中国 | 2010.04.30
中国35天内的第5起校园袭击案：社会病还是病社会?
据新华社报道，4月30日上午，山东省潍坊一男性村民闯入尚庄小学，用铁锤打伤5名学前班学生，然后点燃汽油自焚死亡。5名受伤学生目前无生命危险。这是中国35天以来媒体报道的又一起校园袭击事件。
在短时间内连续发生此类以青少年儿童为主要袭击目标的恶性伤人事件，中国人民大学社会 学教授周孝正把这种现象称为"社会心理传染病"："这和传媒报道有关，一报道就放大了，很多人就知道了，就产生了传染病的效果，包括心理暗示、诱发等。所 以在报道时一定要掌握好平衡：一是保障公民知情权，但不要过分炒作。"
"社会不公是病源"
周孝正补充说，连续几起伤人案件都发生在校园或幼儿园等青少年集中的地点，案情有相似 性，也是"社会心理传染病"的典型表现。在谈到社会环境对此类袭击事件的发生有何影响时，中国人民大学社会学教授周孝正认为："中医是治一个得病的人，西 医是治人得的病。原来我们管这个叫'社会病'，现在用中医的观点就应该叫'病的社会''问题的社会'。为什么这么说呢？温家宝总理在今年两会上讲到两个' 不公'：司法不公和收入分配不公。这两个'不公'就是目前中国大陆越发严重的不公正现象，也就是社会生病了，而且病情越来越重。病症也就要表现出来。"
一个多月以来，中国发生的校园伤人事件屡见报端，用周孝正的话说，"病症"表现频 繁：3月23日福建南平郑民生杀8名小学生；4月12日广西合浦男子砍死一名8岁小学生和一名妇女；4月28日雷州市雷城第一小学发生行凶事件，导致16 名师生受伤；4月29日，一男子在江苏泰兴幼儿园砍伤31人。对于这些案件的制造者背景媒体报道不多，外界只知道部分凶手年龄、性别和职业。中国近期发生 的伤人事件制造者都是成年人。而美国和德国曾发生的校园枪杀案凶犯大不乏青少年，而且多是案发学校的在读或毕业生。
中国各地加强校园安全防护
中国各地目前已经采取各类措施加强校园保安工作，比如北京西城区所有学校将配警用钢 叉，校园监控录像将于公安部门连通；重庆部署校园周边的整治和加强巡逻；福建要求中小学和幼儿园完成保安员配备，重要场所还需安装监控和报警装置；南京市 自5月1日起，将有配备警棍、防身用辣椒水等的专职校园保安将进驻鼓楼区各公办中小学和幼儿园，守护校园平安。
"凶手是预防犯罪的活教材"
制造3月23日"南平惨案"的凶手郑民生已被执行死刑，而周孝正反对将凶手"急急忙忙 处决"的做法："最关键是预防犯罪，我的观点是不主张急急忙忙把罪犯杀掉，因为他们是预防犯罪的活教材。我们要研究这些穷凶极恶、滥杀无辜的罪犯的心路历 程，他们的生长环境，家庭、学校、社会环境。把这些问题都研究透彻后，希望以后这些事件越来越少，最好杜绝，这样死的孩子也没有白死。如果急忙把凶手杀 了，没有好处，以后这样的案件还要出现。"
作者：谢菲
责编：洪沙
江蘇泰興再現砍殺幼兒事件 已知31傷
江苏男子持刀袭击幼儿园 28童受伤 中国近来连续发生袭击小学生和幼儿事件 中国江苏省泰兴市星期四（4月29日）发生砍杀幼儿事件，共有28名儿童和三名成人受袭击。
一名 男子在早晨9时30分左右持刀闯入泰兴市泰兴镇中心幼儿园，将儿童和老师以及门卫刺伤。 新华社报道称有五名幼儿伤势严重。 尽管有媒体称有受伤儿童死亡，但泰兴官员表示，截至下午2时50分，并没有受伤者死亡。 行凶者已经被警方逮捕，目前还不清楚他的动机。 新华社报道引泰兴警方称，凶手是一名47岁男子，名叫徐玉元，是当地一名无业人员。 江苏省公安厅说，徐玉元曾在当地一家保险公司工作，2001年被单位辞退，他此前还曾从事过违法传销活动。 有报道还说，多数受伤的孩子都是四岁大，都是在同一个班级。
同类案件
没有安装Flash播放器 下载Flash 选择其它媒体播放器 这已经是近期发生的第四起类似案件。这类血案频发，到底反映什么社会现象和原因呢？上海复旦大学心理及精神病学教授季建林在接受BBC中文网采访时说，社 会不稳定以及压力不容忽视。 广东省雷州市一所小学星期三发生小学生遭袭击事件。 一名中年男子在下午持刀冲入雷城第一小学，持刀砍伤18名学生和一名教师。 就在星期三上午，上月在福建南平市持刀袭击小学生造成八死五伤的郑民生被执行死刑。 而本月12日，广西合浦县一名精神病人持刀在小学校门口袭击小学生和路人。 凶案共造成两人死亡，五人受伤，其中死者分别是一名八岁小学生和一名老妇，伤者则包括两名小学生，一对中年夫妇和一个尚未入学的幼童。
最近這兩起襲擊案的動機還不為人知﹐但它們凸顯了中國如何對待精神病人的問題。在中國﹐精神病人常常得不到任何治療。
江蘇泰興市政府網站上的一條聲明稱﹐週四襲擊案中受傷的三名成人包括兩名教師和一名保安。聲明說﹐到目前為止﹐還沒有人在這起發生於泰興中心幼兒園的襲擊中死亡。
官方通訊社新華社稱﹐週四上午的襲擊發生後﹐有五名兒童情況危急。新華社引用警方一位發言人的話說﹐一名47歲的男子已被控制。泰興警方一名官員證實已逮捕一名嫌疑人。
新華社報道說﹐很多受傷孩子都是同一個班級的四歲兒童。
據當地政府發佈的聲明﹐週三的襲擊案發生在雷州市雷城第一小學﹐當時一名男子持刀沖擊了校園。疑兇已被警方制服﹐受害者被送到了醫院。新華社報道說﹐週四仍有五名傷者情況危急。
當地政府的聲明說﹐疑犯身份被確定為33歲的陳康炳﹐他曾是雷州市白沙鎮的一名小學教師﹐2006年2月以來從學校辦理病休至今﹐警方正在對犯罪動機進行調查。當地官員後來說﹐他們將對聲明進行更新﹐但到發稿前為止還沒有。
當地派出所和雷州市公安局的警官拒絕就這起事件置評。
雷州的另一所學校兩年前也發生了校園血案。2008年2月﹐曾在雷州第二中學就讀的一名學生持刀刺死兩名學生﹐刺傷另外四人﹐之後自殺。
就 在週三血案發生當日﹐中國處決了不久前在中國東部福建省發生的另一起校園慘案的兇手。新華社報導稱﹐3月23日﹐現年42歲的鄭民生持刀刺死了八名學生。 他於三週前被判處死刑﹐週三執行。鄭民生曾是一位醫生。新華社引述當地法院的陳述稱﹐調查發現鄭民生因戀愛失敗感到心灰意冷。國有媒體此前報導他有精神病 史。
哥倫比亞大學研究員和中國精神病醫院的醫生共同在醫學雜志《柳葉刀》(The Lancet) 6月刊上發表研究報告稱﹐中國多達1.73億成年人受到精神疾病的困擾﹐他們當中絕大多數從未接受任何治療。在中國﹐用於精神病治療的醫護設施短缺﹐而且 精神病患者會受到嚴重的社會歧視。
中國政法大學犯罪心理學教授馬皚說﹐媒體對鄭民生一案的關注可能會讓其他人仿照他犯下類似的罪行﹐他們會針對兒童下手以造成更大的社會影響。此類攻擊者發泄他們的仇恨、不滿和不平衡﹐希望社會能夠關注他們。
相對而言﹐嚴重暴力犯罪在中國還較為罕見﹐但隨著對多重兇殺案的報導增多﹐人們也開始關注兇手行兇背後的誘因﹐除了精神疾病外﹐促使他們行兇的因素還有失業及其他社會和經濟問題。中國嚴格管控槍支持有﹐因此大多數襲擊事件的兇器都是刀具。
上個月﹐國有媒體報道稱河北省一名男子向警方投案稱殺死了六名親屬﹐之後被警方拘捕。今年2月﹐北方山西省一名男子因涉嫌捅死一家五口被警方逮捕。
Sky Canaves
Stunned China Looks Inward After School Attacks
A guard at a school’s entrance in Jiangsu Province on Friday, the day a man attacked students in Shandong Province.
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: April 30, 2010
BEIJING — In the wake of a fourth horrific attack on Chinese schoolchildren — this time by a crazed man who on Friday beat five toddlers with a hammer, then set himself on fire with two other children in his arms — this shocked and bruised nation was of two distinctly different minds.
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Times Topic: China
Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press
The mother of a child who was wounded by a knife-wielding man in an attack on Thursday in Jiangsu Province.
Associated Press
A student who was wounded Wednesday in an attack in Guangdong Province, where 15 students were stabbed.
China Daily, via Reuters
Zheng Minsheng was sentenced to death in the March 23 killings of eight children in Fujian Province. The attack was the first of four recent ones.
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On the Internet and in newspapers, people agonized over whether their tightly regimented society, a boiling caldron of change with no pressure valve to let off steam, was blowing its lid.
In the halls of government, however, the emphasis was on preventing the steam from escaping at all.
After the first attack, in which a man stabbed and killed eight children outside an elementary school in Fujian Province on March 23, the Internet and government media bubbled with outrage, and the state-run Xinhua news service issued a lengthy study of the loner who committed the crime.
But on Friday, after three consecutive days of spontaneous and inexplicable assaults on children as young as 3, the media went silent. News of the latest attack, at the Shangzhuang Primary School in Shandong Province, vanished from the headlines on major Internet portals, replaced by an announcement that the government had assembled a team of 22 experts to help the education system set things right.
Posts on social networking sites indicated the change in tone came from the Communist Party’s central propaganda department, which directs and censors coverage of major news events.
If it was a classic response, born of Leninist dogma that dictates that bad news be buried and the state’s heroism trumpeted, it was still understandable after a week of what were apparently copycat crimes.
But it brought little comfort to average citizens, who still wondered what in their society could generate such madness. Online, many of them focused on problems — the growing rich-poor gap or the helplessness of average people in the face of power — that are a backdrop to everyday life.
In Taixing, the city in Jiangsu Province where a knife-wielding man stabbed 28 kindergarten students and three adults on Thursday, critically wounding at least five children, protesting parents took to the streets chanting, “We want the truth! We want our babies back!”
“The three killers wanted to get revenge on society,” one person, Zhang Han, wrote in an Internet chat posting. “They considered themselves as ‘underprivileged,’ and they chose an even more vulnerable group, children, to get revenge. Doubtless their own psychological problems played an indispensable role. But social inequality is obviously the catalyst.”
There likely is no single explanation for the assaults in Fujian, Shandong, Jiangsu and, on Wednesday, in Guangdong Province, where a 33-year-old former teacher stabbed 15 fourth-and fifth-graders. (In China, where access to guns is tightly controlled, knives are one weapon of choice in violent crimes.) Many Chinese might correctly note that their situation is hardly unique; the United States and other nations have also endured violent attacks on students.
Yet some aspects of the assaults — the alacrity with which they were copied by new assailants, to cite one example — raised questions among some Chinese about whether something else was at work here. Curiously, the four attacks in March and April mirror a series of assaults in August and September 2004, in which students in four other schools and a day care center were attacked by knife-wielding men who stabbed dozens of children.
One theme echoed in some Internet postings was the feeling by many Chinese citizens that they had little power in the face of authority, and few ways to right wrongs. One posting compared the attacks to a notorious rampage in July 2008 by a man who said he felt he had been wronged by the police. In a single attack in Shanghai, the man, Yang Jia, stabbed six police officers to death — and he became a national hero by the time he was executed that November.
One person who posted in a chat room pointed out that after the attack in March, a student wrote a letter to the assailant, saying, “If you’ve got hatred, please go to kill the corrupted official.”
“Isn’t it shocking to hear such assertions come from a child?” the poster wrote. “But in fact, this is a collective perception shared by the entire society. That’s why Yang Jia was hailed as a hero after killing innocent police.”
Stan Rosen, a University of Southern California political science professor who leads the university’s East Asian Studies Center, noted that the Cultural Revolution under Mao was so violent in part because it unleashed the bottled rage of a society that had suffered famine, impoverishment and brutal rule — and had no outlet for its grief.
Mao’s days are a distant memory now, and citizen protests, muckraking journalism and open discussion of social problems are accepted parts of Chinese life. But Martin K. Whyte, a Harvard University sociologist whose new book, “Myth of the Social Volcano,” parses the frustrations of average Chinese, said in an interview that a caldron of discontent still bubbled.
That, he argued, is mostly because average citizens still feel they have no steam valve, and the government is still concerned about keeping the lid on.
“The system still very much tries to pretend everything is going fine,” he said, “and it still hushes things up when there are disturbances.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 30, 2010
An earlier version of this article misidentified the province where Leizhou is located. It is in Guangdong Province, not Shandong. An earlier version of this article also misstated the percentage of mentally ill people thought not to have received professional help in China. The correct figure is 91 percent, not 98 percent.
