New | Calmer, conciliatory voices clash with radical ones on social media as China grieves Kunming victims

The brutal massacre at a railway station in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming that resulted in 33 deaths on Saturday night has fuelled heated online debate.

While officials have blamed “separatists” from China’s vast northwestern Xinjiang region for the terror attack, others on microblog services have called for mourning and have stressed that not all Uygurs should be seen as terrorists.

Liberal legal scholar Xu Xin, who claims more than 6 million followers on his Weibo microblog, urged the public not to vent their anger on Xinjiang residents or the Uygur ethnic group while condemning terrorism.

“Inciting ethnic hate is exactly what terrorists aim to do,” he said. “Instead of igniting more hatred, we ought to reflect on what generates terrorism in order to more effectively contain it,” he added, suggesting to rethink China's ethnic policies. 

Despite state media reports on the identity of the attackers, the official social media outlet of Kashgar, a city in the centre of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, has called on the media and public to avoid using terms such as “Xinjiang separatists” that may potentially implicate innocent residents.

“The overwhelming majority of Xinjiang residents have nothing to do with East Turkestan Islamic Movement terrorists… Please do not tarnish the word ‘Xinjiang’,” the city government said in a post, referring to the extremist organisation which calls for independence for the region.