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8/23/2019 Violence Articles

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Let law take its course to keep

the Web clean

By Jules Quartly (China Daily)

While the Internet is occasionally touted as a forum for free expression

without restriction, 99.9 percent of people accept the reality is somewhat

different. For instance, snuff movies, images of pedophilia, and Web videos

of teens being beaten up and degraded by their peers are regarded astotally unacceptable.

There is a way of dealing with this issue. Instead of taking the moral high

ground and censoring content, let the law do its work. No one in their right

mind wants this type of media content on the Web, where it can become a

source of copycat violence.

A case in point is the latest in a long series of "Very Yellow, Very Violent" (

) videos that features an apparently pregnant Guangdong student beinghit around by a group of camera phone-wielding teens.

Though popular among the Web watching public, most hosting sites have

voluntarily removed the disturbing 2 minute and 45 second video, which

shows the young woman holding her belly while being kicked, punched and

verbally abused.

While mob.com helpfully provides stills from the encounter, along with an

editorial describing what happened, it is framed in such a way as to focus

attention on the people who form a human flesh search engine to hunt

down the guilty parties.


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"Very Yellow", by the way, refers to sexually-related material (like Western

"blue" movies) and in the uploaded films in question, they typically show a

young woman passively accepting the violence meted out by girls of aroundthe same age, and often lead to partial or full nudity. Recording it

compounds the violence, as the victim is publicly humiliated.

In another case, from late last year, a female student dubbed "Sister Bear"

slaps and kungfu-kicks a "schoolmate" in front of her leering friends, as they

film the action on their phones. Public exposure of the video led to a human

flesh search engine hunt that ended up with demonstrations outside the

school in Shanghai and calls for punishment against the perpetrator - who

was suspended from school.

While it is tempting to believe this kind of mob justice is righteous,

especially when the original crime is not dealt with, it could easily lead to

innocent people being held responsible and punishments getting out of

hand. It's a form of retrogression, not a sign of Internet enlightenment.

Britain, in the 1990s, had to deal with this issue, after a popular advert for a

soft drink featured a fat orange man who crept up and slapped people who

partook of the fizzy beverage. It led to teens imitating the fat orange man

and in some cases perforating the eardrums of the unfortunate victims.

It was called "happy slapping" and proved to be anything but. It spread

across Europe, morphing into school ground violence that was captured on

camera phones and disseminated on the Web. The term was then used to

cover any form of violence or sexual misdemeanor that was captured on

video. Now, those who film the action are held culpable and punished, while

those who host the videos can also be held responsible for their actions.

It would seem to be a reasonable way of dealing with this sort of behavior.

Instead of being a case for censorship, it becomes a matter of applying the

law when it is broken. Anyone crass or stupid enough to commit such an


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act, film or host it, will thereby provide evidence of the crime and should

suffer the consequences.

Behind China's Killing Spree

A bizarre spate of stabbings at schools

across the country has left children

dead and wounded. Daily Beast China

correspondent Huang Hung reports on

why the public is blaming the press for

the violence.

by Huang HungThe Daily Beast, May 16,2010

In less than two months, China has seen six cases of men charging into

schools and kindergartens to kill and hurt children. On April 28, 29, and

30, there was one incident per day in three separate cities. On

Wednesday, a man with a cleaver killed seven children and two adults in

a central China kindergarten, while on Saturday the man behind the April

29 attack was sentenced to death for stabbing 29 children in an eastern

province. The situation has become not only very dark, but very surreal.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/huang-hung.htmlhttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/who-is-killing-chinas-children/article1566954/http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/05/201051510223229275.htmlhttp://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/huang-hung.htmlhttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/who-is-killing-chinas-children/article1566954/http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/05/201051510223229275.html


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News like this spurs social criticism and debate on the faults of modern

society. But what these child killers stirred up was a backlash against

freedom of the press in China. An angry article on an official governmentwebsite blamed sensationalist reporting for the copycat killing spree in

small Chinese cities. After the article came demands by the public for

the press to be banned from reporting on any further incidents.

Getting even seems to be very important to the Chinese. Forgiveness is

definitely not in vogue. Its scary sometimes.

Amid all the hurt and confusion, there was, for a couple of weeks, a

public push to further regulate the media in China. I was a bit takenaback by the whole debate. It made me wonder seriously whether this

country is ready for democracy. Maybe we have been told what to think

for so long, we have lost our common sense. Take this debate on media

responsibilitythe public has confused two completely separate issues:

freedom of the press and media control during a criminal investigation.

Talk about shooting the messenger.

But it doesnt surprise me. So often, conversations in China become

warped. And our society in general is prone to vengeful violence. The

fact that the killers used hammers and other blunt objects to commit

these crimes shows that they are not hardcore criminals who have

access to serious weapons. It means that otherwise, these very

disturbed people could have looked quite normal walking down the

street. Thank goodness guns are illegal in this country. Getting even

seems to be very important to the Chinese. Forgiveness is definitely not

in vogue. Its scary sometimes.

Fortunately, several Chinese magazines have finally started to do in-

depth reporting on the child killings and have tried to diagnose the social

maladies that might have caused such crazy behavior. The articles note

that none of the killers wanted to get away with murderthey all


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attempted to commit suicide. And some other reasonable theories have

begun to surface. Caijing, a leading financial magazine, speculated that

Chinese frustration with the lack of an independent justice system,wrongs that are not righted, and the little guy who cannot be heard have

led to desperate acts like this.

To kill children in a country with a one-child policy is a knife aimed at

everyones heart. Caijing noted that when the weak prey on the weaker,

it is the most desperate kind of cry for public attention. Unfortunately, I

dont think the public has heard this message. Southern Weekend, a

popular weekly, ran a story with the headline Now That He Is Executed,

We Are All Relieved on the day the first murderer was executed. An eye

for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Yet no one has lit a candle for all the

dead children. Sympathy is a scarce commodity in this country unless it

is a natural disaster. These kind of incidents are dealt with and quickly

forgotten, because they are embarrassing to the country.

So I was relieved when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said in an interview

with Phoenix TV in Hong Kong that the child murders reflect deep social

problems in China. Thank goodness the prime minister actually

recognizes that factand didnt blame the killings on freedom of the

press.

Huang Hung is a columnist for China Daily, the English language

newspaper in China. She is also an avid blogger with more than 100

million page views on her blog on sina.com
http://sina.com/http://sina.com/

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