Revenge against society must be firmly condemned

Source:Global Times Published: 2013-7-25 0:33:01

On Tuesday, another stabbing took place in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

A villager killed two officials with a knife and injured four others at a local family-planning office. The police said the man was mentally ill, but this detail seems unimportant amid a time when a series of anti-social cases have taken place across China recently.

There have been more cases of disadvantaged people taking revenge on society. But meanwhile, public opinion feels sympathetic toward their miserable experiences or even applauds their behavior in the first place.

Such unhealthy public opinion is not just the problem of opinion itself or only the result of the fault of governmental work. It reflects the public opinion's maladjustment toward this transformative society.

Due to the sympathy and de facto encouragement, some people may feel less ethical pressure when resorting to such attacks. Those who have never thought of such attacks may even be incited to kill.

Currently, there's no data supporting the conclusion that the number of anti-social killings is rising, but support for such killings is rising. Ever since the case of Yang Jia who stabbed six policemen in 2008, there have been more voices calling for such people to be forgiven.

Strong and effective measures must be taken to change this situation. To get at the root needs time and complementary reforms, but fixing the situation in the short-term is also key.

Traditional media should take on responsibilities to condemn slaughtering the innocent. Opinion leaders on the Internet should also contribute. The government should ban opinions that support killing the innocent. Such voices, if they go viral online, will hurt society in the long run and even threaten the future of the country.

Public opinion should be united in the issue of objecting to killing the innocent. It's not a matter of the freedom of speech. It is the universal value and the bottom line of humanity. The Chinese should defend this bottom line.

Some people hold that it's unavoidable that social management will come across chaos. Only when "street movements" get a certain freedom and retaliatory killings begin to threaten the public will public opinion change to the good.

But China should avoid detours. We should adjust ourselves when we sense the signs of tragedies.

More brave people should stand up against anti-social revenge. Public opinion platforms should play their part to make people know the danger of irrational opinions once they spread. We will either knock down abnormal mentalities or be dragged into division.



Posted in: Observer

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