire on officers, triggering a shoot-out. A government administrator Nasir Khan said they had launched a massive hunt in effort to trace and arrest the attackers. He confirmed 11 deaths and 12 injuries.No one claimed responsibility for the two separate bombings, but anti-polio teams or their guards have frequently been targeted in Pakistan by Islamic militants, who say the campaigns are a tool for spying and claim the vaccine makes boys sterile.

Pakistan is one of the few remaining countries where polio persists. In most cases the disease is found in the northwest, where militants make it difficult to reach children for vaccination.

• Written reasons for five-game ban to be received on Monday
• FA's Alex Horne says: 'At which point it's open to appeal'

The Football Association could push for Nicolas Anelka to serve more than a five-match ban for a racially aggravated goal celebration by appealing against its own disciplinary panel's verdict.

On Wednesday, the West Bromwich Albion striker received the minimum FA racism ban for performing a gesture known in France as a quenelle and which has been called an inverted Nazi salute.

Although the gesture was found to be racist, the FA's independent commission backed Anelka's insistence that he was not being intentionally antisemitic.

The FA's general secretary, Alex Horne, said the governing body will not receive the written reasons until Monday "at which point it's open to appeal from either our side or from Nicolas Anelka's side".

Until then Horne said he could not comment on "whether five matches is enough".

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Follow the day’s developments as tensions continue to escalate in Crimea and US warns Russia of ‘costs’ if Moscow intervenes

Robert Harris has crafted a compelling narrative of state corruption and individual principle

The Dreyfus Affair constitutes one of those moments of history that a lot people know of rather than much about. Even among well educated people there's often little more than a headline understanding of antisemitism, a French miscarriage of justice, Devil's Island and Emile Zola's famous attack on the French establishment's conspiracy against the Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus: J'accuse. But the real story is like something from the imagination of Alexandre Dumas, full of intrigue, wrongful imprisonment and heroic effort to establish the truth. In other words, it's a thriller and there is no more deft hand at work in that genre than Robert Harris. But unlike previous Harris thrillers, this is not a historical counterfactual, but, save for a few small fictional details, an almost documentary-like assemblage of what actually took place.

Dreyfus was convicted of passing secrets to the Germans in 1895 and sent to solitary confinement on Devil's Island, where he was forbidden even to speak to his guards. But he was an innocent fall guy, fingered by the military and the government because he was conveniently Jewish, while the real culprit was allowed to continue at dissolute liberty to avoid the embarrassment of the public knowledge that there was a non-Jewish – ie authentic French – spy in the army.

The hero of the piece, however, is not Dreyfus, who despite his dreadful suffering, is a minor and not particularly sympathetic character. Instead, Harris unearths the tale of Georges Picquart, the French officer who initially played a part in Dreyfus's arrest, only to be struck by a growing suspicion that the wrong man had been sent away. Although not without his own flaws, including a glint of antisemitism, Picquart is a man who can't let anything lie – even when it is beneficial to him. After Dreyfus's incarceration he is made head of a secret intelligence unit called the "statistical section". But he finds himself a victim of a sinister campaign when he begins to ask uncomfortable questions.

While finely attuned to modern resonances of surveillance, cultural identity and patriotic loyalty, Harris stays true to the atmosphere and morals of the period. He has crafted a compelling narrative of state corruption and individual principle, and a memorable whistleblower whose stubborn call can still be heard more than a century later.

• Kiev puts armed forces on full combat alert
• Putin and Obama hold 90-minute call over crisis
• UN security council meets for emergency talks

Ukraine has put its armed forces on full alert and warned Russia that military intervention will lead to war shortly after Vladimir Putin gave the green light for an invasion as the upper house of the Russian parliament unanimously approved his request to send troops into the neighbouring state.

After a three-hour meeting with security and defence chiefs on Saturday, prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk said he had called for talks and urged Russia to return its soldiers to base in the Crimea region during a phone call with his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. "Military intervention would be the beginning of war and the end of any relations between Ukraine and Russia," Yatseniuk said.

Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, said he had put the armed forces on full readiness because of the threat of "potential aggression" as 15,000 Russian troops were said to have joined those who have effectively seized Crimea. Speaking live on TV, Turchynov said he had also ordered stepped-up security at nuclear power plants, airports and other strategic infrastructure.

Putin told the US president, Barack Obama, during a 90-minute call on Saturday night that Russia had the right to protect its interests and those of Russian speakers not only in Crimea but also in east Ukraine. Obama called on Russian forces to pull troops back to base in Crimea and not interfere elsewhere. He also warned Putin that Russia faced greater political and economic isolation. The White House said in a statement: "President Obama expressed his deep concern over Russia's clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is a breach of international law."

The US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, told his Russian counterpart on Saturday that Moscow's military intervention risked creating further instability and an escalation "that would threaten European and international security," the Pentagon said.

Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he would hold a meeting on Sunday to discuss the crisis after Ukraine asked it, the US and EU "to look at all possible mechanisms for protecting its territorial integrity".

Tensions escalated into the night when two Russian anti-submarine warships appeared off Crimea's coast, violating an agreement on Moscow's lease of a naval base, a Ukrainian military source was quoted as saying. The two vessels, part of Russia's Baltic Fleet, had been sighted in a bay at Sevastopol, where Moscow's Black Sea Fleet has a base.

Obama's national security team met to discuss policy options, according to a senior administration official, while David Cameron said: "There can be no excuse for outside military intervention in Ukraine – a point I made to President Putin when we spoke [on Friday]. Everyone must think carefully about their actions and work to lower, not escalate, tensions. The world is watching."

Foreign secretary William Hague said he was "deeply concerned" at the Russian parliament's decision to use troops in Ukraine. He said: "This action is a potentially grave threat to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine."

After several days of Russian stealth, the move to deploy forces came suddenly and decisively. The Kremlin said Putin wanted troops in Ukraine "until the sociopolitical situation is normalised". Less than an hour later, in a hastily convened extraordinary sitting of Russia's Federation Council that was laced with cold war rhetoric, senators voted unanimously to support Putin's proposal, and proposed withdrawing Russia's ambassador to the US in protest at an "insult to the Russian people" from Obama.

Earlier in Kiev, Turchynov, who has been in power since president Viktor Yanukovych fled a week ago, convened a special session of the cabinet, and spoke by telephone with the US secretary of state, John Kerry.

Former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, a leading candidate in presidential elections set for 25 May, had called for parliament to convene and order a full mobilisation of the army. The United Nations security council was due to hold an emergency session to discuss Ukraine on Saturday night. In London, William Hague said that Russia's ambassador to Britain had been summoned to the Foreign Office.

The Russian decree does not limit the use of troops to Crimea, specifying only that the Russian military could be deployed "on Ukrainian territory", and the big question is how far the Kremlin wants to go. So far, Putin's statement only talks about "protecting the interests of Russian citizens and compatriots", but there are fears that Moscow is planning a full-scale annexation of Crimea, with its majority ethnic Russian population. Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that no decision to implement the decree had yet been taken.

Ominously, there were also clashes in the major eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk on Saturday, with the deputy mayor of Kharkiv saying that 97 people had been injured in violence between supporters of the new government in Kiev and pro-Russian demonstrators.

Putin's move comes after two days during which the Kremlin's motives were unclear. Armed men seized the Crimean parliament on Thursday and the peninsula's airports on Friday, but claimed to be members of locally organised "self-defence squads".

Ukraine had already accused Russia of a "military invasion and occupation" of Crimea. Michael McFaul, until last week the US ambassador to Russia, castigated the Kremlin: "Russian companies and banks with business in the west will suffer as a result of reckless Putin decision. Will they speak up?" he tweeted.

But the parliamentary session roundly dismissed western criticism in advance. Senator Nikolai Ryzhkov said Russia should be prepared for the west to "unleash their dogs on us". "They ruined Yugoslavia, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, all in the name of western democracy. It's not even double standards, it's political cynicism."

Late on Friday night, Obama told Russia there would be "costs" for intervention in Ukraine. A senator in the Federation Council said it "crossed a red line" and "insulted the Russian people". The parliamentary body said it would ask Putin for the Russian ambassador to the US to be withdrawn.

However, actual signs of violence have been limited. The Russian foreign ministry claimed on Saturday that armed men "from Kiev" had tried to seize the government building in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, but had been repulsed by self-defence units, who took casualties. On the ground, nobody could offer any evidence of such an attack.

Yanukovych, who gave a press conference in the southern Russian city of Rostov on Friday at which he claimed he was still the legitimate president, has called the new government Nazis. His role is now unclear, but the Federation Council said he had approved the use of Russian troops. He fled after signing a compromise agreement with opposition leaders, in the presence of three EU foreign ministers. Russia has blasted the EU for failing to keep the opposition to its side of the bargain.

Yanukovych's flight from Kiev was the culmination of three months of protest, ending with 82 people being killed in clashes with riot police. Ukraine's new government has disbanded the Berkut riot police involved in clashes with protesters, while Russia has announced it will give them Russian passports. The first of them collected passports at a Russian consulate in Crimea on Saturday.

In Crimea on Saturday, there were more pro-Russia rallies, and the region already appeared under the control of Russian troops and pro-Russian militias, who were patrolling the airports, parliaments and roads in and out of the region.

State media blame militants from Xinjiang after 'violent terror attack' at crowded ticket hall in Yunnan province, south-west China

China was reeling from what was described as a "violent terror attack" on Saturday in which a knife-wielding gang stabbed 33 people to death and left scores more injured at a railway station.

State media blamed the killings at Kunming in Yunnan province, south-west China, on militants from Xinjiang in the country's restive north-west. "Evidence at the crime scene showed that the Kunming railway station terrorist attack was carried out by Xinjiang separatist forces," the Xinhua news agency said, quoting officials in the city.

Reports said five attackers were shot dead by police following the incident on Saturday evening and another five were being hunted. Unverified photographs circulating on social media appeared to show the blood-soaked bodies of victims lined up on the floor. Other images showed distraught people running away from the station and crowds gathering among police officers and ambulances.

Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered a full-scale manhunt to find those responsible for what was one of the deadliest attacks in the communist country in recent years.

"Severely punish in accordance with the law the violent terrorists and resolutely crack down on those who have been swollen with arrogance," he said, according to Xinhua. "Understand the serious and complex nation of combating terrorism. Go all out to maintain social stability."

Chinese TV said the country's top police official, Meng Jianzhu, was on his way to the scene.

Yang Haifei, who was wounded in the chest and back, told Xinhua he had been buying a train ticket when the attackers approached and he had tried to escape with the crowd. "I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone," he said. Others "simply fell on the ground".

Some who escaped were desperately searching for missing family. "I can't find my husband, and his phone went unanswered," said Yang Ziqing, who had been waiting to catch a train to Shanghai when the knife gang struck.

Eyewitnesses were quoted by the China News Service, saying the attackers, dressed in black, "burst into the train station plaza and the ticket hall, stabbing whoever they saw".

Xinhua said at least 113 people were injured in the "organised, premeditated" attack. The victims were taken by ambulances to hospitals around the city.

Weibo users took to the social network to explain what happened, though many of those posts were quickly deleted by government censors, especially those that described the attackers, two of whom were identified by some as women. Others condemned the attack.

"No matter who, for whatever reason, or of what race, chose somewhere so crowded as a train station, and made innocent people their target – they are evil and they should go to hell," wrote one user.

The website of the state-run People's Daily newspaper said the gang struck at 9pm local time on Saturday, hacking into victims who it said were "passersby". It said the station had been cordoned off and more than 120 police, firefighters and security officers deployed to the scene. TV images showed police wrapping a long, sword-like knife in a plastic bag, amid the heavy security at the station.

Kunming, about 1,300 miles south-west of Beijing, is a bustling university town and major commercial hub on trade routes linking southern China to neighbouring Vietnam.

The attack comes at a particularly sensitive time as China gears up for the annual meeting of parliament, which opens in Beijing on Wednesday and is normally accompanied by a tightening of security across the country. China has blamed similar incidents in the past on extremists operating out of Xinjiang, though such attacks have generally been limited to Xinjiang itself. China says its first major suicide attack, in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in October, involved militants from Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people, many of whom resent Chinese restrictions on their culture and religion.

In July 2008, the city was hit by two explosions on board separate public transport buses, leaving two dead. Officials did not classify the blasts as acts of terrorism and later dismissed reports that they were claimed by a Xinjiang separatist group.

The former Labour cabinet minister has written a beguiling memoir of his parents' low-key yet heroic fight against apartheid in South Africa

History is replete with the most ordinary people carrying out the most extraordinary actions. Adelaine and Walter Hain, English-speaking white South Africans, spent years trying to protect anti-apartheid activists. Their heroics were low-key – hosting meetings, visiting prisoners, smuggling messages – but their constancy was admirable. The story of Ad and Wal is told by their better-known son, Peter, who came to the fore in the 1970s with his campaign against South African sports and rose to become a member of Tony Blair's cabinet.

The pivotal moments of the apartheid regime, from the Sharpeville massacre to the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, are well documented. This account spans these events and more, but its focus lies elsewhere. It is the small acts of cruelty and kindness that make this narrative so captivating.

The more active the Hain family became in fighting apartheid, the more debilitating and vindictive were the restrictions imposed on them. Special branch officers were regular visitors to their home, burly men with menacing voices, and on occasion Hain's parents were taken in for questioning. Banned from public meetings and other activities "calculated to further the aims of communism", Wal, an architect, was forced to watch young Peter playing sports from his parked car outside the school playing fields.

The pettiness of the apartheid regime's attempt at racial segregation is well told. One couple, Fabian Ribeiro, a doctor, and his wife, Florence, were an extremely rare breed – wealthy blacks. Non-whites were not allowed to own a house in their township, send their children to the school of their choice or take their family on holiday, since there were no resorts for them. So the Ribeiros drove a Mercedes and dressed well. The problem was that non-whites were not allowed to try on clothes before purchasing. So Pretoria's top clothes shop, which wanted Florence's custom, arranged secret fittings for her after hours.

With so many comrades, black and white, in detention, Ad found ingenious ways of getting messages through to them by way of food parcels. She put pencil lead inside a sausage to enable one of the detainees to write. She took "the pith out of an orange, gluing it back after inserting a message inside, or after cooking a whole onion, sliding a note between the leaves to be covered as it cooled".

The most horrific incident in the book is the hanging of their close friend John Harris, the only white man to be executed for political insurrection by the apartheid regime. The book begins with a graphic description of his last moments and the contortions of the dead body. Harris did plant a bomb in July 1964 at the whites-only concourse at Johannesburg railway station, killing an elderly woman and injuring two dozen other people. He had wanted to create a political moment, but not to kill. He had phoned through a warning to the authorities but they deliberately ignored it, calculating that the prospect of whites dying from terrorism would allow them to clamp down further. Eventually the harassment became too much for Ad and Wal, who left their homeland for Britain with a heavy heart. At this point the author becomes a leading light in the anti-apartheid struggle, but his use of the third person to describe his own activities, and even his personality, does jar.

That criticism aside, this is a beguiling book that casts a light not just on the politics of the time but on human motivation. There were some in the Hains' circle, including members of their extended family, who shunned them for causing trouble. Others betrayed their friends, testifying against them either to secure their own release or plea bargain, or out of cowardice. Yet there were more who did what they could to stand up against injustice, including the unassuming but dogged Wal and Ad.

John Kampfner's The Rich: a 2,000-Year History will be published by Little, Brown in October

Xinjiang separatists blamed for Saturday's attack at railway station in Kunming in which at least 29 people died

Chinese police said they were still hunting five of the assailants who hacked to death at least 29 people at a train station in south-western Kunming, in an attack the government has blamed on Xinjiang separatists.

More than 130 were injured in the brutal attack, which began just after 9pm on Saturday. Police shot dead three male and one female attackers at the scene and captured a female suspect, state news agency Xinhua reported. About five others remain on the run.

Xinhua described the violence as "an organised, premeditated violent terrorist attack", and said evidence at the station showed separatists were responsible, citing the Kunming government. It took place days ahead of high-profile political meetings in Beijing.

Witnesses described attackers in black clothing hacking at people apparently at random. Sixteen-year-old student Qiao Yunao told the Associated Press she was waiting to catch a train when people started crying out and running. She then saw a man cut another man's neck.

"I was freaking out, and ran to a fast food store, and many people were running in there to take refuge," she said via the Sina Weibo microblog. "I saw two attackers, both men, one with a watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and chopping whoever they could."

Graphic pictures showing bloodied bodies and accounts of the incident appeared on Sina Weibo, but many were quickly deleted by censors.

The timing is striking because the annual session of China's largely rubber-stamp parliament opens in Beijing on Wednesday. Security is tightened in and around the capital during the runup to the event.

China's president, Xi Jinping, has urged security officials to spare no effort to bring to justice the perpetrators. "Severely punish in accordance with the law the violent terrorists and resolutely crack down on those who have been swollen with arrogance," Xinhua quoted Xi as saying. "Understand the serious and complex nature of combating terrorism … Go all out to maintain social stability."

Security chief Meng Jianzhu, who visited the injured in Kunming, said the attack had exposed the inhuman nature of terrorists. "They inevitably will face the severe punishment of the law. We must mobilise all resources and adopt all means to break this case," he said.

The violence in Kunming follows an incident in Beijing's political heart last October, when a car ploughed into tourists in Tiananmen Square, killing two pedestrians and the three people in the vehicle. Officials blamed that, too, on extremists from the troubled north-western region of Xinjiang, where many in the large Uighur Muslim population chafe at Chinese rule and some seek independence.

At least 100 people have died in outbreaks of violence in the region in the past year. Last month, police killed eight people who they said had attacked patrol cars in Xinjiang. In 2009, almost 200 died in vicious ethnic riots in its capital, Urumqi.

But Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, is hundreds of miles from Xinjiang. In July 2008, just before the Olympics, a Uighur separatist group claimed responsibility for two bus explosions in the city, but officials said there was no evidence of terrorism.

Sean Roberts, who studies Uighurs at George Washington University, said that if Uighurs were responsible for the train station deaths it would be a new kind of attack – premeditated and outside Xinjiang – but still rudimentary in weaponry. "If it is true that it was carried out by Uighurs, it's much different than anything we've seen to date," he told AP.

But Roberts said it was unclear whether there was an organised Uighur militant group and that attacks so far do not appear linked to any "global terrorist network because we're not seeing things like sophisticated explosives or essentially sophisticated tactics".

A commentary on the English website of the state newspaper Global Times described the attack as "China's 9/11", warning: "The latest attacks in Beijing and Kunming have clearly indicated a despicable trend that separatists are targeting civilians out of Xinjiang. "It also showed a shift in their attack strategies from targeting symbols of the government, such as public security stations and police vehicles, to roadside civilians."

The United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has condemned the "terrible" attack. "The secretary-general notes that there is no justification for the killing of innocent civilians and hopes that those responsible will be brought to justice," a UN spokesperson added.

Gary Shteyngart's memoir of adapting to life in the US is witty and heartbreaking

Like the tragic clown who bawls so mellifluously in the opera, funny men are often sad sacks at heart. Although Gary Shteyngart's three comic novels – covert memoirs about his life as a Russian immigrant in America – have brought him critical and financial success, he persists in regarding himself as a failure. Telling his story again in a new book that is more candidly autobiographical than his novels, he prosecutes his abiding quarrel with himself, with his family, with Russia (that would probably have killed him if he had stayed there), and with America (that even more unforgivably saved his life). Little Failure is irrepressibly funny, but almost by default. The witticisms are fired off like bullets, and Shteyngart's wisecracking grin eventually hardens into a smirk of something like despair.

"I am a kind of joke," he says. He means it metaphysically, and it's not a laugh line. Small and furry, he sees himself as one of biology's nastier jests, and in addition he blames history and geography for afflicting him with a name that is only easily garbled into Shitfart. It doesn't help that this invidious label was the result of a bureaucratic error in Soviet Russia: his family's actual name is Steinhorn, meaning "stone horn", which Shteyngart says would be better suited to a priapic German porn star than to a boy whose American schoolmates jeered at him as a red nerd. Outdoing those who mocked him, he describes himself as a gnu, a gerbil, or "a tiny vertical dachshund".

Hilarious as it often is, Little Failure is a record of existential homelessness, of living in a limbo between two different countries and identities. Shteyngart's parents, who were among the "grain Jews" granted exit visas in return for Jimmy Carter's donation of wheat to the USSR, left Leningrad for New York in 1979. Little Gary, aged seven, was agape. As if transported from Kansas to Oz, he felt that he had "stumbled off a monochromatic cliff and landed in a pool of pure Technicolor". But acclimatisation was hard. He had trouble making friends, since whenever he said "Oh, hi there" it came out as "Okht Hyzer", which could have been "the name of a Turkish politician".

America, he decided, tasted like the cereal he was fed, "easy and light, with a hint of false fruitiness"; an all-you-can-eat salad bar at a steakhouse summed up American plenty, a dual display of capitalism and gluttony. Much later, he equated America with the body of a girlfriend – loamy down below like the fertile soil of the hinterland, topped by an Anglo head from which grew "20 inches of rich, flaxen hair". Yet despite his appetite for cereals, salads and the grabbable rear and kissable nose of the girlfriend, Shteyngart cannot forgive himself for adjusting to his adopted country, and broods over what he has lost.

He writes incisively about Americanisation, which is a moral process as much as a course in civics. Immigrants are expected to undergo a regeneration, almost a reincarnation: America is the homeland of happy endings, where happiness is earnestly pursued and invariably attained. Orthodontic improvements are essential, guaranteeing that everyone can emit an evangelical grin, and after his father's dental makeover Shteyngart is startled to see him "smiling fully, with teeth, in the American manner". He is taken aback as well to see the acquired, Americanised good nature of his grandmother fall away as she lies dying, when her face settles back into "a contorted Soviet grimace".

Shteyngart's twin nationalities offer a choice between satire and sentimentality, between the rage and frustration that go with being Russian to the effervescent optimism that is compulsory in America. Recoiling from the young Gary's asthma, his father called him "snotty", and his mother, realising he would never qualify as a lawyer or accountant, nicknamed him "Little Failure" – or "Failurchka" in her Russo-American pidgin. Their barbed endearments, Shteyngart reflects, are symptoms of a "natural cruelty that comes with our mother tongue".

But he prefers this razor-tongued truthfulness to the American insistence on boosting the ego and being the star of your own life; he is grateful for his infantile sickliness and his adult neuroses, because a writer, in his opinion, is "an instrument too finely set to the human condition", vocationally condemned to pain. This is why, even though he says he will never live anywhere but New York, he remains an archetypally Russian figure – a chirpier version of Dostoevsky's rancorous, liverish subterranean hero in Notes from Underground, a more antic companion for Lermontov's malcontent Pechorin in A Hero of Our Time.

Never having quite grown up, Shteyngart interprets geopolitical disasters on an analogy with the rough treatment he received in his American childhood. Hitler's invasion of Russia, he believes, was treated by Stalin as a "breach in school-yard-bully etiquette"; the despot reacted by sentencing 20 million Soviet citizens to death, at least two of them Shteyngart's own kin. But little Gary, in his imagination at least, is as indiscriminately vindictive as any totalitarian ogre. At Hebrew school, he longed for a nuclear holocaust and amused himself by writing science fiction, with fantasy serving as his "multiple warhead delivery system".

The Russian Shteyngart writes to rid himself of gripes and grudges, ignoring his father's advice not to be "a self-hating Jew". The American Shteyngart writes for a more plaintive, ingratiating reason: to his parents, his brutal schoolfellows, and his "several readers around the world", he is crying out, as he admits in desperate italics, please love me. His work is strained by these mixed motives, and – exemplifying Freud's diagnosis of humour – he relies on jokes to hold the contradictions together. Thus his self-dislike is shadowed by preening narcissism: every chapter of Little Failure is illustrated by a snapshot of Gary from infancy to young adulthood, and although he insists on his shaggy grotesquerie, he often looks as adorably pixieish as the young Audrey Hepburn.

Hoping to deflect such criticism, he quotes the opinion of a teacher who watched him try too hard to be cute in an acting class and screeched: "You know what your problem is, Gary? You're fake and manipulative!" His silent reply was, "This is New York": attitudinising comes with the territory. Elsewhere, with subtler irony, he confesses that this fakeness made him a writer, whose three novels and this memoir are all exercises in fiction, which is, he warns us, another word for falsehood. "I have," he says, "no mythmaking abilities beyond the lies I tell on the page."

There is a wink of postmodern self-congratulation here, but also a wrenching insecurity. As Shteyngart remembers the wheezing panic of his asthmatic infancy, he says, "Emerging from nothingness takes time"; he is still unsure whether he has hauled himself out of that black vacancy into the bright American light. At a reading he gave in New York a while ago, he ended by calling for questions and then, when none were forthcoming, asked if anyone wanted to give him a hug. He needs our embraces as much as he needs our laughter, but I doubt that they'll make him feel much better about himself.

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