Editorials

Preventing tragedies

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-30 07:52

What is behind the three cases of strangers randomly killing or injuring children in schools or kindergartens in less than 40 days?

In the latest case on April 29, a 47-year-old jobless man injured 31 people including children, teachers and security guards in Taixing, Jiangsu province.

When a former community doctor hacked eight students to death and seriously injured another five on March 23 in Nanping, Fujian province, many people called for the tightening of security in schools and kindergartens. But about four weeks later, a teacher stabbed 15 students and one teacher in Leizhou city of Guangdong province.

Security both inside schools and kindergartens and at their gates must be tightened nationwide. But that deals only with the symptom and not the root cause.

The first killer was executed on April 28 and he deserved to be punished. But we cannot expect other latent murderers to be deterred from doing the same, because they know well of similar consequences if they slaughter innocent people.

The issue is the psychological state of these killers before and during the time of the crime. We should find out what propelled them to such extremes. What problems do they have? Could anyone have helped, especially the authorities?

Local governments and social assistance organizations may have overlooked their ability to help in such cases to prevent any killing.

It can be easy to put killers on trial and execute them, but it is far more difficult to find out the deep-seated causes behind such horrifying acts. Our efforts should be focused on preventing these from happening.

(China Daily 04/30/2010 page8)