Inaction makes bystanders complicit in boy's death

Editor's Note: A 9-year-old boy was beaten to death by a 30-year-old mentally ill neighbor near the boy's home in Changsha, Hunan province, on Tuesday. China Daily writer Li Yang comments:

What has transformed the tragedy, the latest in a series of violent attacks involving people with mental health problems in recent years, from a local news story to a hot topic nationwide is that people living in the same neighborhood, including employees of the property management company of the community witnessed the violent attack, which lasted for 29 minutes, without anyone trying to stop it.

After calling the police, who arrived with an ambulance 30 minutes after the brutal act started, and conveniently one minute after the attacker's father rushed to the site and put his son under control, the bystanders had done nothing except record the incident on their mobile phones from a safe distance.

Afterwards some of the witnesses justified their inaction by citing the intimidating size of the attacker, who was about six-feet tall and weighed more than 100 kilograms and pointing out that he was armed with a screwdriver.

But was it fear or indifference that prompted their inaction? None of the onlookers tried to take any measures to distract or disturb the attacker. Instead, reportedly, they were talking with each other with folded arms while the boy's cries for help gradually trailed off.

Some property management security guards, who are legally bound to stop the violence, were among the spectators. They said they did not have time to go back to their booth to get a net, and no security staff appeared with a net until after the police arrived. Yet the place where the violence happened is only dozens of meters away from the nearest security guard booth.

By not assisting the boy, the bystanders were complicit in his death. While it is not an unshirkable civic duty, acting to help someone in need, especially a child, is a civic responsibility that people bear as members of society. More needs to be done to raise people's awareness of what is expected of them as good citizens.