West's coverage of Kunming reveals double standard

BEIJING - It is a time of shock and grief for the Chinese people. Dozens of innocent lives perished and over 100 others were injured in a hair-raising terrorist attack on the railway station of the southwestern city of Kunming.

Yet that is not all they are suffering from. Although most media outlets worldwide covered the incident in a professional manner in line with the principle of humanity, a handful of Western news organizations have rubbed salt into China's wound by refusing to recognize the Kunming massacre as what it is in essence.

Chinese authorities have officially announced that the indiscriminate mass killing was an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack and that evidence at the scene showed that it was carried out by Xinjiang separatists.

However, certain Western news organizations still chose to view the puddles of innocent blood through tinted glasses, resorting to such means of semantic manipulation as evoking inappropriate associations and placing terrorists under quotation marks.

Lurking between the lines of their reports are even such outrageous implications that the appalling violence was due to China's ethnic policy and that Beijing exaggerated the threat "as a pretext to crack down on" Uygurs.

The presence of such suspicion and innuendo is in sharp contrast with their absence in those news institutions' coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, not to mention the 9/11 attacks.

Such prejudiced reporting reeks of a double standard, not least because the Kunming incident completely accords with the widely accepted definitions of terrorism, including those provided by the UN General Assembly and the European Union.

Thus the willful neglect of the venomous nature of the Kunming carnage is not only detrimental to the credibility of those media organizations themselves, but also offensive to the victims and the Chinese people as a whole.

Implicit accusations against China's ethnic policy are also baseless and biased. Beijing has fully demonstrated its commitment to protecting freedom of region, preserving cultural diversity and promoting development and prosperity in minority areas.

There are no justifiable grounds whatsoever for Xinjiang separatists, and their deliberate killing of innocent civilians is a crime against humanity all conscientious people should denounce and fight against.

Those distorted reports have caused a rising chorus of condemnation. "None of the terrorists could be under the name of freedom. Shame on you," a netizen commented in response to an online report by the Time magazine. Many others demand that those news organizations apologize to the Chinese people.

Terrorism knows no boundaries and deserves no compassion. Applying a double standard on terrorism jeopardizes the global efforts against the heinous challenge faced by all mankind.