Chinese News Outlets Play Down Killings of 19 in Mountain Village

[Griff]

[QUOTE]HONG KONG — In a remote Chinese mountain village, 19 bodies were found. Among the dead was a 3-year-old. Hours later, a young man was arrested in connection with the killings.

Had this crime, discovered on Thursday morning, occurred in the United States, it would have ranked as one of the most horrific mass murders in the nation’s history, worse than the killings last year in San Bernardino, Calif., where 14 people died, and the 2012 shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., which killed 12.

But in China, the country’s censors have been hard at work taking down posts about the killings on social media that deviate from the terse, five-sentence account released Thursday afternoon by Xinhua, the official news agency, and dutifully reproduced in print and on the internet across the country.

Although Yang Qingpei, 27, was arrested in relation to the killings in the village of Yema — “wild horse” in Chinese — little was publicly known on Friday, 36 hours after the bodies were discovered, about what happened. The police arrested Mr. Yang on Thursday afternoon in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, more than 100 miles to the south of Yema, Xinhua reported.

The Beijing News was one of the few news outlets to go beyond Xinhua’s account, reporting that Mr. Yang was a native of the village and that the police did not suspect the killings to be a case of terrorism. No official reports indicated any possible motive, and there was no indication what weapon Mr. Yang is accused of using, though in China it is far more common to commit homicide with a knife than with a gun.

It was also not clear when the killings took place. Xinhua reported that the police received calls around 7:50 a.m. on Thursday. But The Beijing News referred to a document listing the names of the dead from the “9/28 incident,” suggesting they might have occurred the day before.

One paper in western China, The Chengdu Economic Daily, citing a classmate of Mr. Yang’s, reported that he had racked up large gambling debts while working in Kunming. He had asked his family in Yema for money, but his request had been rejected. The report was subsequently taken down but remained cached on Google.

Only later, on Friday evening, did Xinhua provide more detail, confirming the Chengdu paper’s account. In a five-sentence report, it said the police, working for 33 hours, had solved the case. Mr. Yang, who worked in Kunming, had returned home and asked his parents for money. He had an argument with them and killed them on Wednesday evening, Xinhua reported. Later, in an effort to conceal his crime, he killed another 17 people. On Thursday, after being arrested in Kunming, he confessed.
[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/world/asia/china-yema-killing-yang-qingpei.html[/url]

[RaptorJGW]

It's almost like the Chinese have a low regard for human life in general

[alxnotorious]

Let's bring this back to reality with: I'm sure a majority of Chinese understand that their state-run media is an international embarrassment when scandals like this happen and would much rather have their country and people respected than mocked for propensity for forgery and lies.

[naelstrof]

I mean they could have good intentions. They could be censoring it so that copy cats don't try to do the same thing for attention.

[Archangel125]

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;51133110]I mean they could have good intentions. They could be censoring it so that copy cats don't try to do the same thing for attention.[/QUOTE]

I hadn't considered this angle.

[TurtleeyFP]

[QUOTE=Naelstrom;51133110]I mean they could have good intentions. They could be censoring it so that copy cats don't try to do the same thing for attention.[/QUOTE]

That is kinda what happens with American reporting, but still, censoring social media is overkill in any case.