Han Han: A Government That Cannot Protect Its Children…

Han Han is a famous post-80s generation race-car driver, best-selling author, and Chinese blogger who was also recently named in Time magazine’s Top 100 list.  — Fauna

From Han Han’s blog:

Kids, you’re spoiling the old men’s fun

Another stabbing incident in a Taixing kindergarten left thirty-two people injured and the number of dead still unclear [as of when Han Han wrote the post, there appear to be no deaths]. This incident came so close to the Nanping kindergarten stabbing attack that I first thought they were the same kindergarten.

Among recent incidents of murderous insanity, nearly all the perpetrators have chosen to attack kindergartens or primary schools. It seems that in the hearts of many who want to exact revenge on society, going to kindergartens and primary schools and killing people has become a kind of fashion because in the process of the murder one encounters the least resistance so you can kill more people. Creating great panic among the people is the best means of taking revenge on society. Aside from Yang Jia, nearly all killers choose to begin by killing the weak. If they feel there’s no way out in society, then killing those even weaker than themselves becomes their only way out. I recommend that all the police guarding the doors of local officials nationwide be transferred to guard kindergartens. A government that can’t even protect children doesn’t need so many people protecting it.

One of the great causes of these murders is social injustice and unfairness. Yes, “fairness and justice must be more brilliant than the sun” [This is something Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said earlier this year]. But the sun doesn’t come out every day. Doesn’t it seem as though there are a bit too many overcast days and nights? So saying that fairness and justice must be more brilliant than the sun isn’t impressive, only when the sun is hanging over our heads every minute of every day will it be impressive.

After the Taizhou kindergarten murder incident, the media was controlled. These children were born at the wrong time [i.e., unlucky] and they died at an even worse time. In this jubilant atmosphere [of the opening of the Shanghai Expo], this incident is just noise to the relevant government departments. All we know is that according to the government, 32 people were injured and no one died, but on the streets there are rumors that many children were killed. So who should I believe? If the government is telling the truth, then why are they not letting parents see their children? They’ve also blocked off the hospital and shut off the news, and there are no photographs or video of children. Moreover, a murderer chops up thirty two people with a knife and no one dies? Was he really committing murder or performing surgery? [On the other hand,] if I want to believe what people are saying, I must remember that the word on the street is usually exaggerated, and with no evidence at all, there’s really no way to trust it. So I searched [the web] for Taizhou and unexpectedly came across this article from April 30 [i.e., after the killings]: “The Three Happinesses Come to Taizhou”.

I was very astonished. The Taizhou government has successfully sealed information, closed the hospital, controlled the media, forbidden visitors, and diverted public attention, but now they have successfully taken the people’s anger at the killer and directed it at themselves, and for what? It’s not that they have some other motive. Aside from wanting to cooperate with singing the Shanghai Expo’s “harmonious song”, this is just inertia; it’s the government dealing with a situation according to their habits. It’s their usual process: eat, drink and be merry all night until something happens, then hide, isolate, remove the media, make prohibitions, send press releases, make compensations, cremate the bodies — then go back to eating and drinking. Their way of dealing with things isn’t much more noble than a murderer’s. No wonder I saw online a kindergarten hanging a banner: “Injustice has a cause, debt has an owner, out the door and to the left is the government building.”

Five school killings in a month, and two within just a week (4/29 Taizhou, 4/30 Weifang). I don’t want to delve into the social reasons for the killing, I just want to tell everyone here that a man rushing into a kindergarten and stabbing children can’t even make the news. To the thirty-two kids whose ages would only reach a hundred if you added them all up, you’ve been stabbed, but you can’t even get into a newspaper, because a few hundred kilometers away there is a grand meeting with millions of fireworks. At the same time, your hometown of Taizhou is enjoying the “three happinesses”: national tourism days, economic talks, and a ceremony to celebrate overseas Chinese starting businesses.

Perhaps in the eyes of those old men, you children are just spoiling their fun.

Wretched children, it is you who are poisoned by milk powder, harmed by vaccines, crushed by earthquakes, and burnt in fires. Even if there’s a problem with rules in the adult world, you are the ones adults stab in retaliation. I truly hope it is as the Taizhou government says, and you’re all just injured and no one has died. We elders have failed in our duties. I hope that when you grow up, you will not only protect your own children but build a society that protects everyone’s children.