Others on Song Binbin.

I just saw these on China Digital Times. (China Digital Times is the best.) The subject head is "Apology Not Accepted." Yep.

                                         Song Binbin: "Teacher, I'm sorry I didn't protect you...Don't you see who 
                                         this is? I was barefoot when it happened."
                                         Bian Zhongyun: "There were three feet kicking me."

Song and some Red Guards cut their hair and rampaged through Beijing barefoot. The literature, in English anyway, on Bian's murder is very vague. What was done? By how many people? By whom by name?  This is the first time I have heard of a specific number. Just those who kicked? Or the total number of beaters? Jung Chang said "Everybody in China knows." But they don't say. Drives me nuts.

Crocodile tears. Oh, you understood that? I apologize for any inconvenience.

This one is captioned: "Regret for her youth or fond remembrance?" A double entendre, peut-etre? Oui, monsieur, me thinks.

Police officer: "You all beat people to death when you were young? So now you're turning your selves in?"
Group: "Oh, no, we came here to apologize."

This cartoon distinguishes between an apology and a confession. They're pretty close, though!  A statement that is vague, as Song's was, is called a "statement against interest." Song's statement at the school, in my opinion, would help prove a hypothetical case against her. The greater point of this cartoon however is the difference between justice and truth and reconciliation. Justice includes punishment; truth and reconciliation does not. This artist, many Chinese, want justice. Where do you go to get justice? To officialdom. To the police, who will then turn over the statement to the prosecutors who will examine it and all other evidence for legal sufficiency, who will then file formal charges in court, where justice is determined and if justice is a "guilty" verdict, where punishment is administered. China does not have this requisite officialdom. And there is, in my opinion, no international court with jurisdiction. Chinese are not going to get formal justice with cops and prosecutors and defense attorneys and judges and juries. And they are not going to get "street justice." Song Binbin is not going to get whacked on the streets of Beijing by outraged citizens, as she might if she were American!  I wish that the Chinese people would come to terms with this and put their collective heads together to come up with an acceptable alternative. I wish that they would not make the perfect an enemy of the good. Wish. Foreigner.