Schools spread the word in fight against terrorism

Concerted action taken after Kunming attack, report Yang Wanli and Xue Dan.

Two days after the March 1terrorist attack in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, Liu Ersi wrote an e-mail to the principal of the School of Architecture, Design and Construction at the University of Greenwich in London.

In his message, Liu suggested that a forthcoming lecture tour by academics from the British university should be deferred for safety reasons.

Liu, president of the International Business School at Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, was concerned the visitors might be apprehensive about their safety after the knife attack that left 29 people dead and 143 injured.

A prompt reply reassured Liu. "They had heard about the attack, of course, but refused to cancel their trip," he said.

"They pointed out that London had been the target of many attacks in recent decades, and said if people gave in, even once, it would be a victory for the terrorists. We can't allow that to happen."

The attack in Kunming was a watershed for Chinese society; for the first time the wider population was faced with the specter of terrorism in major cities.

Before March 1, terrorist acts mostly occurred in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in the far west of the country, or were seen as a phenomenon that occurred in other countries.

The attack left a tense atmosphere in Kunming, a well-known tourist destination, famous for its natural scenery and as a center of cultural activity. The initial shock wore off quickly, but residents remained on high alert.

In response, Yunnan is set to launch a pilot plan to promote awareness of terrorism and provide safety tips that will allow the local population to respond to any future attacks. On March 2, the day after the Kunming attack, Yunnan Education Department published a notice that listed awareness of terrorism as a priority for the provincial education system.

"Our aim is to promote the program heavily and regularly and make awareness of terrorism part of people's daily lives," said Gui Zhenghua, director of Yunnan Education Department's publicity office.

Gui said the lectures will provide details of the situation in China and overseas, and will have a special focus on personal security within schools. "It will not just be aimed at the students but also the teachers, especially those working in primary and secondary schools," Gui said.

Rising concerns

Awareness of terrorism and personal safety should be regular parts of the curriculum, according to Gui, who added that the program will provide details of how to best maintain public security, but would not point fingers at any particular group in society. "The purpose is to help students gain a better understanding of anti-terrorism work, not to aggravate conflicts," he said.

Given that concerns about further attacks have surfaced nationwide, that may be easier said than done. Even as people were digesting the news of the Kunming atrocity, news broke of another knife attack, this time in Changsha in the central province of Hunan. A dispute between two market stallholders developed into a fight in which one of the vendors killed the other. The murderer then attacked and killed four innocent bystanders, before he was shot dead by the police. Although the local authorities stressed that the incident was not linked to terrorism, the fact that the protagonists were both members of the Uygur ethnic group, like the perpetrators of the Kunming attack, triggered disquiet and concerns about public safety.

On March 14, unfounded rumors of a knife attack in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, resulted in chaotic scenes in the city's downtown area. The following day, in an attempt to distract pursuers, a pickpocket in a shopping mall in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, shouted out that a knife attack was under way, resulting in confusion and fears of a repeat of the Kunming attack.

"In the past, terrorism as a concept was far from familiar in China, but now it has come and it's time to take action," said Zhao Guangwu, director of the School Security Office at Yunnan Education Department.

Anti-terrorism and personal safety education in schools will be promoted by the authorities from the provincial to the local level in the coming months, he said. Meanwhile, a campaign to promote an educational program for primary and secondary school students has been launched in a number of cities and provinces, including Zhejiang, Guangxi and Guangdong.

Many of the schools have chosen to use role-playing as a means of driving the message home and helping the children to remember fundamental safety procedures. At Dongxin Kindergarten in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, for example, security guards pretended to be terrorists intent on kidnapping a child, while the teachers called the police, mobilized the students and led them to "safety".

At the end of the month, Chengdu will promote a terrorism awareness program in every kindergarten and primary and secondary school in the city, according to a report in the Chengdu Business Daily. Two e-books - Details of Self-protection in a Terrorist Attack and Survival Skills in a Terrorist Attack - have already been uploaded onto a website for the city's students, who have to key in their personal identification code to access the material.

Student safety

Zhou Zibo, a fourth-grader at Kunming Normal College Affiliated Primary School, became aware of the word "terrorism" for the first time after the knife attack at the city's railway station. "I was scared when I watched the news report at home with my parents. I was frightened by the pictures of the injured and the heartbroken families of the victims," said the 9-year-old. "But my parents told me that the bad guys will be punished eventually."

Liu Chunwei, the president of Zhou's school, said the 2,300 students had attended a 45-minute lecture on March 3, where they were given a briefing about the attack and were also instructed in basic survival skills to help them cope in the event of an attack. A year ago, the school purchased and fitted an alarm system linked to the local police station.

Awareness of terrorism, with a special focus on personal safety, has now been listed as an important part of the monthly meetings between class tutors and parents. "One important thing I was taught was to run away if an attack occurs and if we have the chance, we should call the police immediately," Zhou said.

Cui Yongyuan, a well-known anchor on China Central Television, said at the recently concluded Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference that the best thing for individuals to do in the event of a terrorist attack is to call the police. "I don't think anything is more effective than that," he said.

Global consensus

Wu Enyuan, a research fellow at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the recent events require an effective response. "A nationwide awareness of terrorism and safety has become necessary because terrorists are behaving with unbearable insolence."

According to Wu, it's crucial that China should share a consensus with the rest of the world. "An international consensus on who we are fighting is more important than just passing related laws within a certain country or an area," he said.

He said there is no excuse for terrorist acts because the victims are usually innocent people and violence poses a deep threat to safety and social stability. "All terrorists are the object of universal condemnation," he said.

In July 2008, the Ministry of Public Security released more than 2.6 million copies of a handbook containing safety and awareness tips for citizens nationwide. The book is widely believed to have been used to improve awareness of public security during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. However, once the Olympics ended, the book was hardly seen or even mentioned again.

The Kunming attack and the tensions it aroused have focused attention on a plethora of books related to personal safety. One of the biggest sellers, The Citizen's Security Manual, written by a professor at the People's Public Security University of China, catalogues different types of terrorist activity, including bombings and kidnappings. It also provides methods of spotting potentially dangerous individuals and survival tips for a variety of scenarios.

Unlike the simple role-play method used in the country's schools, the program designed for university students and lecturers will include detailed discussions of terrorist motivation and countermeasures. The prevention of all types of violence, terrorist-related or not, is a massive task for universities given the much larger numbers of people involved, compared with primary or secondary schools.

"It's essential that universities with a large number of students from different ethnic groups improve communications for better understanding and introduce systematic education about resolving ideological conflicts," said Xiong Shuxin, president of Yunnan University of Finance and Economics.

Because Yunnan is home to 26 ethnic groups, the university has stepped up security on the campus and has improved communications between students from different cultural backgrounds.

Globalization is changing people's lives, bringing about developments in society but also triggering a number of social problems, according to Xiong.

"I'm considering running some lectures on traditional Chinese schools of thought such as Confucianism or Taoism, philosophies that emphasize tolerance and peace. Those ideas could encourage people to gain a deeper understanding of the world and different cultures and beliefs," he said.

Contact the writer at yangwanli@chinadaily.com.cn

Li Yingqing and Jiang Xueqing contributed to this story.

Timeline

2013

April 23: A violent clash between terrorists and the police in Xinjiang left 21 people dead. The gang killed 15 people, and six of the assailants were shot dead at the scene. Ten of those who died were members of the Uygur ethnic group.

Aug 20: A police officer was killed when local authorities clashed with a gang in Kashgar in Xinjiang.

June 26: A riot resulted in the deaths of 27 people in Lukqun, a remote township in Xinjiang. Seventeen people - nine police officers and security guards and eight civilians - were killed before police opened fire and killed 10 of the rioters.

Oct 28: Five people were killed and 38 were injured when a jeep bearing Xinjiang registration plates crashed into a crowd and caught fire outside the Forbidden City in Beijing. Police said they retrieved extremist religious material from the car. The driver of the jeep and his wife and mother, who were passengers, died along with two tourists, a woman from the Philippines and a Chinese man from Guangdong province. The injured included Chinese tourists and police officers, plus three Filipinos and one Japanese national.

2014

Feb 14: Eight terrorists were killed by the police and three others died after detonating their own suicide vests during an attack in Wushi county, Aksu prefecture in Xinjiang.

March 1: A premeditated knife attack at Kunming Railway Station left 29 people dead and 143 injured in the southwestern city.

- Yang Wanli