Child stabbed to death near Japanese school in China

Japan announced on Thursday that a 10-year-old boy who was stabbed on his way to school in Shenzhen, China, had succumbed to his injuries.

The attack occurred on Wednesday and Chinese authorities said a 44-year-old suspect was arrested.

“I take the incident extremely seriously,” Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters.

“Such a thing should not happen in any country,” Kamikawa said. “In particular, I sincerely regret that this heinous act was committed against a child on her way to school.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a press conference on Wednesday that the case was “still under investigation” and that China would “continue to take effective measures to protect the safety of all foreigners.”

The stabbing attack follows two stabbing attacks on foreigners in China in June. On June 11, four lecturers at a US college in northeast China were attacked as they walked through a park. The Chinese Foreign Ministry described this as an isolated incident.

Two weeks later, a man attacked a Japanese school bus in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou. A Japanese mother and her child were injured and a Chinese woman who tried to stop the attacker died.

Japan's Deputy Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Moriya said Japan had requested detailed information about Wednesday's stabbing and urged Beijing to prevent a repeat of such attacks.

Moriya added: “Japan will continue to work closely with the Chinese authorities and make every effort to ensure the safety of its nationals living abroad.”

Other Japanese schools in China advised their students to be cautious. The Japanese school in Guangzhou, near Shenzhen, asked parents to accompany their children to and from school for the rest of the week and to avoid speaking Japanese loudly in public.

Earlier this year, Japan subsidized bus security for Japanese schools in China for the first time. The Japanese Foreign Ministry applied for about US$2.5 million in government subsidies to hire school bus security personnel in China.

Wednesday marked the 93rd anniversary of the train bombing that Japan used as a pretext for invading northeast China in 1931.

Some information for this report comes from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters

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