With a headline like this, what message do you think it implies? Very often it implies of racial tension, discrimination, and police brutality. The actual title of the CNN story is "Two Uyghurs shot dead by Chinese police." The tone of the headline couldn't be clearer: Chinese police are using deadly force to crackdown on Uyghurs protesting inequality and racial discrimination. The text of the report told a totally different story.
Police shot and killed two ethnic Uyghurs and wounded another in a Chinese region that has seen violent ethnic strife in recent weeks, state media reported Monday.
The police were trying to stop the three people from attacking a fourth person with clubs and knives in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China Radio International reported, citing the local government.
All four people involved in the incident were ethnic Uyghurs, a minority Muslim group distinct from China's majority Han population, CRI said.
So three criminals were attacking someone with weapons. In trying to stop the crime, police shot and killed two of the criminals and wounded the third. All three criminals and the victim were Uyghurs, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the police were also Uyghurs - but that information certainly wouldn't interest CNN writers.
I'll give CNN some credit though. Here is a much more balanced report. But even in this piece, CNN failed to report that overwhelming majority of the victims of violence were Han or Hui (Muslim) ethnic Chinese. After reporting on Han and Hui victims of violence, to show "the other side" of the story, they reported on the burned out shops and cars in a Uyghur neighborhood, but failed to mention that only the shops and cars owned by Han or Hui people were burned. Although these might be innocent omissions, they left an impression that both Uyghurs and Hans were involved in the riots - it's like reporting that whites went to Watts and rioted there. How many people would believe that?
The western media had lost almost all of its credibility with Chinese people over their reports of violence in Tibet. This time although the reports have been somewhat more balanced, ironically Chinese people believe them far less than their own government, from what I heard (I have been in Beijing for the past month on a business trip). In fact, the Chinese government has been shockingly open about the racial riot in Xinjiang this time. Nightly TV news almost always lead with reports on the violence and the crackdown. Once I rode in a taxi and the taxi driver stopped our conversation, turned up the volume of the radio when the radio was reporting on the Xinjiang violence. The radio talk shows talk openly about the racial tensions and are highly critical of the government handling of the affair. The criticisms, however, are universally hawkish. Nearly everyone in Beijing thinks that the government has been too weak in its response.
I talked to some of the professors in a couple of universities in Beijing. Their opinions are remarkably the same. They all think that the faults are at the government. The government, in the name of ethnic harmony, had been too lax in law enforcement when ethnic minorities commit a crime. It was said that a party membership was worth three years (ie, if a communist party member commits a crime, his sentence would be automatically reduced by three years), and an ethnic minority was worth half of the sentence. So an ethnic minority party member can get out of the jail for free. Thus when the rioters commit violent crimes it put the government in a very tough position. If they crackdown then they are applying laws differently than they normally do. But if they don't crackdown then things will just spiral out of control.
The ethnic violence in Xinjiang has deeper roots than Uyghurs' simple wish for independence. BTW Xinjiang has many ethnic groups of which Uyghurs form only a plurality. My feeling is that the racial tension won't get resolved until there is true democracy in China.