School Attacks

Posted on 19 May 2010.

A knife-wielding man injured 18 children at the Leicheng First Primary School in Leizhou city, Guangdong province. A 42-year-old man stabbed a second-grader and an old woman to death outside a primary school in Hepu, Guangxi province.

A former community doctor stabbed and killed eight school children at a primary school in Nanping, Fujian province, after breaking up with his girlfriend. A mentally disabled man attacked five children and a grandmother at a primary school in Mazhang, Guangdong province, killing two of the children. Twenty-eight children and three adults were injured by a 47-year-old unemployed man with a knife at a nursery school in Taixing city, Jiangsu province. And five young children were attacked by a man with a hammer at a primary school in Weifang, Shandong province. The man then burned himself to death in despair about government plans to knock down his home.

In response to the spate of incidents above, which all took place in a period of a few weeks in March and April, "the education ministry has formed an emergency panel to tackle the violence and some local police authorities have distributed such instruments as steel pitchforks and pepper spray to security guards in schools" (BBC).

The education ministry had already ordered schools to upgrade their security facilities and employ guards, as well as teach their students about safety and ensure young children were escorted home. However, as the BBC reports, "Such measures are expensive... and in reality there is little that can be done to prevent such acts of violence."

These attacks are often blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness. Professor Ji Jianlin of Shanghai's Fudan University has highlighted the lack of social and psychological support in China's rapidly changing society. "In the past," he said, "China's workers used to have social support from the unions or women's associations. They used to provide quite adequate support. It's now quite weak."

Whatever the reasons, many parents are understandably very unsettled by these disturbing events.

Lift up to the Lord the children who have been injured in these attacks and the parents of those who have been killed or injured. Pray for physical and emotional healing.

Pray for peace for parents who are worried for their own children following these disturbing attacks.

Pray that schools will do all they can to protect the children in their care.

Pray for Chinese society - that adequate social and psychological support might be made available to those who are struggling in difficult situations, so that they do not resort to such drastic actions.