When talking about the extremists, what is the first thing come into your mind? The yelling people, the cruelty riot, the crazy parade or the suicide bomb? It is true that people all have the right to speak out their opinions in the way they like, however, it is not right that what you do bother other people’s normal life or even threaten their personal and property security . As for extremists, it is not only about the common people’s daily life that they may disturb, but also lives of other people are threatened. We call them extremists, because they do something extremely and always in a negative way. Below is an example of the riot done by some extremist in China.
This is a picture posted online about the July 2009 Ürümqi riots happened in XinJiang province in China. It is reported that a total of 197 people died, with 1,721 others injured and many vehicles and buildings destroyed during the riot, and here is the link about the riot on Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots.
The riot was incited by the ethnic separatist--Rabiye Qadir, the President of theWorld Uyghur Congress, while even her own children cannot agree with what their mother had done. I cannot agree with any kind of violent no matter what kind of reason it has. Although people all have the freedom to express their own opinions, they should not threaten the safety of other’s life and property, especially those innocent people.
What surprised me most about this riot is that the extremists got together and plotted the riot through the website and the instant communicating tools, such as QQ. I was shocked when I heard that the extremists used QQ to communicate with each other and plot the riot through it, because QQ is such a popular instant communicating online tool in China that almost every young people has a QQ account and contact with their friends and families on line. A research showed that there are 29 million active QQ users all over China.(http://uir.blog.hexun.com/11819872_d.html) It is hard for me to imagine that what will happen if that violent information had been spread by the extremists to the young people. Just as Mr. Raspal Khosa said,the internet is a powerful tool for extremists to radicalize vulnerable individuals and potentially recruit them to violence. (ASPI ,http://www.aspi.org.au/research/spf.aspx?tid=9 24th February, 2011).
That causes me to think about the use of internet among the public. Lots of the extremist groups have their own websites and everyone can get access to the websites wherever they are in the world.The problem is that what can we do to prevent the spread of the violent information online. The internet is the most popular media among the Chinese young people. On the other hand, I think the internet is the most dangerous media, because people don’t have to be responsible for the things they publish online or ensure the reliability or accuracy of the content. A number of people just put up whatever they like and sometimes the information they spread online is nothing but rumors. Some people may vent and express their frustration by writing down some extreme comments towards the government or society. The young people, especially children and teenagers, they have no ability to tell right from wrong and they are so naïve that easily to be misled by the information they see online.
Some people hold such an opinion that it is the government’s obligation to keep the internet function well and make sure the online environment online is safe and reliable. However it is very hard for the government to counter the insidious extremists groups on its own. From my perspective, the right thing to do is to help the internet users to have the ability to make their own judgments about the issues published online rather than believe whatever they see online or whatever other people say. Having their own beliefs and values is a very essential skill for the young people, and the most effective way to get to that purpose is education. In the recent years, many primary school and high school have some special classes called “my first class” at the very beginning of the semester. In those classes, the teacher will talk about how to keep yourself safe if some emergency happens, like an earthquake or fire, as well as some basic knowledge of protecting your personal information while using the internet. With the popularity of the internet, more and more young people are using the internet quite often. I remember that when I was in my secondary school, my Chinese teacher had spent a whole class telling us about the underlying threaten of using the internet. Our teacher told us a lot of skills about how to keep our personal information safe, for example, using the birthday of your friends or parents is a better choice than always use your birthday as your password, and do not easily trust the information like “you are the lucky customer of certain product”, which is always used to cheat for money. I think education should be keep in touch with the time and the teacher should teach the students not only the theories, but also some practical knowledge used in the daily life. Because a lot of people form their values when they are teenagers, it is very important and useful if the teachers and parents help the kids to set up the right opinions toward the internet.
The internet can be both a positive and negative tool for netizens, and we should pay extra attention when children are using the internet. People always say that the children are the future of the world and we should instruct them to the right direction. We cannot stop the extremists posting online, but we can help our kids to keep away from the violent information and make their own decisions.
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