The violence that poisons the air we breathe
Chang Ping says vengeful rhetoric on crime could fan more hatred and violence
“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”. During my recent trip to the 5th World Congress against the Death Penalty in Madrid, the famous saying from Mahatma Gandhi was heard everywhere. To me, this “blindness” resulting from revenge killing is even more harmful, because it blocks out any other possibilities of reconciliation. It is especially the case in China.
This year’s congress was supposed to focus on movements in the Arab world to abolish the death penalty in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution. But since China alone accounts for 85 per cent of all the death sentences in the world, it naturally became the focal point of almost every panel discussion. However, I was a bit distracted by the storm of Chinese media coverage over Chen Shuizong, the suspected arsonist in the disastrous Xiamen bus fire that killed 47 people on June 7. In particular, I was haunted by the angry, blood-fuelled words in Chinese media editorials.
What troubled me even more was the Chinese media’s uniform stance on the issue. All levelled their guns at Chen, the dead suspect, and refused to reflect on the tragedy from any other perspective. Any expressions of sympathy for the suspect’s miserable life were seen as attempts to exonerate him, or to encourage similar crimes, and therefore met with indignant criticism. It was a matter of black and white. The media wanted to unify our thoughts and our words, and bury the suspect with resolute, angry and hateful language.
“Condemnation must come first in the face of anti-social crimes,” declared a Global Times editorial. “We believe the whole of society must be completely and unconditionally unified in such condemnation.” Xiamen Daily, based in the city where the disaster occurred, went even further: “Indiscriminate sympathy [for the suspect] is fundamentally evil. It is a ‘murder’ against the dignity of the law, public feelings, as well as social psychology.”
This mentality of hate and vengeance could split our society, fanning more hate and violence that further harm the innocent
I was shocked. Nowhere else in the world have I even seen any kind of sympathy being branded as “evil.”