Society
After deadly attacks, campus security tightened
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-05-31 22:12
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BEIJING - From deployment of more security guards to cutting back outdoor celebratory activities, primary schools and kindergartens across China have tightened campus security ahead of International Children's Day following a string of deadly attacks on young students.
At primary schools and kindergartens in the eastern cities of Jinan and Nanjing, parents are now required to show a special pass or even to be filmed when they drop off their children at school or pick them up after school.
"We had planned to celebrate International Children's Day in parks and in the school playground. But in the end we dropped the plan because of security concerns. We decided to hold the celebrations in the classrooms," said Gu Na, a teacher with the No 2 Primary School Affiliated to the Shandong University in Jinan.
"Unlike in previous years, celebrations will be shortened to a single day this year, June 1, instead of the usual practice of five days," she said.
In Beijing, education authorities have also asked primary schools and kindergartens to reduce or cancel outdoor celebrations.
Security checks will be conducted for the first time at all entrances to the Working People's Cultural Palace in downtown Beijing, where large outdoor celebrations are held on June 1 every year with the participation of thousands of children.
"We really do not want to see children's happiness undermined by the security measures, but we must be on high alert in the wake of the series of attacks at schools," Gu said.
Prior to International Children's Day, the Education Ministry, the All-China Women's Federation and 16 other agencies jointly issued a circular requiring local authorities across the country to take measures to ensure children's safety during the celebrations.
"I fully support the moves taken by the schools. I know children may have a less enjoyable celebration this year, but those security measures are very necessary," said Zhu Zhengrong, whose grandson is a first-grader at the No 2 Primary School Affiliated to Shandong University.
Five attacks on children over the last two months in China have left 17 dead and scores injured. In the most recent atrocity, a 48-year-old man killed seven children and two women with a meat cleaver at a kindergarten in northwestern Shaanxi Province on May 12. The man committed suicide after the attack.
In another case, Zheng Minsheng, 42, murdered eight children outside their primary school in eastern Fujian province in March. He was executed on April 28.
The suspect in the school attack in Weifang, in eastern Shandong province, also killed himself, and the suspect in the case in Leizhou, in southern Guangdong province, has yet to stand trial.
Xu Yuyuan, a 47-year-old man who attacked 29 children and three teachers in a kindergarten with a meat cleaver late last month in Taixing, in eastern Jiangsu province, was executed Sunday.
Experts have blamed pressures caused by modern society for the string of attacks.
Local authorities have been ordered to beef up security at school compounds and nearby residential communities.
Police will shoot school attackers when necessary, Wu Heping, a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry, has said.
"If someone dares to commit such a crime again, police will enforce the law firmly without hesitation in line with the Criminal Law and the police code for using guns and other weapons, " he said.
In southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, police are setting up 10,000 more security cameras around schools this year to guard against possible attacks.
In eastern city of Changzhou, alarms directly connected to local police command center have been installed in primary schools and kindergartens.
In Shaanxi, all kindergartens will have security guards stationed at schools. They are also being equipped with defensive weapons like rubber batons and anti-cut gloves. Students and staff are also learning self-defense skills.
In the Qinhuai district of Nanjing, some well-built parents with strength have been selected to help police officers patrol local kindergartens at times children come and go.
In some provinces, such as Jiangsu, the education authorities are training more male teachers for work in kindergartens where teachers are mostly female.
"Male teachers have an advantage over female teachers in protecting children. We are working to reach a goal that every kindergarten in the province will have at least one male teacher within three to five years," said Shen Jian, director of the Jiangsu Provincial Education Department.
But the tightened security measures have concerned some sociologists.
"The measures are not permanent solutions. Kids should enjoy a happy, innocent childhood. But if they are put in a closed environment, they will feel uneasy and fearful about the outside world and suffer psychological harm," said Hu Guangwei, deputy director of the Sociology Institute at the Sichuan Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.
"Therefore, society needs to pay more attention to the perpetrators of the attacks: What drove them to commit such violent crimes? Society needs to take care of the disadvantaged who live in similar circumstances to the school attackers to prevent such violence from happening again."