The Seagull was so disgusted by the UC Davis incident when police officers walked to a few students who quietly sat in the quad area in protest and started spray on them.
From the calm and measured faces and paces, in a sharp contract to the students who dodge their heads in between their legs but otherwise sitting still through out the entire process, the Seagull had no doubt that had these officers given an order to shoot they would not even blink.
The Seagull will never forgive soldiers who opened fire at students in Tian'anmen Square in the early morning of June 4th, 1989. However, the incident at UC Davis showed those soldiers were not the only evils in this world.
The UC Davis police chief later claimed the police was 'cut off' and 'threatened'. With so many videos posted on Youtube, everybody could see by their own eyes whether any police was cut off or threatened in any way by any measure.
It is an even chilling moment when the UC Davis Chancellor Linda PB Katehi brushed it off, in response to the videos, as 'questions about how best to handle situations like this'. In an email to the campus, Ms. Katehi wrote: 'We deeply regret that many of the protestors today chose not to work with our campus staff and police to remove the encampment as requested. We are even more saddened by the events that subsequently transpired to facilitate their removal.'
Shame on you police, shame on you Ms. Katehi, shame on you University of California.
And watch it again, check out that smirk on his face, when University of California at Davis police officer Lt. John Pike performed his job. According to Assistant Professor Nathan Brown who was at the scene, police then pried open students' mouth with baton, then ejected pepper spray down their throats.
Professor Brown called for Ms. Katehi's resignation. A petition can be signed here.
The incident on campus at U C Davis made all the arguments of democracy pointless, when ordinary people in China see peaceful students being treated this way in the US.
I am an educator in a Chinese college. I have been teaching in Chinese colleges and universities for the past decade. In that decade, deep in the heart of one of the most brutal police states in the world, I have never, not even once, seen brutality from university and civil authorities that comes even close to what I saw from UCB and UCD in recent days.
I say this with a very strong observational foundation, I might add. In the year 2003, in the first institute I taught in (Jiujiang Institute, http://www.jju.edu.cn/), there was a full-fledged student riot—complete with massive property damage (a several hundred metre section of the school’s outer wall was torn down)—over restrictions placed on student movement during the SARS crisis. I was able to witness first-hand how the school’s authorities reacted. Despite being a well-connected official in one of the most brutally authoritarian states in the world, the president of the university went out, facing personal danger (students threw a variety of objects from their dormitory windows at him including filled thermos bottles), to *negotiate* with the students. The riots were brought back under control, tempers were cooled and the crisis brought to an end, get this, without the use of guns, chemicals, batons or even policemen.
Congratulations, America, you have actually managed to surpass China’s brutality—and make no mistake, the Chinese government is a collection of brutal thugs!—in this sphere.
I hope you’re proud.
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