Chinese Private Institution Torturing Young People
Chinese Private Institutions Are Still Torturing Young People
(Translated and collected from Weibo and Zhihu in Chinese language)
(may be subject to change due to the update of the event)
[Please HELP Spread this !]
On October 29th of 2017, a Weibo account (@黑客凯文) and a Zhihu (Chinese variant of Quora) account (@wei-jia-fu-98) had disclosed their experiences of being committed into a kind of private institutions – in the name of quitting internet addiction and/or learning Sinology(Chinese ancient/traditional culture), and therefore being tortured and physically and mentally abused.
The source links are (in Chinese): 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5, 6
Public media has also reported: Sina Tech
Some background information:
It is widely known that there are many institutions built and run privately for the purposes including “helping” young people to quit “internet addiction syndromes”. Most of them are legal in Chinese administrative systems, (but not psychiatric hospitals). Some of them are registered as educational institutes while some others are registered as private medical institutes. Among them, the most notorious one is Yang Yongxin’s institution in Shandong province, whose abusive work had been disclosed by mass media several years ago but they are still alive and running.
The tricky thing is that such institutions like Yang’s one, legally registered but doing very, very abusive things to the so called “problematic teenagers” who are committed by their parents. The society know the notorious things these institutions do but can stop them hardly. One possible reason would be that those parents are backing such institutions. They think their children are problematic (for instance, playing computer games all day long) and has no ways to cope with their children’s “problems”. Thus they send their children to these isolated institutions. The duration can be from several months to three years!
Although the mass media had reported this many times, with quite many sounds of the victims from the social networks, the governments and police had done little on these institutions. Besides some parents’ backing, these institutions use their public communication skills to work out the negative news on media/social network (e.g. buy content-deleting services.) Moreover, they do advertisement to say they are curing young people and spreading Chinese traditional culture or so.
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What I am translating here is the most recent disclosure of a victim running away from one of these institutions located in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, called Yuzhang Academy, alleged promising they can cure “internet addiction” by using Chinese traditional culture (but actually only using physical punishment and isolation). According to the victim’s word, many young people got mental distress after discharged from the institution. Some even died in there.
I hope the international communities would get to know about such events and situation here in China. Hope international organizations give stress to Chinese governments and even make independent investigation.
Students in institution are punished to stand at 10pm everyday.
Some of the articles written by victims on the social network have been saved by me, and can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. (to prevent censorship)
—- Translation begins —-
The following content is translated from a post on zhihu.com (it was blocked or banned; but can be viewed here on Archive.)(I ignore the images on the webpages most of which are evidence of the abusive behaviors. Please refer to the original pages to see these images.)
author: 温柔(wei-jia-fu-98)
title: How many Yang Yongxin on earth are there in China?
Recently, I received a private message from a child. He told me about a “black industry” which is covered by the peaceful, blooming society. The creators, founders of this industry, who are also the promoters and consumers of it, are just the children’s parents who are always saying “What I do is just for your own good”. Whereas, is was them that send their beloved children to this dark hell in the human world.
This industry, is the so called “internet-addiction quitting schools” around this country, who are also the promoters and consumers of it, are just the children’s parents who are always saying “What I do is just for your own good”. Whereas, is was them that send their beloved children to this dark hell in the human world.
This black industry, is the so called “internet-addiction quitting schools” around this country.
There was an event happened in such a “school” called Yuzhang Academy, at Nanchang (capital city of Jiangxi province).
(translator: the author posts several screenshot images which shows the dialogue between the author and a victim. I try to translate this dialogue.)
Victim( V for short): I went to Lu Mountain (a tour resort) along with my mother last year. One day later I found somebody came to pick me up at Nanchang Railway Station.
The pick-up car carried me from the downtown to suburban with more than one hour’s distance. Then I was carried to an old-style brick-made house.
People inside the house all in white Tang-style dress.
Author(A for short): Please go ahead.
Isolation and inhuman environment
V: I found something strange, like the gate and wall are very tall. There are about ten people came to talk to me, all of them ware staring at me. After that, they took me to a small dark room. I can smell the very disgust smell of excreta. They forced and pushed me into that room, and put all my clothes off….(and more details)
They did me a wash/bath without any privacy measures. After that I was alone in that dark room. It was like a psychological experiment “sensory deprivation”. There was a documentary film recorded it. There was no time/date concept, no any communication tools. all excrement was going to a urinary tract. I was there probably 8 or 9 days, but I can’t remember. And I couldn’t fall asleep. They gave me a bucket of water once three days. Meals were just an egg and a bowl of rice. The weather in Nanchang you know, was hot and wet, over 40 Celsius. The room had no windows let alone air-conditioner. I was dying I thought. I was sleeping on the dirty marble floor. So many mice and cockroaches.
V: Every night all students should attend a sort of meeting called “morality assessing”. An old man was “teaching” how to behave oneself. He addressed to revive the old-style academy-type education, adopting the life style and customs of ancient people. But it is now modern society! There were not any ways to communicate with the outside world.
A: This is just concentration camp.
V: Yes, it is. Devoid of human nature. No respect to personality and privacy.
The tuition fee was 30,000 RMB(Yuan) for a term (half a year). And the meals, misc and accommodation were not included. The miscellaneous things sold in there were three times expensive than outside prices. what’s worse, the products sold there were fake.
Physical Punishment
V: They (“teachers” or officers) use rulers (to punch students). The ruler was about 50cm long, thick like a mobile phone, made of bamboo. They use it to punch students’ inner side of hands. If a student was punished with 5 such punches, he/she can’t write a word. They usually did at least 5 punches, no upper limit. The reasons for such punishment varies. Could be an eyesight, a motion or a behavior…(and more details)
Another instrument was whip, a finger-thick wheel bar. It was used to punch students’ buttocks. The institution has very strict regulation on male-female relationships. If they see a boy talking to a girl, they will use such whip to punish them. I saw a nine-year-old girl was punched by such whip with about 30 times. Then they forced the girl to stand on her knees in front of the statue of Confucius. She refused to do it but being punched on her legs. Finally she had to stand on her knees for a whole afternoon, and fainted with heat stroke.
V: When I saw that situation I found myself have no any mercy and sympathy. I was accustomed to it.
A: I know. I feel sorry to hear that.
V: I have not tend to recall these things for a long time. I want to cry…
A: I am sorry, but we must let them pay the price.
Food
V: The food in the institution was very awful. Rotten rap was found inside the bowl of soup. There were little eggs in the so called stir-fried eggs with tomatoes but full of egg shells. And there was a dish: red chili stir-fried with green chili (with nothing else!). The first time even I had ever seen such dish! The institution namely explained this as: to cultivate the spirit of hard work.
dealing with student suicide
V: Moreover, I was committing suicide when I had my lowest mood there. I drank half a bottle of laundry detergent. Then I could not bear with the burning of my stomach.
A: Did they send you to the hospital?
I: They did. The doctor in E.R. had issued a notice of medical crisis. However they (the officers) did not dear to sign on it!
A: Did they notify your parents?
I: The doctor later said I was okay if I do gastric lavage. They only told my parents about my drinking of detergent but not mentioning the medical crisis notice.
I: However the doctor won’t do me the gastric lavage if nobody sign the notice.
Guess what they did then?
They carried me back and use the drinking machine (with big bucket of water on it), and pour (like irrigation) the water into my mouth. My stomach was full and I threw the water up. After throwing up there was another pouring/irrigating.
A: f*k!
I: It’s been a year since then. Now I have Esophageal counter-current. I was then spitting white foam and even blood.
A: They are evil, but think themselves are doing good things.
Labor Exploitation
V: We paid tuition fee, but they even forced us to move bricks, or to carry cement, not letting us to attend classes (such as class for Chinese ancient culture). If I resisted to do it I would get punched. I had never ever done such labor before, but I had to carry a bag of cement weighing 100kg from ground floor to the third floor.
Sexual harassment
V: An officer/”teacher” is probably a gay. He focused on me, and asked to me sleep with him on his bed. Then he touch my legs but no more motions.
I don’t have prejudice to LGBT, but in such situation I have no ways to say “no”.
V: However, fortunately, I ran away from here thanks to him. I pretended to be good with him and thus I could have chance to quit. So I only stayed there for three months. Many and many of them stayed there for half a year, or even more than a year.
A: more than a year? They might have mental problems.
Kidnapping
A: There are two ways to get these students into this “school”(institution): one is being spoofed by their parents; the other is being forced by their school (physically tied).
V: If you are based in this country, and your parents pay ofr them, they can definitely catch you wherever you are. And they use handcuffs. Usually they come to catch you when you are sleeping at night.
A: Up to now, when you are reading this article, there are still hundreds of young people are bearing such torture in this concentration-camp-like “Yuzhang Academy”.
And even though such situation has been disclosed to the public, there are still parents sending their children to this institution.
—- Translation Ends —-
I tend to finish translating this article here, since it’s main idea and the core fact had been illustrated. The rest of the article shows this institution more in detail, such as how they buy service to delete web content and do lots of public communications. Further, its “strong” power background backing the leader/founder of this institution. Such (political) power makes it exist till now. On the other side, as the author mentioned at the beginning of this article, “treating internet addiction” has already been a chain of industry, which means there are massive profit in the industry. Author states that, only tuition fees can be over 100 million RMB Yuans per institutions (est. 3000 students in an institution). Once such institutions got money, they can buy advertisement, and thus control the speech/information on both media and internet. One of their partner is the badly-known search engine giant, Baidu. By the way, Baidu has monopoly status as a search engine and other services in Chinese language world. How it has been found to not obey any industrial ethics, like ranking of bidding in search results, mixing up search results with advertisements, and even doing business with those fake hospitals – to name but a few.
Okay, I tend to stop here. Hope you and readers help spread and try to find ways to stop the running of such institutions. Although in some cases (usually the cases of the institution make young people die), the police intervened, there are still a lot of institutions running and torturing. (There is a law regulating this but very weak administrative and criminal enforcement.)
All the best!