China: Mass murder with a knife

PUBLICATION: Vancouver Sun
DATE: 2004.11.27
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A20
BYLINE: Joe Mcdonald
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BEIJING

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Nine boys killed by knife-wielding man: CHINA
The attack in Ruzhou was the most serious of several recent knife
attacks at Chinese schools

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BEIJING — A man with a knife broke into a high-school dormitory and
killed as many as nine boys as they slept — the deadliest of a series
of knife attacks at Chinese schools in recent months, the government
said Friday.

Police were hunting for the man following the attack late Thursday at
the No. 2 High School in the city of Ruzhou, government news agencies
reported. They said the motive was under investigation.

The man broke into the dormitory at 11:45 p.m. local time and “chopped
eight people to death,” the official Xinhua News Agency said. Another
state-run outlet, the China News Service, put the death toll at nine.
Ruzhou police refused to release any other information.

The China News Service said the attacker might have been a former
student who had been expelled. It cited a survivor as saying that during
the attack, the man with the knife said, “Don’t blame me.”

It was the fourth knife attack reported at a Chinese school or day-care
centre in as many months. The earlier assaults left one child dead and a
total of 42 people injured.

The spate of violence prompted the government of President Hu Jintao to
issue a nationwide order in September for schools to hire guards and
tighten security.

The reason for the surge in knife attacks isn’t clear. They have taken
place throughout China and involve attackers from different backgrounds.
In the only other fatal case until this week, an attacker at a Beijing
kindergarten was reported to be an employee of the school who had a
history of mental illness.

But China’s cities and towns seethe with grudges and personal feuds amid
wrenching economic and social change.

Fatal bombings, mass poisonings and other attacks are reported
frequently, usually blamed on people trying to hurt business rivals or
seeking revenge in often minor disputes.

Last month, six men were arrested in Beijing in a knife attack at an
Internet cafe that left 14 people bloodied. News reports said the
attackers wanted revenge on several men they had met at the cafe, and
when they couldn’t be found, slashed customers at random.

Ruzhou, a city of 920,000 people, is about 750 kilometres southwest of
Beijing in Henan province, southwest of the giant industrial city of
Zhengzhou. The city government website says coal mining is a major local
industry.

Photos released by Xinhua showed investigators standing in the dormitory
in an area cordoned off with white-and-yellow police tape, while crowds
of spectators stood outside the school gate. An unidentified student was
shown talking to a relative through the closed metal gate.

On Wednesday, a court executed a man who slashed 25 children with a
kitchen knife in September at a grade school in eastern China. Although
no one was killed, a court ruled that the penalty was justified because
the violence was “especially cruel.” Police said that attacker had a
grudge against the parent of a student at the school.

In August, a man with a history of schizophrenia killed a student and
slashed 14 children and three teachers at a Beijing kindergarten near
the compound where China’s leaders live and work.