Authorities in Chinese city of Zhuhai remove memorials at site of deadly car-ramming attack

Beijing: According to Al Jazeera, authorities in Zhuhai, a city in southern China, have taken down monuments that were erected at the scene of a fatal car-ramming incident, including flowers, candles, and bottles of Chinese whiskey.

Chinese officials’ action seems to be an effort to control public anger at the government’s handling of the disaster, which claimed 35 lives and wounded 43 more.

As reported by Al Jazeera, the authorities said that a 62-year-old man with the last name Fan crashed his SUV through a gate of a sports facility in Guangdong province on Monday, driving over individuals who were working out there.

The government took a long time to declare the number of people killed in the incident, and early police reports did not include any deaths. On Chinese social media, tweets criticizing the government’s behavior were quickly restricted due to the tardy reaction and the suppression of recordings linked to the incident, according to Al Jazeera.

On the popular social networking site Weibo, a hashtag linked to the incident had been removed from the top place by Wednesday afternoon.

The incident is regarded as the worst since a car ramming and bombing in Urumqi in 2014, which left 43 people dead and over 90 wounded, and it is the bloodiest mass slaughter in China in over ten years. A possible explanation for Fan’s behavior has been put forth by authorities as “dissatisfaction with the division of property following his divorce.”

Following the incident, Zhuhai officials stepped up security at the location and relocated the memorial artifacts to a “mourning hall” inside the complex that is closed to the public. According to Al Jazeera, authorities said the act seemed to have been personally motivated, even though Fan, who had stabbed himself with a knife after the attack, remains in a coma and cannot be questioned.

The assault took place in Zhuhai during China’s biggest aviation show, which garnered a lot of media coverage. There is no proof that the two incidents were connected, but the timing could have been an effort by the public to highlight the tragedy while the airshow was still being covered.

Although violent crimes are not common in China, there have been some fatalities there in recent months. According to Xinhua, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged “strictly guard against the occurrence of extreme cases” in reaction to the Zhuhai incident.