The Unfathomable Brutality of School Attacks in China

America is no stranger to violent school attacks, but over the course of the last 2 months, China has seen a wave of school violence that dwarfs anything we've seen in the states – not in terms of total numbers, but certainly in terms of the makeup of the victims and the methods of the assaults. As the BBC reports, "media reports of [these incidents] have been minimal, perhaps in an attempt to discourage the copycat attacks that many parents now fear." So in case you've missed it, here is a selected timeline:

• May 12: A man with a meat cleaver hacks seven children and two adults to death at a kindergarten in Hanzhong city in Shaanxi province. He then kills himself.
• April 30: A man attacks and wounds five kindergarten students with a hammer in Shandong province's Weifang city before burning himself to death.
• April 29: A man stabs 28 nursery students with an 8" knife, most of them 4-year-olds, in Jiangsu province. He was sentenced to death in a half-day trial on May 15.
• April 28: A teacher on sick leave breaks into a primary school in Leizhou city in Guangdong province in southern China and stabs 18 students (fourth and fifth graders) and a teacher.
• March 23: Zheng Minsheng, 42, kills eight young children in a knife attack at the Nanping Experimental Elementary School in south China's Fujian province. Zheng is executed April 28.

In at least three of these attacks, the victims were of kindergarten age or younger. None of the attackers used firearms. Instead they turned to meat cleavers, kitchen knives and hammers. I can hardly fathom anything more gruesome. With a gun, there's distance, detachment. It provides the assailant a modicum of separation from the carnage. But a kitchen cleaver?! On 3, 4, and 5-year-olds?!!! It is no wonder that these men either immediately killed themselves or were quickly sentenced to execution. The shame–the social stigma is off the charts. As a parent... as a human being, the blood curdles just to think about it. Grown men. Helpless children. Tools of violence. And therein lies the horror. The more innocent and helpless the victim, the more heinous the assault. The more violent and tortuous the means of execution, the more terrible the attack.

Imagine if the victims were even younger. Imagine if they were even more helpless and less capable of defending themselves. Imagine if the assailants didn't just stab the children to death, but actually pulled their arms and legs off in the process. And imagine if it wasn't just happening in China but right here in America – with the full support of the medical community and the President. And imagine if these men were paid for their gruesome services, while the rest of society argued that these children were so small, helpless and dependent that they shouldn't even be counted as human beings at all. Wouldn't that be something that every man and woman of conscience would stand up and do something about?! I wish.

Click here to read the rest or add your own...