Cho Seung Hui is a name that will go down in the annals of history. It is the first time an Asian shot to notoriety the way he did, blasting his way through 5 rounds of ammo, killing 5 professors and another 27 students. One of them was a holocaust survivor named Liviu Librescu, an engineering professor. He was shot and killed in the Virginia Tech massacre while he was holding off the gunman at the entrance to his classroom so his students could escape through the windows. An accomplished academic, he received many academic honors during his career.
I find it ironic that he died the way he did. Can you imagine surviving the holocaust, escaping from the systemic violence and the Nazis, and then ultimately to have your life ended by a bizarre event that people are still trying to make sense of? But he died a hero, and at 76, one can say he had had a long full life. Nevertheless, I find it a sad pity that he had to go this way, in this spate of shootings, in such a violent senseless manner. And that is after he has survived the first senseless slaughter of the Jews. It makes a mockery of his initial survival.
Who was Cho? What was he thinking? Why the mediocre / bad plays?
A commission was set up by the governor of Virginia to look into these questions directly, but he also mentioned that one could probably never understand why he murdered the students. Like Izzy and Liting, I followed the news of the shootings with an obsession. It affected and shook me somehow. First, the news that he was Asian worried me inexplicably. Maybe it’s the collective mindset of the Asian community. I was worried that he’ll be Chinese, that the Americans will think that all Chinese are repressed mass murderers. I mean think about how Americans react when you tell them you’re a Singaporean. They’re still hung up about the Michael Fay incident where an American national was caned for graffiti. So they’ll ask about caning AND the ban of chewing gum in Singapore. That’s what they asked MM Lee in a recent interview too. Caning and chewing gum. Peas in a pod, they are.
Well, we all found out that he was South Korean. And now everyone’s trying to deny any connection with him. They called him an alien first. Imagine that. Who uses alien to term an immigrant except a lawyer? That’s the old old English legal term we’re talking about. It’s hardly ever used these days. He’s not a little green man brandishing his laser gun. It’ll do no good to paint him that way. Now he’s a South-Korean born native. That is largely correct, but it shows how the US is trying to distance its relationship with him. Having moved to the USA since he was eight, he had spent the better part of his life in the US of A. A whole 15 years. That’s more than the time he spent in his native land. And South Korea tries to play down the fact that he was born there. He had spent the better part of his life in the States after all. Repeat ad infinitum.
Disowned by the nations. Well, he had it coming. There is seriously no sympathy there.
But this does not solve the root of the problem. The root of the problem is what caused him to kill so many people. He’s odd, he had an imaginary girlfriend called Jelly. He’s called deranged, his family felt that they don’t even know him after this incident. Fair enough, after all, one cannot eliminate mental illness from society. But then, what made him to be able to lash out his hate on society on such a large scale?
It is not video games that is causing all these school shootings. Jack Thompson has got it all wrong. He’s barking up the wrong tree. It is the gun control laws in the US. Or rather, the lack thereof. It is gun trade disguising itself as freedom and rights. It is a simple weapon, the gun. You pull the trigger, aim in a particular direction and it goes off. Bang. A person drops dead. Does the intention to pull the trigger equate to the intention to kill? Of course, any normal person would know that pulling the trigger will kill a person. My point is simply this– when a weapon makes it so easy for a person to kill another, public access to it should be heavily restricted. A photo id is not enough. Limiting it to people of legal age is not enough. What is needed is regulation. No matter how strong the NRA (National Rifle Association) lobby group is, the US should not lack the political will to legislate gun control. How many students would have to die in school shootings before such regulations are implemented? The Columbine High School shootings weren’t enough. Is Virginia Tech just another page in the chapter of school shootings?
Lowering the flag at half-mast for the victims of the massacre is the correct move by President George Bush. But something more than sympathy is sorely needed.
