More School Stabbings in China: Another Cleaver Attack at Vocational School, One Student Loses Hand — Last Week, Man with Cleaver Killed 7 Toddlers & 2 Adults in Chinese School
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 21, 2010
China's Haikou College of Economics and Vocational Technology, location of latest stabbing attack
Horrifying and heartbreaking — our prayers go to the families of these slain, wounded, and attacked students in China. In yesterday’s attack, a vocational student’s hand was cut off with a cleaver. In last week’s attack, seven toddlers in a Chinese school were killed.
From AOL News, Thirteen Wounded in Latest Chinese School Stabbings:
Knife-wielding attackers have wounded 13 students at a vocational school in southern China, including one whose hand was hacked off as he tried to defend himself.
It’s the latest in the spate of school stabbings in China, which has ramped up security at school buildings after five assaults left at least 17 children dead in less than two months. China’s premier spoke out about the attacks with rare frankness last week, saying “deep-seated causes” and “social contradictions” in Chinese society may lead to such crimes.
While most of the victims in previous attacks have been kindergartners or even younger, today’s violence affected much older students at a vocational school in Hainan province. Students at such schools are typically in their late teens or early 20s.
The latest attacks came in two bouts, with stabbings overnight and then again this morning at the Hainan Technology and Vocational Institute in the city of Haikou. Details were reported by local Chinese media and picked up by foreign news agencies as well.
At around midnight, students got into an argument with other neighborhood youths over a barbecue that was being held near their school. Four students were injured in an initial clash, and then the attackers returned to one of the school’s dormitories hours later and stabbed nine people.
Eight of the victims were wounded only slightly, and two others remain hospitalized, including the student who lost his hand.
While this vocational school attack appears to have erupted from a feud between local youths and the school’s students, the other recent school rampages have been blamed on personal grudges, unemployment or people suffering from mental illness. They underscore how China — which has enjoyed a lower crime rate than Western nations — is becoming vulnerable to violence from such individuals, who are often stigmatized and left untreated.
“We need to resolve the deep-seated causes that have resulted in these problems,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last week in an interview with a Hong Kong TV station. “This includes handling social contradictions, resolving disputes and strengthening mediation at the grass-roots level.”
As many as 173 million Chinese adults suffer from mental disorders, and the vast majority of them have never received care, according to joint research by Columbia University and Chinese psychiatrists, which was published in the Lancet medical journal last summer.
From China Daily, Dorm attack: 4 suspects in police net
Four people suspected of being involved in the latest knife attack in the country have been arrested in Haikou, Hainan province. The police are still hunting for the other suspects, local authorities said on Thursday.
Nine students of the Hainan Institute of Science and Technology, a vocational school on the island, were injured after the suspects barged into two dormitories and slashed them with cleavers.
A preliminary investigation shows the students had earlier been involved in a conflict with the suspects, who are residents of the nearby Lanmei village, police said.
News on last week’s attack on a Chinese kindergarten…
From New Zealand Herald, Children in China school attack were as young as three:
Children as young as 3 years old were among the victims targeted in an attack at a kindergarten in northwestern China that killed seven toddlers and two adults, a doctor said on Thursday.
The attacker who charged into the kindergarten on Wednesday and hacked at his victims with a cleaver was also a familiar figure to them, said another doctor. The killer, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, committed suicide at home following the attack.
The assault, which left 11 other children hospitalized, was China’s fifth such school rampage in less than two months, and occurred despite heightened security countrywide, with gates and cameras installed at some schools and additional police and guards posted at entrances.
The attacks have raised concerns about the rising emotional stress in China’s high-pressure, rapidly changing society, along with a dire lack of infrastructure to diagnose and treat severe mental illness.
It was not clear if security had been increased at the private Shengshui Temple Kindergartens on the rural outskirts of Hanzhong, an industrial city of nearly 4 million people.
Images taken from local TV and posted online portrayed the school, which only had about 20 students, as a tumble-down, two-story farmhouse.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before, never,” said Zhao Fangling, a doctor overseeing care for six of the most seriously wounded survivors at the 3201 Hospital in Hanzhong. The other five survivors were being treated at a separate hospital.
The four boys and two girls under Zhao’s care were between the ages of 3 and 6-1/2. He said they were in stable condition in intensive care with head wounds.
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