\nWhat was it about the murder of 29 men, women and children on Saturday at the Kunming train station that does not qualify make it an act of terrorism? And why is the press so shy about connecting the dots on this incident to the wider campaign being waged by Islamist terrorists? Can the word terrorism no longer be used in polite company?<\/p>\n
The first news story I saw came from the state-run Xinhua News Agency<\/a> which announced that on the night of March 1, 2014 a gang invaded the central waiting room of the Kunming train station in China\u2019s Yunnan province. Armed with knives the attackers attacked people waiting for their trains and police officers, killing 28 and in jured 113 (the numbers were later revised to 29 dead and 143 wounded.)<\/p>\n Police shot five of the assailants dead. The identity of the attackers was not given, but the incident was described as:<\/p>\n an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack, according to the authorities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The report stated the killers were dressed in black and attacked their victims with knives. Xinhua was able to quote eye witness accounts of the attack. saying:<\/p>\n Chen Guizhen, a 50-year-old woman, told Xinhua at the hospital that her husband Xiong Wenguang, 59, was killed in the attack. \u201cWhy are the terrorists so cruel? \u201d moaned Chen, holding her husband\u2019s ID card in blood with her trembling hands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So we have a group of black clad knife welding assailants rushing into a busy urban train station and randomly maiming and killing 172 people. The government describes it as a terrorist act and a witness calls the attackers terrorists. Let me go out on a limb and say the attackers were likely to have been terrorists.<\/p>\n Xinhua did not identify who the attackers were, but at the close of their story recounted two recent terrorist attacks. While not naming names, Xinhua implied the attack was the work of militants from northwest China\u2019s Xinjiang province \u2014 the Muslim Uighar people.<\/p>\n In the first press reports many western news outlets were reticent in describing the attack as terrorism, or they placed the word \u201cterrorist\u201d or \u201cterrorism\u201d in quotes either in the title or in the body of the story.<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/a><\/em> report described the attack in terms usually reserved for a clash between groups. A \u201cgroup of assailants wielding knives stormed into a railway station\u201d and proceeded to kill and injure scores of travelers. The NY Times<\/em> identifies the \u201cassailants\u201d as Uighars, citing local government sources, and states:<\/p>\n The attack, in Yunnan Province, was far from Xinjiang, and if carried out by members of the largely Muslim Uighur minority could imply that the volatile tensions between them and the government might be spilling beyond that restive region.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But the language of the story shifts. \u201cThe violence erupted \u2026\u201d;\u00a0 \u201cthe attack would be the worst \u2026\u201d; \u201cThe latest attack appears \u2026\u201d; \u201cAfter the slashing attack, President Xi Jinping of China said \u2026\u201d \u2014 why the reticence in using the word terror, terrorism, terrorist?<\/p>\n CNN was equally shy,writing<\/a>:<\/p>\n Members of a separatist group from Xinjiang, in northwest China, are believed to have carried out the assault, authorities said. The report referred to them as \u201cterrorists.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The mention of Islam is pushed to the last paragraph of the story while CNN plays the trick of having the Chinese government use the word terrorist. The international community strongly condemned this cruel attack, but the coverage of the incident by a few Western media organizations, including CNN, Associated Press, The New York Times, and the Washington Post was dishonest and appeared to be directed by ulterior motives. Emanating from such loud advocates of \u201cthe fight against terrorism\u201d, the coverage was insulting and has led to widespread resentment in China.<\/span><\/p>\n There was extensive evidence at the crime scene to leave no doubt that the Kunming Railway station attack was nothing other than a violent terrorist crime. But regardless of this evidence, some western media organizations were unwilling to use the word \u201cterrorism\u201d in their coverage. CNN\u2019s report on March 3 put the word \u201cterrorists\u201d in quotation marks, and offered the view that \u201cmass knife attacks\u201d are \u201cnot unprecedented\u201d in China. The intention here was to associate this terrorist incident with a number of attacks that occurred in 2010 and 2012, all the more disgusting because these attacks happened at schools, they were conducted by individuals who were clearly mentally disturbed, and their victims were children. None of the perpetrators had any political connections, or any political motives. The Associated Press report used the term \u201cdescribed by the authorities as\u201d to qualify their use of the word \u201cterrorists\u201d. The New York Times and the Washington Post called the terrorists \u201cattackers\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The People\u2019s Daily<\/em> article is not above reproach, however. It ignores the religious aspect of the attack and argues that the relations between the majority Han Chinese and minority Uighars are good.<\/p>\n In their depictions of the background to the attack, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post all ignored the significant social progress that has been made in Xinjing, instead focusing on the problem of \u201crelations between China\u2019s ethnic groups\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Making an editorial decision to omit the t-word by Western press agencies has stirred up the Chinese government. But where is the religion ghost? Is the demographic fact that most Uighars are Muslims sufficient to start the Islamist terrorist theme for this story? No, that is not enough.<\/p>\n However there is evidence of an Islamist terror connection based on how the attack unfolded that many religion reporters would have picked up from the eyewitness accounts. The first day report from the Associated Press <\/a>reported that one witness saw one of the killers slash at the neck of one victim. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a> reported:<\/p>\n A 20-year-old university student, Wu Yuheng, says the attackers tried to target people\u2019s heads. One had swiped his long knife and just nicked him on the scalp.<\/p>\n \u201cI was terrified \u2026 they attacked us like crazy swordsmen, and mostly they went for the head and the shoulders, those parts of the body to kill,\u201d he said, lying on a hospital bed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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\nThe circumlocutions were such that the People\u2019s Daily<\/em><\/a> \u2014 the official Chinese Communist Party newspaper \u2014 denounced Western news reports as biased for failing to describe the attack as an act of terrorism.<\/p>\n