Chinese officials in the city of Zhuhai have erased the makeshift memorial for victims of Monday’s horrifying automobile attack, in which a man killed 35 people and wounded 45 others by driving his sport utility vehicle (SUV) into a crowd outside a stadium.
China may have destroyed the memorial because public anger is mounting over the slow and opaque response to the attack.
The authorities have released very little information about the attack, saying only that a 62-year-old man surnamed “Fan” ran down a crowd of innocent strangers because he was upset about “the division of property in his divorce case.”
The attacker is reportedly in a coma after trying to kill himself with a knife before the police could take him into custody. The police have yet to hold a formal press conference about the attack.
Chinese social media users noticed their authoritarian government moved with suspicious speed to censor discussion of the attack, even though it was a huge national story – it was one of the worst mass-casualty attacks ever perpetrated on Chinese soil, and it prompted an unusual statement from dictator Xi Jinping.
Two days after the attack, it was clear officials were erasing more than just social media posts. A large memorial filled with wreaths, candles, and offerings for the dead had been constructed at the scene of the crime, but on Wednesday it had been completely removed.
The people of Zhuhai made dogged efforts to recreate the memorial, driving up on motorcycles to drop fresh loads of flowers, but the authorities were equally persistent in removing them. The scene of the attack is now surrounded by barriers and patrolled by security personnel. Journalists who tried to speak with mourners were driven away by the security troops and ordered not to take pictures of the site.
Local officials said the memorial items had been moved to a designated “mourning hall” inside the sports complex where the attack took place – a hall that was completely closed off to the public.
Chinese state media, at both the local and national level, abruptly stopped mentioning the Zhuhai attack on Wednesday. The only official news coming out of the city concerned the massive airshow it is hosting.
Social media posts and journalist essays calling for a deeper examination of the attack were scrubbed. Zhuhai residents said they were terrified of posting about the incident online because their IP addresses could be traced by government officials.
The far-left New York Times (NYT) noted this all comes right from “the Chinese government’s usual playbook after mass tragedies: Prevent any nonofficial voices, including eyewitnesses and survivors, from speaking about the event. Spread assurances of stability. Minimize public displays of grief.”
“The goal is to stifle potential questions and criticism of the authorities, and force the public to move on as quickly as possible. And to a large degree, it appeared to be working,” the NYT observed.
Flower deliveries to the memorial, for example, seemed to be trickling off as local flower shops grew nervous about provoking trouble with the police. Some people working in nearby offices began setting up their own floral arrangements to honor the victims, but this lacked the visceral impact of building a memorial on the site of the killings.
A lone dissident called “Teacher Li” labored to boost social media posts about the Zhuhai attack to the global Internet, making it impossible for the Chinese Communist Party to completely erase them. Many of these posts complained about the lack of information coming from officials, or expressed dismay that the government was trying to make it seem like the attack never happened.
