Call Tian'anmen attack what it was

Days after the terrorist attack in Tian'anmen Square which killed two civilians and injured another 40, the United States' refusal to acknowledge it as a terrorist attack laid in plain sight a double standard on terrorism.

After repeated questioning in recent press briefings, and despite the Chinese government's detailed revelations on the attack, a spokesperson for the US Department of State would say only that the United States was continuing to monitor the situation closely and determine the facts of what happened on the ground.

At noon on Oct. 28, three people set gasoline on fire inside a jeep after crashing the vehicle into a crowd of people. The dead included a Philippine female tourist and a Chinese male tourist. Three tourists from the Philippinesas well as a male tourist from Japanwere among those injured.

Gasoline, equipment full of gasoline, two knives and steel bars as well as a flag bearing extremist religious references were found in the jeep, while five conspiring suspects were later arrested and admitted to the attack, all evidence that the incident was a carefully planned, organized and premeditated act of terrorism.

It is difficult to conclude that the incident -- indiscriminately targeting innocent civilians under the international spotlight -- was anything other than a terrorist attack. In stark contrast to the U.S. State Department's bewildering choice of words, French President Francois Hollande condemned the attack within three days.

More troubling has been reactions from leading Western media and experts that focused not on the cruelty of the violent crime but on the hypothetical "cry of desperation" behind it, as one American professor opined on the website of CNN.

The fact that the perpetrators were of Chinese Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region origin apparently gave these pundits pause in condemning the attack, but they marched with little hesitation to elaborate their biased reading of life and goings-on in Xinjiang.

Granted, it is within one's freedom to disagree with Chinese mainstream understanding of development and progress in Xinjiang, but failure to acknowledge the Tian'anmen attack as an act of terrorism is another matter entirely.

Linking it with ethnic and religious issues, or using it as a pretense to criticize China's domestic policies while stopping short of denouncing the attack itself is condoning terrorism, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman has said.

To rationalize terrorism is to invite more of it. Terrorists have always had their own supposed desperation and animosity, but were these grievances to be indulged as an explanation behind deliberate use of violence against civilians, such reasoning could be applied to any violent extremists anywhere.

Grounded in absolute morality that brooks no excuses, rationalizations or justifications, terrorism knows no boundaries, as recent history showed, be it a Chinese girl killed in the Boston Marathon bombings, or the Filipino mother who died in Beijing.

It is exactly these tragic consequences that make counter-terrorism an international commitment. A serious discussion about the Tian'anmen attack must begin by calling it what it really was: an act of terrorism.