China’s Premier Discusses School Attacks/9 Killed in School Attack in China

China’s Premier Discusses School Attacks
By EDWARD WONG
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/world/asia/15beijing.html?hp


BEIJING — Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said Thursday that the Chinese government would examine the deeper social problems that may have led to the recent string of deadly attacks on schoolchildren.

It was the first public comment by a Chinese leader on the violence since the latest attack, in which a landlord in a village hacked to death seven kindergartners, a teacher and the teacher’s elderly mother on Wednesday.

In a brief television interview , Mr. Wen told Phoenix Television, based in Hong Kong, that the government attaches “great importance” to investigating the assaults, which have resulted in the deaths of 17 people and the injury of nearly 100 others. All the assailants have been middle-aged men armed with knives or tools and acting alone.

“Apart from taking powerful security measures, we also need to solve the deeper reasons behind this issue, including resolving social tensions, reconciling disputes and enhancing mediation at the grass-roots level,” he said. “We are sparing no effort in all of the above works.”

Mr. Wen’s comments were an implicit acknowledgment of the challenge that the series of five seemingly unrelated attacks, which began in late March, has posed to the Chinese government. The Chinese regard children as an especially treasured stratum of society, and very prominent dangers to children in the last two years — from tainted baby formula to school collapses — have led parents to call for greater government efforts to stamp out such hazards. Some ordinary Chinese say the recent attacks show an inability by the government to hold together the traditional social fabric in a time of great economic upheaval.

Under orders from the Propaganda Ministry, most of the main Chinese news organizations have declined to run follow-up stories on Wednesday’s attack, which took place in Linchang Village of Shaanxi Province. China Daily, an English-language newspaper aimed at foreigners, was an exception — it ran a front-page headline on Friday that said “School Security Beefed Up” and carried Mr. Wen’s comments. Chinese officials say reporting of the attacks could incite more copycat assaults, and in any case the Propaganda Ministry is often quick to order a blackout on news that points to deep social disturbances in China.

In his interview, Mr. Wen did not mention addressing mental illness, a topic that the Chinese often avoid discussing. Interviews conducted by The Associated Press in Linchang Village indicate that the killer, Wu Huanming, 48, was an unbalanced individual — he had tried to commit suicide twice in the last month and believed that the kindergarten administrator, Wu Hongying, had put a curse on him to prevent his diabetes condition from improving. Mr. Wu and Ms. Wu, who were apparently unrelated, had had frequent arguments over rental of the kindergarten building, which Mr. Wu owned. The morning of the attack, Mr. Wu loudly complained about payment of rent as he stormed toward the school.

An online Chinese news report said Mr. Wu had gotten a circumcision in March, citing local officials at a news conference.

Mr. Wu first attacked Ms. Wu with a kitchen cleaver, nearly severing her head, then turned on the kindergartners. He also killed Ms. Wu’s 80-year-old mother, Su Runhua, who often helped care for the schoolchildren.

China Daily reported that schools across China were hiring more security guards in the wake of Wednesday’s attack. In Beijing, a special team of 800 guards armed with truncheons and tear gas has begun work. Even before the last attack, 2,000 guards were sent to more than 500 kindergartens and schools in Beijing, said He Gang, a police official. But rural schools like the kindergarten in Linchang remain highly vulnerable.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting, and Zhang Jing contributed research.




9 Killed in School Attack in China
By EDWARD WONG
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/world/asia/13china.html?hp


BEIJING — A man with a kitchen cleaver rampaged through a kindergarten in rural northern China on Wednesday, and state media said he hacked to death seven children and two adults before returning home and killing himself.

The attack, the deadliest of five assaults on Chinese schoolchildren in the last two months, immediately prompted some writers and scholars to call for government officials to examine the pressures in society that may have led to the mass killings and to stop what they called government efforts to limit more extensive coverage of the violence.

The attacker was identified by the state-run Xinhua news agency as Wu Huanming, 48. A local government report said he was the landlord of the building where the kindergarten operated, but that connection could not immediately be confirmed and his motive remained unclear.

Eleven children were wounded in the assault, according to Xinhua and local medical officials reached by telephone.

At least 17 people have been killed — mostly children — and dozens injured in the series of attacks, which began in March. In each case, a middle-aged man acting alone set upon children with knives or tools. Some of the men had families.

The attacks have taken place across China and are presumably copycat crimes. They have caused fear and outrage among parents and prompted some schools to improve security measures; private guards with red armbands are an increasingly common presence on the grounds, as are security cameras and metal gates. A growing number of parents have spoken of their anxieties at sending their children off in the morning.

The attack on Wednesday began at 8:20 a.m. in Linchang Village of Nanzheng County in Shaanxi Province, a poor area in the parched yellow-earth landscape common to north China. The wounded were taken to a hospital in the city of Hanzhong, where a nurse answering the phone said many of the wounded had critical head injuries.

“We are very busy saving people’s lives,” she said.

There were five boys and two girls among the dead, Xinhua reported. Also killed was Wu Hongying, the kindergarten owner and a teacher. The assailant first stabbed to death Ms. Wu and a student, then attacked another 18 people, according to the local government report. Seven of those died at the hospital, including Ms. Wu’s mother.

A local official told Xinhua that only about 20 students attended the school.

Shooting rampages are rare in China. It is difficult to buy guns of any kind here. Sharp objects and tools are the weapons of choice for homicides.

Although official news organizations have been quick to publish initial reports on the string of attacks, the government has been carefully censoring subsequent stories, perhaps to prevent other copycat murders, or perhaps to play down any suggestion of dysfunction within Chinese society. In presenting China as a “harmonious society” — the signature propaganda phrase of President Hu Jintao — the government often deletes dissonant reports from the Internet and other media platforms.

A report on a Web site that monitors government control of the Chinese news media said the Propaganda Ministry had issued an order Wednesday telling news organizations not to send journalists to the site of the attack in Shaanxi. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Some scholars and writers have speculated that the attacks underscore the absence of adequate pressure-release valves in a society that is going through rapid economic upheaval, where the gap between the wealthy and the destitute is widening, and where corrupt officials often exercise power arbitrarily, fueling widespread frustrations among ordinary citizens.

On Wednesday, Dahe Bao, a newspaper in Henan Province, quickly posted on the Internet a fiery editorial that pointed to misbehavior by government officials as the root cause of the problem.

“After being treated unfairly or being bullied by the authorities, and unable to take revenge on those government departments that are safeguarded by state security forces, killers have to let out their hatred and anger on weaker people, and campuses have become the first choice,” said the editorial, signed by a writer named Shi Chuan.

The newspaper took another bold step by criticizing government efforts to censor news of the attacks.

“Any effort that attempts to maintain social stability by silencing public media is outrageously wrong,” the editorial said. “It is undeniable that the media’s coverage on these incidents of bloodshed may ‘inspire’ potential killers, but it will educate more people by raising awareness of self-protection and spur the authorities, and this is the role that media should play in the society.”

In a telephone interview, a sociologist, Tang Jun, said the attackers did not appear to personally know the children they chose as victims, so the assaults “must be an expression of their dissatisfaction of society.”

“They choose children because it’ll have the largest negative impact on society,” said Mr. Tang, who does research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. China has a strict one-child birth policy, and the murders often leave the parents of victims without any children, something the killers are probably well aware of, Mr. Tang added.

The attacks have also prompted talk of how Chinese rarely discuss mental illness, and thus treatment is inadequate. In June, a British medical journal published an analysis of mental health issues in four Chinese provinces and concluded that an estimated 91 percent of 173 million Chinese adults believed to be suffering mental problems never receive professional help.

“In the past 30 years, China has seen drastic social change, and people now pay too much attention to the material while neglecting spiritual development,” said Ma Ai, a professor of criminal psychology at the China University of Politics and Law. “We believe a rapidly changing social environment has a huge influence on people’s personalities. That’s the deeper correlation we should attend to.”

The first of the wave of attacks took place on March 23, when Zheng Minsheng, 42, stabbed eight primary school students to death in Fujian Province. After a speedy trial, Mr. Zheng was executed on April 28, the same day that 15 children and their teacher were wounded in an attack at a primary school in the southern province of Guangdong.

The following day, in Jiangsu Province, an attacker with a knife injured 29 kindergarteners and three adults. Protesting parents took to the streets chanting, “We want the truth! We want our babies back!”

Then, in Shandong Province, a man wielding a hammer beat five kindergartners and a teacher. The man doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire with two other children in his arms. The attacker died, and the children survived.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing. Zhang Jing contributed research.