Self-styled porn star Luka Rocco Magnotta has been arrested in a Berlin internet café, where he was identified while watching pornography and reading news stories about the global effort to track him down. His capture came as a relief to Montreal’s Chinese community, following the identification late last week of Wuhan-born student Lin Jun, whom Magnotta allegedly murdered, dismembered and mailed parts of to political parties.
In China, the case seems set to deepen perceptions of foreign study as a risky prospect, following another murder in Canada last year and two widely publicised incidents in April: the shootings of two Chinese students in Los Angeles, and an overtly racist attack on two others on a Sydney train. It remains unclear whether Lin’s killing was racially motivated or simply part of a sustained campaign of increasingly extreme attention seeking. Montreal police would not speculate on the matter, but suspicions have taken root among the local Chinese community. From The Globe and Mail:
The murder of Mr. Lin has provoked widespread shock and anger in China, where many believe the crime was racially motivated. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has warned citizens living or travelling in Canada to “strengthen their personal security” in the wake of the deadly attack.
Mr. Lin’s death is the second killing of a Chinese student in Canada in just over a year, following last April’s murder of York University student Liu Qian, part of which was watched on Skype by her boyfriend back in China.
[…] A makeshift memorial to Mr. Lin sprang up in downtown Montreal in front of the statue of Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon regarded as a hero in China. The foot of the statue was covered with bouquets along with a note in English, French and Chinese that summed up the sense of relief over Mr. Magnotta’s arrest: “We got that beast.”
An earlier Globe and Mail report quoted the embassy’s warning, and outlined the case’s possible impact on Canadian universities’ ability to attract Chinese students.
“The Chinese Embassy in Canada reminds Chinese citizens traveling in Canada, as well as students and the staff of Chinese organizations in Canada, to improve their self-protection [and] awareness, and to strengthen their personal security,” reads the final paragraph of the Embassy’s Chinese-language statement on Mr. Lin’s murder, which called condemned the “heinous criminal act.” A similar warning was posted on the webpage of the Chinese consulate in Montreal.
[…] “The impact of the case will be very bad on Canada,” Meng Xiaochao, the boyfriend who witnessed the attack on Ms. Liu, said in an interview. “Last year when Liu Qian’s case happened, many parents said they were no longer willing to send their children to Canada. Now here comes this other case.”
More than 50,000 Chinese students currently live and study in Canada. Like all foreign students, they pay higher tuition than their Canadian-born classmates, making them highly sought-after by cash-strapped universities. Another 242,000 Chinese came to Canada as tourists last year, a number the travel industry had been hoping would increase by as much as one-fifth this year.
An infographic at GOOD shows the most favoured destinations for Chinese students abroad, with Canada ranking third behind the US and UK. 85% of Chinese with net worths of more than one million US dollars reportedly plan to send their offspring to study overseas: those who have already done so include Bo Xilai, at least five of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, if one includes grandchildren, and noted crusader against foreign trash Yang Rui. The strong association of study abroad with wealth triggered a storm of resentment around the USC case in April. Some online reactions to Lin Jun’s murder displayed similar sentiments, though many others attacked such unsympathetic responses. Many expressed concern at the apparent dangers of journeys to the West, linking the Magnotta case to other bizarre and gruesome stories of recent weeks. From chinaSMACK:
kansen2009:
I wonder which rich family or official’s family this unlucky child belongs to.
byrainby00:
Isn’t Canada and the United States supposed to be heaven on Earth?
研小叽:
Yep yep, either way, just be careful when abroad. Just a few days ago I saw the incident of someone’s [face] being bitten and torn off, and today I see this kind of cannibalism in Canada too, sigh, the world truly isn’t safe.
gaoqiaoxueer:
I urge everyone to stop going to Europe and America to study abroad. Not only is the cultural difference big and Chinese people are discriminated against, the main thing is that it isn’t safe. Perverse people.
