Internet addict camp beats teen to death
- Source: Global Times
- [21:39 August 19 2009]
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A “reboot camp” student in Nansha District, Guangzhou City, tries to get help from the outside by putting a letter inside a slipper and throwing it out the window on August 9. Beside him, another student waves a cloth to attract attention. Photo: CFP
By Yin Hang
Birthday boy Pu Liang got a surprise present on August 13: a serious critical condition diagnosis from Chengdu West District Hospital.
Pu celebrated his 14th birthday with his sobbing mother lying on a bed of West China Second Hospital of Sichuan University with broken ribs, a kidney malfunction and a bleeding eye.
Watching a silent metal machine pumping out her son’s blood, filtering and returning it, Li Shubing’s inconsolable grief must have been worsened by an intolerable sense of guilt.
She had sent sixth-grade dropout Pu to the China Non-traditional Versatile Education Training Center in Zhongjiang County, Sichun Province, on August 4. She paid 5,000 yuan ($732) for her son’s “alternative education.”
Pu was required to cook meals, clean rooms, help farmers in their duties and engage in physical work. Any minor infraction would lead to a series of punishments.
“He was required to complete 500 push-ups. When he failed at that, his campmates were ordered by their instructor to beat him with shoulder poles,” Li told the Global Times.
Eight days later, Pu’s parents were called by police and told to come and take him home. Pu’s situation had emerged by accident: a student at the camp had drowned in a river playing with his campmates. Investigating the drowning, police had stumbled upon Pu.
Camp principal Tang Jingcheng, 27, was detained August 8 on suspicion of inflicting intentional injury, according to an officer at Jiqing Police Station of Zhongjiang County, Sichuan Province.
