“An
attack by knife-wielding men at a railway station in Kunming in
south-west China has left at least 29 dead, the state news agency Xinhua
says.” –BBC
I was idling away my time browsing aimlessly online yesterday (March 1st, 2014) when the news of the terrorist attack in Kunming swamped my social media news-feeds. Sitting in front of my computer, I had a hard time grappling with the tragedy and react to the assorted voices pouring out of governmental agencies, news outlets, and individual netizens. It was heartbreaking to see pictures of the blood-smeared floor of the deserted train station and people’s faces distorted by agony. 24 hours have passed since the attack, many questions remain unanswered but limited evidences have led the Kunming city government to blame separatists from Xinjiang as being behind the attack.
Xinjiang is a peripheral province in China where minority Uighur Muslims population concentrates. It has always been tricky and “sensitive” when it comes to the policies and treatments ethnic minorities in China receives. (While the Han majority maintains absolute dominance, the combined population of officially recognized minority groups comprised 8.49% of the population.) I have seen Uighur intellectuals compare the hardships they have to endure to those experienced by American Indians. Equipped with little knowledge and understanding of their culture, history, and struggles, I dare not to verify such comparison. Just as with issues related to American Indians, I find myself not able to engage in an informed discussion on the issues facing ethnic minority groups in China. Not only did I barely have any personal experiences mingling with ethnic minorities in China, I am aware that I have been consuming the distorted and biased images of those groups projected by media and public school curriculum. It is not just me, most of my peers are equally ignorant on the topic.
With little factually information about the attack at hand and no knowledge on the ethnic minority issues, I remained silent and was not sure what kinds of public sentiment and discourses were brewing. After people recovered from the initial shock, trending tweets and blogs voicing opinions surrounding the incident began to emerge. The number-one trending tweet related to the incident on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter, since the ‘real’ Twitter is blocked in mainland China) was re-posted over 300,000 times within 24 hours. It reads: “I abhor any terrorist attack against civilians. No matter how miserable is your life and how noble is your motive, if you attack the innocent and do so as a tool to reach your goal, you are the enemy of human race. I don’t care about your story, your appeals and won’t negotiate or surrender. The only thing we need to do is to annihilate you all if not at the moment we will after we get you. No mercy (shall be shown).”
What shocked me were the masses behind the opinions that refused to examine the purposes of the extremist group and the disinterests people exhibit over ethnic minorities’ appeals and voices. I want to ascribe such sentiment partially to people’s ignorance and their inability or unwillingness to acknowledge it. I know these conversations are hard to have but I wonder if we don’t try to understand where this terrorist group is coming from, why they did what they did, how they were able to do what they did; if we don’t try to grapple with the root causes of the antagonization; if we only see the terrorists as insane fanatics with no history, background, or any social connections; how are we supposed to resolve conflicts and prevent reoccurrence of such incidence? Rather than silencing ourselves, much needed to be discussed, examined, and conversed.
I was idling away my time browsing aimlessly online yesterday (March 1st, 2014) when the news of the terrorist attack in Kunming swamped my social media news-feeds. Sitting in front of my computer, I had a hard time grappling with the tragedy and react to the assorted voices pouring out of governmental agencies, news outlets, and individual netizens. It was heartbreaking to see pictures of the blood-smeared floor of the deserted train station and people’s faces distorted by agony. 24 hours have passed since the attack, many questions remain unanswered but limited evidences have led the Kunming city government to blame separatists from Xinjiang as being behind the attack.
Xinjiang is a peripheral province in China where minority Uighur Muslims population concentrates. It has always been tricky and “sensitive” when it comes to the policies and treatments ethnic minorities in China receives. (While the Han majority maintains absolute dominance, the combined population of officially recognized minority groups comprised 8.49% of the population.) I have seen Uighur intellectuals compare the hardships they have to endure to those experienced by American Indians. Equipped with little knowledge and understanding of their culture, history, and struggles, I dare not to verify such comparison. Just as with issues related to American Indians, I find myself not able to engage in an informed discussion on the issues facing ethnic minority groups in China. Not only did I barely have any personal experiences mingling with ethnic minorities in China, I am aware that I have been consuming the distorted and biased images of those groups projected by media and public school curriculum. It is not just me, most of my peers are equally ignorant on the topic.
With little factually information about the attack at hand and no knowledge on the ethnic minority issues, I remained silent and was not sure what kinds of public sentiment and discourses were brewing. After people recovered from the initial shock, trending tweets and blogs voicing opinions surrounding the incident began to emerge. The number-one trending tweet related to the incident on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter, since the ‘real’ Twitter is blocked in mainland China) was re-posted over 300,000 times within 24 hours. It reads: “I abhor any terrorist attack against civilians. No matter how miserable is your life and how noble is your motive, if you attack the innocent and do so as a tool to reach your goal, you are the enemy of human race. I don’t care about your story, your appeals and won’t negotiate or surrender. The only thing we need to do is to annihilate you all if not at the moment we will after we get you. No mercy (shall be shown).”
What shocked me were the masses behind the opinions that refused to examine the purposes of the extremist group and the disinterests people exhibit over ethnic minorities’ appeals and voices. I want to ascribe such sentiment partially to people’s ignorance and their inability or unwillingness to acknowledge it. I know these conversations are hard to have but I wonder if we don’t try to understand where this terrorist group is coming from, why they did what they did, how they were able to do what they did; if we don’t try to grapple with the root causes of the antagonization; if we only see the terrorists as insane fanatics with no history, background, or any social connections; how are we supposed to resolve conflicts and prevent reoccurrence of such incidence? Rather than silencing ourselves, much needed to be discussed, examined, and conversed.
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