this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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A court in China has sentenced a man to death for killing 35 people last month by driving into a crowd, in an attack that raised national concern about mass killings.

Fan Weiqiu was venting his anger because he was unhappy with his divorce settlement, the court in the southern city of Zhuhai said in handing down the sentence on Friday. The victims were exercising at a sports centre at the time of the attack. Fan pleaded guilty to endangering public safety by dangerous means, a court statement said.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Galwan clash: 35 casualties.

Xinjiang riots: 35 dead.

Zixing storms: 30 dead, 35 missing.

Yuxian mine explosion: 35 dead.

Bird flu deaths hit 35.

35 new covid deaths.

I don't know what the deal is, maybe it has to be reported to the government differently if there are more than 35 casualties, but it's suspicious how many times an incident has exactly 35 casualties.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

This is not the evidence you think it is. Plus there might be a missing cultural context here. Arabs for example use multiples of seven to denote uncountable. Seventy in the Quran often just means “numerous”. Now I don’t understand Chinese language or culture and I bet neither do you. But I know that I don’t know enough about them, you meanwhile pass judgement willy nilly. Seeing Westerners talk about my culture cluelessly with confidence makes me think something similar is happening here. Even without any cultural context, 35 is a common number when you have over a billion people. If only China had mass shootings we could probably test this theory and see if they’d report a higher number, but I’d rather people don’t die.