Double standards on terror

Did some foreign media, those in the United States in particular, have any evidence to support their distorted view of the Tian'anmen crash on Oct 28, which has been confirmed by a police investigation to be a terrorist attack carried out by Uygur extremists?

CNN asked "whether the alleged attack was a well-planned terrorist act or a hastily assembled cry of desperation". Through the voice of the World Uygur Congress, AFP said that the official account of the crash is "a pattern of the authorities labeling Uygurs as terrorists with thin evidence".

Of course one will reach the wrong conclusion if one starts from the wrong premise. The premise that there is confrontation between the Chinese government and the Uygurs in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region is completely groundless. There is indeed a confrontation in China's northwestern region, but that is between the Chinese people of all ethnic groups, including the Uygurs, and extremists, whose goal of separating the region from its motherland represents the will and interests of just a few.

A United Nations secretary-general report in 2004 described terrorism as any act intended to cause death or bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the goal of intimidating a population or compelling a government or international organization to do or abstain from doing something. That describes the crash near Tian'anmen Rostrum on Oct 28 perfectly.

Following the example of Western media we could call all terrorist attacks against the US and citizens from Western countries as "a cry of desperation" by the Muslim world.

Some in the West are clearly using double standards. Attacks on innocent civilians that take place in the US or European countries are terrorist attacks, but similar assaults on civilians in China are something else.

They have a kind of phobia about Chinese or Asian people or they see an act of terror through the prism of their Cold War ideology.

Terrorism is the enemy of people all over the world. Any act of violence that meets the UN's definition no matter what country it takes place in should be condemned worldwide. Some people' s narrow-mindedness on this question and their double standards will only send a wrong message to terrorists and extremists.

(China Daily 11/04/2013 page8)