China vows to crackdown on violent terrorist attacks
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.Washington encourages attackers by downplaying terrorism
For the world's "most active human rights defender," the latest random killing of 29 innocent civilians at a crowded Chinese train station is too insignificant to be a terrorist activity.
The U.S. Embassy in China has downplayed the severity of the bloody carnage in southwestern Kunming City, calling it on its official Weibo account a "horrible and totally meaningless act of violence," short of calling the murderers "terrorists."
The wording is the continuation of the government's ambiguous stance on China's counter-terrorism drive in Xinjiang, the northwestern autonomous region haunted by suicide bombs and deadly assaults.
In a related development, CNN, which apologized after its biased news photo editing in reporting of the March 14 riot in Tibet's capital of Lhasa in 2008, has again showed its doubts and disbelief, if not irony, by using quotation marks around the word "terrorists" in its latest reportage of the Kunming slaughter.
How the U.S. government and some media described the terrorist attacks in China has revealed their persistent double standard in the global fight against terrorism.
Their leniency for the terrorists is sending signals of encouragement to potential attackers.
This is not the first time they have adopted this double standard on terrorism.
In October, CNN published an op-ed article titled "Tian'anmen crash: Terrorism or cry of desperation?" after separatists in a vehicle slammed into the Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, killing five and injuring 40.
The latest train station killings, which evidence pointed to politically motivated Xinjiang separatists, is the latest in a spate of terrorist attacks carried out by them.
It is perpetrated by non-state entities, involves violence and designed to have psychological impact far beyond the immediate victims.
It is China's "9/11," only on a smaller scale.
The latest civilian slaughter conforms with any typical terrorist attack and bears striking similarities with what happened in Boston and Nairobi, which the U.S. government condemned as terrorism without a minute's hesitation.
Behind its wording is the entrenched U.S. belief that the Xinjiang murderers were the "ethnically oppressed seeking autonomy."
Nothing, however, justifies the act of realizing political and religious motives by slaughtering the innocent.
Washington is once again playing its "counter-terrorism card." For the U.S. government and biased media like CNN, the only standard for terrorist activities is whether it happened within the territories of its own or its allies.
The U.S. government and biased media should know that their double standard on terrorism will one day backfire and hurt their own interests.
Commentary by Gui Tao Xinhua
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4. Empathy, love soothe pains after Kunming terrorist attack After a stabbing rampage cast a shadow over China's Kunming City, residents and people throughout the country have lamented the loss of lives while delivering support to those haunted by the horror. 5. China journalist association slams Western media on Kunming attack coverage The All-China Journalists Association on Monday condemned Western media for their "double standards" reporting on a deadly knife attack in southwest China's Kunming.
