Biased media rub salt into wound

By Huang Xiangyang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-11 07:14

July 5, 2009, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in China's history.

On that day, a handful of separatists rampaged through the bustling but peaceful streets of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, to unleash a gruesome orgy of killing, looting and arson. They were riled up by the words of a destructive mastermind: "To be braver"; "to stage something big". The separatists found easy prey among residents, men, women and children - of Han, Uygur and other ethnic groups. They had an explicit agenda: To create terror, to spread hatred, to divide Xinjiang from China.

To an extent, the separatists achieved their vicious goals by turning a city of peace, where people of various ethnic backgrounds used to live in harmony, into an abyss of violence and brutality. We have seen the horrifying images on television and the Internet of how terror was inflicted with the indiscriminate slaying of innocent people. We have seen photographs of corpses littered on the streets, some with heads or limbs chopped off. Blood was shed in Urumqi, too much of it.

This was not an ethnic or religious conflict. It was an attack of terror, a massacre, a crime against humanity.

The premeditated attack against innocent people has taken a toll on not only the livelihood of Han and Uygur nationalities, but also ethnic unity and harmony this nation has worked so long and so hard to achieve. Anger was seething, calls for revenge against a particular ethnic group were heard. This is a result that no one except those who have planned and worked for it would like to see.

The tragic event in Xinjiang makes tears well up in our eyes and sadness fill our hearts. But as people try to pull through and start rebuilding their homes and lives, they hear the cacophony of anti-China choruses in Western newspapers, TV channels and websites.

China's tragedy became the Western media's jubilee.

One Western newspaper seemingly could not hide its excitement to see the mayhem and showed the least sympathy for the victims.

"Now Xinjiang", declared a headline of The New York Times editorial, which describes the event as a crackdown on "repressed ethnic minorities" by the Chinese authorities.

Armed with a political agenda, some Western news outlets never hesitate to mix black with white, to confuse right with wrong. CNN called the Sunday event a "peaceful protest" sparked by the "unlawful mob beating and killing of Uygur workers at a Guangdong toy factory", citing a separatist organization based in Munich.

Other smaller players like the London Evening Standard resorted to the vulgar means of directly telling a lie, describing two blood-covered young women attacked by rioters as victims of Chinese police.

Their action reveals not only moral degeneration but blatant betrayal of journalistic ethics. The lie flies in the face of truth, and is tantamount to openly fanning ethnic hatred, an act outlawed in their so-called civilized society.

It prompted a netizen to write these words on the anti-CNN website, a portal set up last year by some Chinese students to expose biased Western reports after the Tibet riots:

"If you read through all the reports by major Western newspapers on the (Xinjiang) riots, you will find that they express little sympathy toward the innocent Han Chinese who were killed. Rather, they keep accusing China of its 'repressive' policies in Xinjiang Western reports give disproportionate credit to the opinions of the Uygurs living overseas as political refugees. They are propagating sympathy toward the rioters. Why? Because (they think) anyone that opposes the Chinese government and kills Han Chinese deserves the sympathy and recognition of Western governments. Such is their mentality."

Most of the Western reports on the latest riot boil down to the same conclusion: Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions; the Uygurs have long been mistreated, with their identity and well-being "systematically eroded" by government policies; Beijing has always tightened control on religion and culture, and financed an influx of Han migrants (as claimed by The New York Times).

The dark side of human nature can never be underestimated. Yet it still requires bold imagination to arrive at the ideology based hatred against a government or a people, and a deep sense of callousness over the loss of lives that have enabled the Western media to sweep truth underneath and rejoice in the calamity of the Chinese nation.

To those who are ignorant about the situation in China, we want to tell them that the government policies toward minority groups have always been preferential and favorable, not discriminative. For example, the national family planning policy never applies among them, who enjoy affirmative-action-like preferential treatment in their education, employment and career promotion.

Moreover, Han Chinese migrants are not financed by the government to "settle in the west". Pushed by poverty in the countryside and pulled by the bright lights in cities, they are on the move nationwide to seek a better life. The constitution bestows on them the freedom of migration within their own country. Isn't it "a God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, all deserve a chance to pursue the full measure of their happiness?"

To the rumor-mongering and hatred-spreading media, we want to say that China is a big country with 56 ethnic groups living together under one roof like brothers and sisters. "We are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." They must understand that the determination of Chinese people to safeguard ethnic unity has never been stronger after the dark chapter of the latest riots was turned over.

To those depraved separatists who seek to achieve the political goal of splitting Xinjiang from China by slaughtering innocent people, we want to say their cause is doomed because they are on the wrong side of history.

(China Daily 07/11/2009 page4)