chinas recent school tragedies are sad proof it has never been about the firearm

[cjd]

Zhu Li, a professor of sociology at Nanjing University, said the media was partly to blame for the copycat attacks. "Some people may not have considered stabbing school children, but because of the media coverage, they were inspired," he said, to the China Daily newspaper.

In China, where private firearms are banned, attackers are limited to using simpler weapons like knives. That helps explain the grim logic to why the recent attacks were aimed at schools. They are a soft target, where an assailant armed only with a knife can still inflict great harm. "It's the most effective way to achieve popular shock," says Ding.

"In the long run, it boils down to building a society where everyone is treated justly by law,"

"But it would be unrealistic to mobilize all the police around schools", he said. "The real issues may be how the media report these incidents, as well as the broader social environment."


In five school attacks since March, 17 people died — all but two of them children — and over 80 were injured. China bans nearly all citizens from owning handguns, and all the attacks involved knives and cleavers.

The deaths of children strike an especially deep chord in this country where most urban families are allowed to have only one child, said Yang Dongping, an expert on education at the Beijing Institute of Technology. "I personally feel that media reports about these attacks have helped to create a copy-cat effect", Yang told Reuters. "People who are mentally unstable or who nurse hatred towards society then feel that this is a way of exacting revenge, or of making their demands."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/2010051...08599198875800
As School Knifings Continue, China Does Some Soul Searching

Man attacks kindergarten children
– A jobless knife-wielding man attacked and injured 28 young children and three adults at a kindergarten …
By AUSTIN RAMZY / BEIJING – Wed May 12, 3:00 am ET
A surge of attacks against children in China has continued in recent days despite official pledges of stepped up security. The violence has prompted questions about the state of mental health care in China, highlighted shortcomings in the country's legal system, and left the government struggling to find some way to stop the bloodshed. .....

The assault is the sixth in a series of attacks on schoolchildren that has left at least 17 dead and dozens injured in the last eight weeks. The first, and deadliest, came on March 23, when a 42-year-old physician used a knife to kill eight students and wounded five others as they waited outside the Nanping Experimental School in southeastern Fujian province. The assailant, Zheng Minsheng, said during his speedy trial that he was enraged after being spurned by a woman he was pursuing romantically. Domestic media reports suggested he had a history of mental illness. He was executed just over a month later, on April 28, the same day that 33-year-old Chen Kangbing stabbed 15 students and a teacher at a school in Guangdong province in southeast China. Chen had been a teacher at another school but went on disability leave in 2006 for mental health problems, according to state media. That was followed by an April 29 attack in Jiangsu province and another on April 30 in Shandong in eastern China.
There are no direct links between the attacks, but the cases have similarities. The assaults have all been carried out by middle-aged men who acted alone, and at least three of the attackers had known mental health problems. The number of attacks in such close succession suggests that some of the assailants may have been copycats. "The problems have been there for many years, but the concurrence of similar attacks in a short period of time, that was largely triggered by media reporting," says Ding Xueliang, a professor of social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. But lack of access to mental health care is a larger underlying factor that likely contributed to the recent violence, says Ding. A study of four Chinese provinces published in the medical journal The Lancet last June found that among individuals with a diagnosable mental illness, just 5% had seen a mental health professional. Yang Jiaqin, who stabbed seven people outside a school in the southern Guangxi region on April 12, killing a second-grader and an 81-year-old woman, had been treated for mental illness twice previously. His family had decided he needed more care, but they were too late. He went on his rampage one day before he was scheduled to visit a hospital for further treatment.
The attacks have also pointed to shortcomings in China's legal system, where disgruntled parties often have little recourse when they clash with local officials. Some of the assailants spoke of personal grievances that may have prompted their bloody outbursts. Wang Yonglai, a 45-year-old farmer who crashed down a school gate with a motorcycle, attacked five children with a hammer and then set himself ablaze on April 30 was believed to have been infuriated by a dispute with local officials. Wang was told that a house he built for his son with his life savings would have to be demolished because it was illegally constructed on farmland, Xinhua reported.
China's petition system, which allows citizens who feel they are being mistreated by local officials to file complaints with higher authorities, is antiquated and inefficient. One study found that just 2 out of every 1,000 petitions achieves any sort of results. To slow the flood of violent outbursts, the government should work to alleviate abuses in the legal system, says Ma Ai, a sociology professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. "In the long run, it boils down to building a society where everyone is treated justly by law," says Ma.
In the short run, China faces some practical concerns about how to improve school safety. Part of the reason schools have been attacked is that they make easy targets for a deranged assailant hoping to inflict as much harm as possible. "They hope that people will pay attention to their misfortunes when they bring about pain and horror in society," says Ma. In China, where private firearms are banned, attackers are limited to using simpler weapons like knives. That helps explain the grim logic to why the recent attacks were aimed at schools. They are a soft target, where an assailant armed only with a knife can still inflict great harm. "It's the most effective way to achieve popular shock," says Ding.
China's government says it is making school safety a priority. Last week Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang said it was a "major political task" to protect students. .....

- With reporting by Chengcheng Jiang and Jessie Jiang / Beijing
• As School Knifings Continue, China Does Some Soul Searching
• China's Alarming Spate of School Knifings
• China's Heaviest Toll: Schoolchildren

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...to+death+china

Children hacked to death in China school
DAN MARTIN
May 12, 2010 - 6:44PM
Seven children and a teacher have been hacked to death with a cleaver in an attack at a kindergarten in northern China - the latest in a series of violent school assaults.
Wednesday's attack in Shaanxi province, which ended with the assailant's suicide, was the fifth on young school children in less than two months.
It occurred despite a push to boost security in and around schools across China. ....

And in March, a former doctor enraged by a split with his girlfriend stabbed eight children to death and injured five others in Fujian province. He was executed last month. ...

Violent crime has increased in China as tight controls on society have been loosened in concert with the country's transition from a state-planned to a capitalist economy.
Studies also have cited a rise in mental disorders, some linked to stress as society becomes more fast-paced and old communist-era supports were scrapped.
A study last year estimated that 173 million adults in China have some type of mental disorder - 91 per cent of whom had never received professional help.
Ma Ai, a criminal psychologist with the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said the country had failed to accurately gauge how sweeping economic change could affect the population's psychological wellbeing.
"The recent cases serve as a warning," Ma told Agence France-Presse.
"Hopefully in the future, we can improve ... so that every person's mental development can be healthy and (people) have the ability to face this environment and deal with it."
© 2010 AFP

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id...onid=351020404

7 children hacked to death in China
Wed, 12 May 2010 09:54:19 GMT
Font size :

Chinese police show students how to protect themselves from attacks.
Seven children have been hacked to death in an attack at a kindergarten in northwest China, the official Xinhua news agency has reported, citing local officials.

At least 20 other children were wounded during the violent rampage at the kindergarten in the city of Hanzhong in the Shaanxi province on Wednesday.

No other details were immediately available.

Several similar attacks on young children in the past weeks have shocked the country .....
Beijing says the task force has been ordered to protect the country's 270 million students. Authorities say children will also be taught basic self-defense tactics.

China is also planning to install cameras at all educational facilities.

MVZ/MMA
Related Stories:
• Chinese man stabs 32 at kindergarten


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-in-China.html


Seven children hacked to death at nursery school in China
Seven children at a nursery school in north western China have been hacked to death and at least 20 more injured in the ninth attack involving children in just over a month.

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
Published: 5:26AM BST 12 May 2010

Photo: PA
The attack took place at eight o'clock in the morning in a kindergarten in Nanzheng county, near Hanzhong city, in Shaanxi province, according to Xinhua, the government news agency.
"The injured have been rushed to hospital," said Liu Xiaoming, a local propaganda official, without giving further details.

Related Articles
• Eighth child stabbing in a month
• China's seventh child stabbing in a month
• China suffers new knife attack
The attack is the latest in a series of seemingly copycat knife attacks against young children. The spate of violence began at the end of March, when a mentally-unstable former doctor murdered eight children at a school in Fujian province.
That crime sparked further attacks across the country, mostly involving furiously frustrated middle-aged men. Zheng Minsheng, the 42-year-old who was executed for the attack in Fujian, said he had been prompted by "failures in his romantic life and in society," according to Xinhua.

On April 29, a man locked the doors of a kindergarten class in Taixing, in Jiangsu province, and slashed at the children inside, wounding at least 28. The government has yet to reveal the number of children who may have died.
The following day, a man armed with a hammer attacked children in north east China before setting himself on fire.... In Beijing, the police say they have stopped seven more attempts on schools in the past month.
However, the extra security has so far been unable to protect children in the countryside, and parents have voiced their panic.

Zhu Li, a professor of sociology at Nanjing University, said the media was partly to blame for the copycat attacks. "Some people may not have considered stabbing school children, but because of the media coverage, they were inspired," he said, to the China Daily newspaper.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37098921...s-asiapacific/

7 kids, teacher hacked to death in China school
Latest in string of attacks stokes alarm over government’s grip on order
msnbc.com news services
updated 1 hour, 24 minutes ago
BEIJING - Seven children and a teacher were hacked to death in an attack on a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday, the latest in a string of assaults on schools that has stoked public alarm about the government's grip on order.
Eleven children and an adult were wounded in the attack that happened at about eight in the morning, soon after the school day started, in Nanzheng county, a rural corner of Shaanxi province, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Two children were in serious condition.
The killer, identified as 48-year-old Wu Huanmin, used a kitchen cleaver to kill the five boys, two girls and their teacher, Xinhua said. ...

In Hanzhong, an industrial city of nearly 4 million people in Shaanxi province where the attack occurred, about 2,000 police officers and security guards had been detailed to patrol public schools, kindergartens and surrounding areas beginning last week, according to the city government.

The rampage follows a series of stabbings at Chinese schools and universities in recent years and is sure to stoke public disquiet and demands for stricter school security after five attacks on school children in recent weeks.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao demanded action, the top law-and-order official, Zhou Yongkang, told officials to beef up school security and police have vowed to identify people who could pose a threat to children.
"Of course, we're scared," said a resident of a village a couple of miles from the kindergarten where the latest attack happened. She gave only her surname, Li.
"We've all heard about it. I also have grandchildren, but they're already at primary school," Li said by telephone. "But everybody has to wonder why there are people who can do this."
The deaths of children strike an especially deep chord in this country where most urban families are allowed to have only one child, said Yang Dongping, an expert on education at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
"I personally feel that media reports about these attacks have helped to create a copy-cat effect", Yang told Reuters. "People who are mentally unstable or who nurse hatred towards society then feel that this is a way of exacting revenge, or of making their demands."
"If security for the Beijing Olympics andShanghai Expo can achieve a spotless record, why can't school safety achieve a near spotless one?" said a commentator on the popular Sina.com website. "The safety of leaders is important, but so is protecting the lives of children."
In five school attacks since March, 17 people died — all but two of them children — and over 80 were injured. China bans nearly all citizens from owning handguns, and all the attacks involved knives and cleavers.
Sociologists say the attacks reflect a lack of support for the mentally ill and rising stress resulting from huge social inequalities in China's fast-changing society. Such issues have largely been ignored in state media's reporting on the attacks, which have focused instead on increases in security in an effort to quell public fear and potential unrest.

The assaults began with an attack on a primary school in March in the city of Nanping in Fujian province where eight children were slashed to death by a former community clinic doctor with a history of mental health problems.
The man convicted for that crime was executed on April 28, the same day a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the southern city of Leizhou in Guangdong province and wounded 15 students and a teacher with a knife.
The following day in Taixing city in Jiangsu province, a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with an 8-inch knife wounded 29 kindergarten students — five seriously — plus two teachers and a security guard.
Just hours later, a farmer hit five elementary students with a hammer in the eastern city of Weifang before burning himself to death.
The government has sought to show it has the problem under control, mindful especially of worries among middle-class families who, limited in most cases to one child due to population control policies, invest huge amounts of money and effort to raise their offspring.
Yang, the education expert, said the latest attack would drive parents to demand even stricter security.
"But it would be unrealistic to mobilize all the police around schools", he said. "The real issues may be how the media report these incidents, as well as the broader social environment."
MORE FROM MSNBC.COM

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[snakeman21]

Gun bans work so well, don't they?

[LittleRedToyota]

also being discussed here:

http://forum.pafoa.org/lounge-108/99...massacres.html