MCLC: "terrorism" in Kunming (3)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: "terrorism" in Kunming (3)
***********************************************************

In response to Kevin Lawrence's posting:

First, the US yesterday did declare the incident a terrorist attack. It
took them a few days, but they have now gone on the record. A clear
statement was made by the State Department spokesperson and it can be
found online. The China Daily ran a story on this. I assume it took a few
days because the US government wanted to be sure before it made a comment.
Recall that Beijing has not provided many details yet of what happened,
and that the event is still quite sketchy.

I don’t think this is as sinister as you may think. The term terrorist or
terrorism is a politically-charged word, and some news organizations, such
as Reuters, I believe, are not allowed to use either term directly—they
can only use these words when it’s spoken by another person. This applies
to things that happen in China, as well as the US, or anyplace else in the
world. 

Now, it doesn’t apply to all news organizations. My guess is that the word
is being put into quotation marks because we don’t yet have all the
details from the Chinese government. How can we tell if the incident meets
the criteria of attempting to meet political goals, when we don’t yet have
any information on this? My take is that the international media has
reported sympathetically on this, and no one has tried to play down the
obvious tragedy. It’s just that people have been reluctant to call it
terrorism until there’s more information available.

It’s also important to remember that for years the Chinese government has
labeled many acts by Uyghurs as terrorist, and has not provided any
evidence or proof to support that. It’s believed by many experts that
incidents could just be a handful of people venting anger over something
that has happened to them, but that Beijing is quick to label them
terrorist incidents in order to justify its draconian measures in
Xinjiang. I’m not saying this is what happened in Kunming, just that
Beijing doesn’t have a good track record of providing reliable evidence in
such cases.

It’s interesting that in a handful of cases in recent months in China
committed by Han Chinese that also took a number of lives, that the
government has not labeled those acts terrorism. In the case of the
multiple bombings in Taiyuan a few months ago, the government said it was
a disgruntled Chinese, and not a terrorist. I can’t think of one case
involving Uyghurs—and I’ve been following such incidents since 911—in
which it was not called terrorism. Are there no Uyghurs who are
disgruntled and take lives out of anger over land loss, the beating or
arrest of a family member, or some form of unfair treatment? It seems
Beijing is the one with a double standard. Or are there no Chinese who
commit such acts due to political reasons? Go back and look at the last
dozen violent incidents involving Han Chinese, and none of them have been
labeled terrorist. Look at the last dozen incidents involving Uyghurs and
you’ll see each has been called a terrorist act.

Making matters worse, the government yesterday issued an order that the
Chinese media can only report what Xinhua reports. One wonders why the
Chinese national media is not allowed to report on this sad event? Why is
it only Xinhua? At least the international media has covered this
extensively, even if they haven’t all used the word terrorism.

I understand the Kunming media has reported this, but I don’t think the
incident has been widely reported by the state Chinese-language media.
Chinese netizens outside of Kunming are complaining on line that they
would not have even heard about the incident had it not been reported on
China’s blogosphere. So while the Chinese government castigates the
international media for not using the word terrorism, it forbids it’s own
media from writing independent reports. Why not let the Chinese media
write about this? 

And how many people on this list rely on Xinhua over the NYT for the
accuracy of its reporting on China?

Paul