China: Can a cop-killer be a hero? · Global Voices
John Kennedy

Actually, the majority opinion in the story of Beijing resident Yang Jia who recently rushed into a police building in Shanghai and stabbed and killed six police officers, wounding several others, seems to be on Yang's side. Since then, Yang's mother has mysteriously disappeared, Beijing police have been sent to investigate and, judging from what's being said online, Shanghai police are refusing to cooperate.
Another thing that remains is GenitalGate, the rumor/story flying around that Yang was beaten so badly by police last year when he was accused of having stolen a bicycle that his genitalia no longer functioned properly, and this was the reason for his revenge.
Related to that is the idea that Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth put forth recently following the Weng'an pushup-riots, that either the most effective or most recent technique used by China's human flesh internet discussion directors aka the 50 Cent Party (will somebody please write them an entry on Wikipedia already!) in an age where enough netizens are savvy enough to get around keyword blocks, is to flood the blogosphere with disinformation in situations like these similar enough to divide portions of the online community and discredit the rest.
More information continues to surface on who these 50 Centers are and how they go about their work, so, second, is it likely that this short personal essay which appeared (briefly, for some) on all the usual major BBS forums yesterday was planted in an attempt to influence discussion? For example, how could the journalist mentioned below be so certain that any talk of Yang Jia's genital dysfunction was a lie? One commenter in the post linked to below notes that whoever posted it also only registered that account yesterday.
‘Fragmented thoughts on the Zhaibei police attack case “GenitalGate”‘ as posted on XinhuaNet on July 25:
一、关于生命
袭警案发生了有些日子了，网上各种声音起云涌，其中最夺人心魄的便是“生殖器”门了。由于生殖器被打残，杨佳才愤而杀人，夺走6条人命。于是乎群情激愤，杀人者成了英雄，被杀者成了活该。反过来的话，要是一个警察哪怕是杀了6个罪犯，这个警察恐怕会面临武力使用过当的指控，是绝对成不了英雄的。
难道6个警察的命就不是人命吗？难道面对6条无辜逝去的生命一律忍心用“尽管杀人是不对的，但是……”这种语言来说话不嫌太冷酷吗？
社会进步的最高表现便是尊重生命。不久前的纹川地震，我们一起哀悼死难的同胞，从未追问他生前是好人还是坏人，共同唱响对生命的礼赞，使我们民族的灵魂升华。这一次，难道我们就应该冷酷地拷问生前是非，仅仅就应为他们是警察吗？试问，如果杨佳式的“英雄”行为得以褒扬，我们的社会不就成了杀戮至上野蛮的丛林了吗？
不懂得尊重生命，就是野蛮和落后，别拿林冲来说事儿！
杨佳成了英雄，真是亘古奇闻！
It's been a good few days since the attack on police took place, and all sorts of voices have rung forth on the internet, the most sensational of which has been “GenitalGate”. Because he'd had his genitalia ruined in a beating, he became enraged and a killer, taking six lives. Then the public became furious, the killer became a hero, and the murdered then deserved it. Flip that around, if this had been a cop who killed six criminals, that cop would just be accused of excessive use of force. He definitely would not have become a hero.
So…six cops, aren't these human lives too? Six innocent lives were lost and to go and so easily say things like, ‘killing people is wrong, but……”, don't you think that's a little cold-hearted?
The clearest display of social progress is respect for life. Just a short time ago, we mourned for the tragic deaths of our compatriots in the Wenchuan earthquake. There was no asking if they were good people or bad throughout their lives, there was only unity in singing praise for life, uplifting the souls of our people. Now, though, it's like people are ready to torture others just to prove that they were wrong, and why, because they were cops? So let me ask, if “heroes” like Yang Jia are worthy of praise, won't our society then become some sort of kill-or-be-killed barbaric jungle?
To not know how to respect life is to be backwards and primitive, so don't even think about talking about Lin Chong!
How Yang Jia became a hero is far beyond me!
二、关于杨佳
杨佳已经被舆论打扮成大大的良民，其父说他“好读书”，旅馆说他按时交房钱，且不论是否真的，这就够良民了吗？我就看到有报道说他平时寡言少语，但为点鸡毛琐事就和邻居拔拳相向，大打出手，是个不叫则已，一叫就咬死人的疯狗，更加接近为了打牌输掉就杀死同学的马家爵！这种人在社会上确有一些，其自有存在的合理性，正常人千万敬而远之，以免杀生之祸。
Popular opinion has already painted Yang Jia as some sort of model citizen, his dad has said that he was “good in school”, the hostel he was staying at said he paid his rent on time, and regardless of if these are true or not, is that alone enough to make someone a model citizen? I see reports saying he kept to himself and didn't talk much, but then went picking fights with the neighbors over the most trivial of things, getting violent with them, a mad dog who needed no provocation, but when provoked would bite and not be able to stop, overall looking a lot like Ma Jiajue who killed his classmates over a poker match! People like this definitely do exist in society, and normal people always keep a safe distance, so to avoid tragic loss of life.
三、关于警察
这些年贪官污吏也杀了不少，抓得更多，但新的还在出现。原因很复杂，从人们如潮的怒骂背后，我更多听到的不是道德的谴责和法制的呼唤，而是心态“不平衡” 三个字。试想，这样的人一旦为官，怎能不去“找平衡”？价值观不正，这是贪官不断的一个重要原因。警察作为官府的人，也是从老百姓中来的人，既不象宣传得那么好，也不象大家说的那么坏。为什么一出事就无根据地认定是警察坏了呢？在杨佳被警察拦下的事情上，我就听说他是在人行道上骑着一辆无牌自行车才被拦住的。全世界的警察都在街上盘查可疑人，而每个害怕在街上遭遇飞车抢劫的上海人也都会赞同这样的盘查。当然我也没根据说警察的态度很好，但说警察不对的目前也没看到什么根据，有的都是推断。
Over the past few years, more than a few corrupt officials have been killed, and even more have been arrested, but new ones continue to appear. The reasons for this are complicated, but behind all the people cursing angrily like the tide, what I hear most are not moral condemnations or cries for the legal system, but signs of unbalanced mentality. If you think about it, when people like this become officials, why is it that they don't go find balance? Unhealthy values, this is one of the key reasons for unending official corruption. Police, as authority officials, are also people who come from the public, neither as good as gets propagandized, nor as bad as everyone says. Why is that that when something goes wrong police are groundlessly assumed to be bad? As for the incident of Yang Jia being stopped by police, I even heard that he was only stopped for riding an unlicensed bicycle in a pedestrian lane. Police around the world stop and check suspicious people on the streets, and every Shanghai resident afraid of being jacked in a rob-and-run will agree with these inspections. Of course, I don't have any basis to say that police have good attitudes, but then I haven't seen any basis at present to go and say that police are bad, and anyone who does is just speculating.
四、关于“生殖器门”
这个消息可靠吗？我搜了一下，最早是一个匿名者2号晚上发在Myspace的一个跟贴上的，故事很煽情，但至今没有任何可靠一点的渠道能证实。传的人多了，却几乎变成了确凿事实，据说连凤凰卫视都信了。我有个记者朋友通过关系看到了杨佳自己写的申述状，连杨佳自己都从未说过关于腰部以下的任何事！他告诉我此事肯定是假的，但是发新闻效果不讨人喜欢所以不吭气。从此我鄙视他。
“生殖器门”比周老虎的照片容易分辨，打坏了要变好恐不那么容易，我不信警察隐瞒得掉。要是真的，杨佳杀的就不会是分局，而是派出所，因为拦他的警察就是派出所的，那个地方每天都有老百姓随便进去办户口，不想某些想象力过高的人说的比分局更难冲进去，这是每个中国人都知道的常识。我看他要杀的是在处理中不给他钱的人，因为有可靠消息证明他在山西警察那里就搞到了数万元钱，搞钱的方法和动迁时做“钉子户”差不多。
呜呼,可悲的“生殖器门”！世上本无所谓真相，说的人多了，也就成了真相。
舆论能杀人！它既把秦桧钉上了历史的耻辱柱，弘扬了千古正气，也把大明的长城袁崇焕送上了断头台，使大好河山沦于鞑虏之手。不管许多人喜欢不喜欢，我要说的是：
好听的故事不等于事实，这一次，舆论错了！
Is this information reliable? I did a search, and the earliest I was able to find was an anonymous MySpace user who posted it on the evening of the 2nd. The story is very stirring, but to this day there hasn't been anything more substantial to confirm this. The number of people who have spread it around is quite high, and that alone has nearly made it irrefutable fact, apparently even Phoenix TV even believed it. I have one journalist friend who through his connections was able to see Yang Jia's handwritten statement, and even Yang Jia himself has never said anything at all regarding the area below his waist! He told me that GenitalGate was a lie, but to put that in the news wouldn't please viewers, and that's why he kept silent. Because of this, I despise him.
“GenitalGate” is even easier to refute than the Zhou Tiger photos, because for that to be beaten bad and then recover, I'm afraid, is not that easy, so I don't believe that the police would have been able to cover that up. If it is true, Yang Jia wouldn't have killed people at a central police office, but at a local police station, because the police who stopped him were from a police station, and people go in and out of there every day to process hukous, which, unlike those people with too much imagination are saying, is not harder to rush into than a central police office building. This is common sense of which every Chinese person is aware. I can see that the people he wanted to kill were those who wouldn't give him money while he was being processed, because there is reliable information which proves that while he was being held by police there in Shanxi, he got them for tens of thousands of RMB, using pretty much the same tactics at the same time as the “Nailhouse”.
Alas, for this unfortunate “GenitalGate”! There is no so-called truth on this earth, only people who talk a lot, of stuff that becomes truth on its own.
Public opinion gets people killed! It got Qin Hui fixed in the most humiliating pose in history, bringing about ages of righteousness, put Yuan Chonghuan of the Great Wall up on the head-chop block, even led to our rivers and valleys falling at the hands of the foreigners. No matter how many people like or dislike this, what I want to say is:
Just because a story sounds good doesn't mean it's true, and this time, public opinion is wrong!