Amok, the Asian syndrome that turns men into irrational murderers

2023-06-11 00:26:42

China is one of the safest countries in the world. And crime continues to decline. According to the latest official statistics available, the number of cases of the most serious typologies -including murder- fell by 30% between 2013 and 2021. Only 21% of sentences handed down are for more than three years in prison , less than half what a decade earlier.

These are data that Chinese politicians proudly wield to make a clear difference with what happens in the United States. Even official spokesmen for the Communist Party allow themselves on social networks to show Washington’s colors for the usual shootings in their territory or the overdose epidemic caused by fentanyl in the American superpower, a fact that also serves to justify the overwhelming installation of more than 500 million security cameras and the decree of all kinds of restrictions in China.

But there is one type of crime that worries Mao’s country: stabbings. They have always been a problem but, perhaps because of the reduction in crime and the profusion of heartbreaking images recorded with those cameras that are everywhere, now they attract more attention. Especially since those who perpetrate them seem to do so irrationally and without having any relationship with their victims. This is what has happened twice in the last week in Hong Kong.

Like zombies with a knife

The stabbing of two young people in Hong Kong has reopened the debate on amok syndrome

The most shocking case has been that of a man who bought a knife in one of the many shopping centers in the former British colony and attacked a couple of women in their twenties with it. With one of them he was merciless until he stabbed her 25 times, before the terrified gaze of the rest of the visitors, who never intervened to save her. Only his partner tried it in an intervention that ended up costing him his life.

On Thursday night another woman suffered the same fate in an underground pedestrian crossing. Once again, the attacker had no relationship with her and, according to the first information published by the local press, he did not intend to rob her or sexually abuse her. He simply stabbed her to death. Just because. And on the 31st, a similar event terrorized a small town in mainland China: a man entered a house and stabbed many of those inside, apparently people totally unknown to him. He then left, as if nothing had happened.

A Colt 45 to stop the ‘amok’

Unfortunately, this is a relatively common occurrence in both China and parts of Asia. So much so that it even gives its name to a syndrome: that of ‘amok’, a word derived from the Malay term ‘mengamok’, which means to release fury in a desperate way. It was the British explorer James Cook who first identified it in 1770, but it was not classified until almost a century later, in 1849. And interestingly, this sudden burst of rage was even one of the reasons that prompted the development of the legendary Colt 45 semi-automatic pistol at the beginning of the 20th century.

According to Robert A. Fulton in his essay on the weapon, this was designed in order to increase the ability to stop the advance of a person who charges out of his mind, since the .38 caliber revolver could not stop the Filipinos who , in an amok attack, pounced on US troops on the southern islands of the archipelago. The bullets in the drum of the revolver were not enough to stop this advance and its owner ended up stabbed although the attacker could perish later.

Focus on mental health

One of the child victims of a stabbing in China in 2017

Xinhua

Now, the American Psychological Association’s Dictionary of Psychology defines amok as “a culturally based syndrome observed in men from Malaysia, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian countries.” It occurs mainly in male individuals who suffer from social apathy “before staging an unprovoked violent attack.” Often the attacker will not stop slashing until they are exhausted and have a memory lapse that prevents them from remembering what happened. The murderer of the two women in Hong Kong was left in a trance until the police, sheltered behind a shield, proceeded to arrest him without any resistance.

100 million Chinese citizens require mental health care, a subject that is still taboo in Asia

Similar cases have occurred in numerous places in China, including several primary schools. For this reason, and because of the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Uyghurs, Beijing decided to require the registration of knives of a certain size. However, the government almost always avoids making any mention of amok syndrome, explaining the attacks as isolated incidents of individuals who “wanted to take revenge on society”. However, experts stress the chronic lack of programs to improve mental health in the world’s most populous country.

“Teams of therapists, social workers, nurses, and psychologists need to be established to monitor patients with severe mental disorders and offer help from all perspectives,” says Hector Tsang Wing-hong, acting director of the Mental Health Research Center at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, speaking to the South China Morning Post. Different sources estimate the number of Chinese citizens who require mental health specialists to be around 100 million, a subject that is still taboo in Asia.