chinaSMACK

I often visit the popular website ‘chinaSMACK’, a website full of articles and videos that have been translated from Chinese to English. The translated articles usually originate from popular Chinese forums such as Baidu Tieba, KDNet and various other BBS forums. Articles are often about injustice, but also include humorous happenings around China as well as their reactions to worldwide events. It is certainly interesting to see how the Chinese think of such injustices that happen in their country and also how quickly such videos or articles highlighting such injustice, if involving the government in some way, are taken down so quickly.

Often stories are written about in which you only see one side and thus think in a certain way about the situation. Other times, you see one side of the story, only to see later in the article, the other side of the story which gives you some sort of perspective. One such example was an article about a video of a group of 2 innocent (as it would appear) boys get beaten by KTV (Karaoke Centre) security guards. In the truly shocking video, the security guards (about 20 or so) knock the boys down to the ground and proceed to smash them with steel poles for several minutes. The girlfriend of the two boys tries to protect one of the boys by lying over the top of him. She is also hit although less severely, as the security guards move to hit the other boy lying near unconscious on the floor. A truly despicable act by all the guards involved. Such a gang mentality is rarely captured on film for all the public to see. I really do wonder how all 20 of the guards can justify smashing a defenseless boy on the ground and not one tries to stop the onslaught.

Further down the page it is revealed as to what happened immediately previously to the attack by the security guards. The two boys who were beaten got into an argument with the female KTV clerk. They were so angry that one of the boys threw an object at the clerk and became physically violent. This just like the attack on the boys is a despicable and unjustifiable act. The manager of the KTV centre then proceeded to call the security guards and instruct them to both subdue the 2 boys at the front of the KTV (a reasonable plan of action) and then beat the living daylights out of them (a heartless plan of action). Some might say that because the boys were violent towards the female clerk, the beating was justified. I, on the other hand, just can’t agree with that. The boys should have been subdued by the guards and handed over to the police to face their charges of assault and to resolve the dispute they had with the KTV centre. Taking the law into his own hands and providing his own punishment for these actions, the manager deserves to be brought to justice, just as all the security guards who participated in these despicable acts do.

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