The gates exterior the Zhuhai sports activities advanced in China had been closed. Inside, the stadium was in darkness, as had been the grounds round it.
It was right here, hours earlier than, the place dozens of individuals had been killed when a person drove an SUV right into a crowd. Many extra had been injured.
Solely safety guards seemed to be shifting round behind the fence when the BBC arrived, they usually had been ordered to maintain a watch out for reporters.
One approached us asking: “Are you journalists?” After I requested why he wished to know, he replied: “Oh simply to know the scenario.”
He and a colleague took photographs of us and began making calls, watching us as they did.
Exterior the gates individuals handed by to catch sight of the aftermath. However amongst them was a gaggle of round a dozen individuals extra involved in us.
A ladies began calling to the others: “Look, foreigners, foreigners.”
Quickly a person who was together with her was aggressively interrupting our reporting, grabbing me and shouting.
Usually, when delicate tales like this unfold in China, native Communist Get together officers organise teams of cadres to fake to be outraged locals who’ve been given the position of focusing on overseas reporters and stopping any protection.
Invariably it does not cease the tales, it simply makes China look dangerous.
After former Premier Li Keqiang died final 12 months, crowds of those loyalists had been despatched to the road exterior his outdated household residence. Any journalist that arrived was surrounded and shouted at, pushed and abused.
Premier Li’s dying was delicate to the occasion not solely as a result of it was sudden and sudden – but additionally as a result of he was the final of the outdated liberal wing. It signalled that the occasion was now utterly stacked with loyalists of President Xi Jinping.
However even for rather more minor incidents the identical issues occur.
Final month, we travelled to a shopping center in Shanghai the place a person had randomly stabbed strangers to dying.
The whole location had been cleansed of any proof inside hours of this horrible occasion going down. By the morning after, the mall was up and working once more as regular: no police crime scene tape, no flowers for the useless.
On one degree, you’ll be able to perceive this – many of those inexplicable assaults on the neighborhood are copycat in nature. Tuesday’s assault shouldn’t be an outlier, although it’s surprising for its dying toll.
However officers right here typically need these dangerous issues to easily go away as shortly as attainable.
Hours after our confrontation exterior the positioning of the Zhuhai assault, carloads of police had arrived to raised handle the scenario.
A crowd of residents had additionally gathered to gentle candles to recollect the useless, and movies shared on social media confirmed traces of volunteers at hospitals providing to donate blood.
President Xi has referred to as on officers to handle society’s issues in an effort to forestall one of these factor occurring once more sooner or later.
However, once more, China is left questioning what has pushed somebody to such inconceivable horror. It’s impossibly troublesome to search out the solutions to this one.