Trouble in the marches

Which marches? Take your pick. As David Lindsay correctly notes, both the Slavic ‘оукраина’ and the Chinese ‘xinjiang 新疆’ mean ‘march’.

A suspect has been named as the lead perpetrator of the brutal mass-knifing, clearly a terrorist attack, at the train station in Kunming on Saturday which resulted in the deaths of 34 people and left 143 hospitalised. Yet the Western news media clearly do not treat this attack in the same way as they would had it been committed on American soil: English-language news coverage of the attack is heavily dosed with scare-quotes, weasel-wording meant to cast doubt on any and all investigations and reports coming from the Chinese government, and blatantly exculpatory analysis about the motivations of Uyghur anger against the Han Chinese (even to the point of, in Mr. Rexit’s case, practically defending the actions of the attackers by implying they ‘couldn’t take it anymore’), beneath all of which the facts get lost that thirty-four people were murdered in cold blood. (CNN seems to have finally gotten the message, though, interestingly enough.)

In any case, please do add your prayers for the repose of the dead, for the swift recovery of the wounded and for justice to be visited in full upon the perpetrators. Kunming needs it right now, as do all those who are grieving over friends and loved ones lost in the attack, or who are worrying over those still in the hospital. Memory eternal for those who have been blamelessly cut down.

And please do, as Great Lent begins, forgive me also, a sinner. And I pray that I will be better at forgiving others; I fear this is something I still need desperately to work on.