China has admitted, finally, that it did suffer casualties during the Galwan Valley Clash. Gallantry Awards were conferred to four men of the PLA which indicates that the actual number of casualties were much higher. Social media users noticed an incongruency between the manner in which one far-left media portal reported the event.
The Quint reported that China had finally admitted that 4 PLA soldiers were “martyred” during the Galwan Valley clash. When the Indian Army had said that they had suffered casualties as well immediately after clash, The Quint had reported that the Indian soldiers were “killed” during the clash. The incongruency between the two reports did not sit well with people on social media.
https://twitter.com/VipulSinghvi7/status/1363370039785627649?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwAccording to an archived version of the report from the 19th of February that was published at 9:02 a.m. on the said date, the headline initially carried the word ‘martyr’.
However, it was subsequently updated 3 hours later at 12:22 p.m. The headline in the updated report said “killed”. The URL of the report, nevertheless, continued to carry the word ‘martyred’.
While it is true that the Indian Army does not recognize the word ‘martyr’ as an official term, The Quint’s usage of the same for Chinese soldiers does reflect the underlying mindset that leads to such reports. However, it appears that The Quint seems to have realised its error pretty quickly.