China's government is stepping up scrutiny of “common” disputes such as marriage and property disputes, the Justice Ministry said, as the country reels from a recent series of deadly attacks.
In recent months, China has experienced a spate of violent incidents, from mass stabbings to car rammings, an unprecedented situation for a country that prides itself on its high security.
The issue has prompted questions about the current state of society, and has left some in despair as to why more and more people seem to be taking “revenge” on random civilians.
The Ministry of Justice has called on local mediators to conduct “thorough investigations” into disputes over family, neighbors, land and wages.
The ministry said on Saturday that such sensitivity is necessary to resolve the dispute early.
Officials also stressed the importance of maintaining the “security and stability” of the prison.
“Efforts to support resettlement and released prisoners need to be stepped up to effectively prevent and reduce recidivism,” the ministry statement said.
Earlier this month, a 62-year-old man plowed his car into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai, killing 35 people and injuring more than 40. This was the worst damage in the country in 10 years.
Preliminary investigations suggested the attack was “triggered by (his) dissatisfaction with the division of property after the divorce,” local police said.
A few days later, a knife attack at a vocational school in eastern China left eight people dead and 17 injured.
According to police, the suspect is a 21-year-old former student at the school who was scheduled to graduate this year but failed the exam.
Officials from China's Supreme People's Court also held a meeting on Saturday and said they would “strictly punish serious heinous crimes in accordance with the law and maintain social stability.”
And Beijing's top prosecutor vowed at a meeting on Tuesday: “We will never tolerate crimes that violate students' rights and interests and endanger campus safety.”
The school also pledged to “make every effort to protect the safety of our campus and students,” according to a post on its official WeChat account.
Multiple children were injured in a car crash near an elementary school in central China on Tuesday.
Much of the initial video of the incident appears to have been deleted from China's heavily controlled social media platforms, as with other mass casualty incidents.
In the Zhuhai attack, it took police almost 24 hours to announce the death toll, and the video of the attack appears to have since been deleted from social media.
