Glance Of Private Abusive Institutions
A Glance of Chinese Abusive Private Educational Institutions
**Author/translator: Regaudit
(may be subject to change due to the update of the event)
This article is to introduce a sort of private educational schools(institutions) which use violent and abusive methods to “educate” “problematic” young people. There are massive physical punishment, detention, child labor and aggressive word/behaviors done by the “teachers”/officers to every student in there. Many students suffer mental problems after being discharged from there and some even died or committed suicide before discharge. Mass media had reported these cases and the society knows about this, whereas such institutions exist legally by far, and the number of them does not seem to be decreased.
Who they are and What their purposes are?
The founder of such institutions are often those ex-teachers (who have previously teaching experience) or businessmen. They rent a workplace and bought some equipment, and that’s it. Then they would invest on advertisement to recruit students, and further, to advertise that they are proficient at “educating problematic young people such as teenagers who have internet addiction”. What they promise they are capable of treating or curing includes: internet addiction, truancy and tiredness of schooling, early-age dating, run-away from home, violence and fighting, etc. (quoted from: [1]. It is not difficult to find out such an institution by searching on Baidu.com .)
As a fact in such institutions there are three types teachers/officers: military training officer, psychological teacher and care-giver. Most of them have no certificate as a teacher. Some psychological teachers have psychological background while some others were just previously teachers of other majors. And the so called care-givers are just aunts and uncles who are recruited from the local communities. [2]
What they do to the victims?
What they say they do:
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They say they are competent to treat “internet addiction syndromes” and other “conduct disorders” which subjectively defined to the middle-school students (age from 12 to 30+ years old). They allegedly use a wide range of treatment from psychiatric medicine, “psychotherapy”, to the moral disciplines/theories for preaching young people in Chinese ancient culture. (for details, see: Yang Yongxin’s Centre for treatment of Internet Addiction [3]
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In recent years, there are quite a few private educational organizations set up around the country, claiming the use of several traditional Chinese ancient theories such as Confucius, Mohism, Taoism and so forth, to education and/or discipline young people, especially to those have “bad” or disobedient behaviors. The teachers in those organizations believe that the causes of the social problems occurred in the modernization of Chinese society are mostly the renouncement of the ancient theories in which the value of obedience to the elders/parents and of the value of respect to the status quo (the current social order) are the core.
What they actually do:
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For those institutions using medical approaches, they use Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) as their prior method, with anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medicines as auxiliary method. Some of them have certificate of psychiatrist while some others do not have (or do not have certificate legally). Besides, the use of ECT is neither legitimate nor ethical. First, all the victims(“patients”) in there received ECT without free and informed consent by themselves. They all were forced to do that. Second, the use of ECT had no any clinical and diagnosed base. All the victims received the same implementation of ECT. Third, ECT was used as a mean of punishment. All the victims had to obey the strict and irrational rules in the institutions, and hence had to obey the words of the officers(“doctors”). Otherwise they would be “treated” the ECT. However, the officers in such institutions quibble that the ECT is just “behavioral therapy”, and the assessment of the patience’s obedience is just “psychological assessment”, and the psychotropic drugs are just “brain nutritional medicines”. So explained to the victims’ parents. ([3], [4] Wikipedia: ECT on treating internet addictions (in Chinese) )
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For those using or utilizing ancient culture/approaches, they actually misinterpret those theories/approaches. From the most recent disclosure of a torture case of a such institution (Yuzhang Academy, a boarding “school/academy” isolated from the human community), it is known that physical punishment (e.g. punching with bamboo-made rulers (or even steel-made bars), forced standing-on-knees, detention, bad food, child labor, sexual harassment, dirty accommodations, neglect in students’ medical (crisis) conditions, etc, had been used/happened to discipline the students who were labeled as “bad” conduct, internet addiction, run-away from home/schools, to name a few. Some people even disclosed more severe tortures happened in such institutions. Many of these institutions prefer isolated venue (aligned with their theories), thus making their torture difficult to be disclosed. (for more details, see my previous post: Chinese Private Institution Torturing Young People )
How many those institutions? and how many students/victims inside ?
There are no accurate data of the number of such abusive institutions. It is believed that more private institutions have abusive records but have not been disclosed. There is a fact that the official correctional schools (normally one per municipality) has been abolished. Thereafter some private organizations had been set up to recruit the those “drop-out” students. It is estimated that there are at least 3 or 4 such organizations in every frefecture-level city (294 as of 2017, [5] ). So there should be more than 1000 such schools/institutions advertising they can treate internet addiction and/or bad conduct.
As of the case Yuzhang Academy, it has about 90 students [6], 60 male and 30 female. Therefore a conservative estimation of the students in such institutions all round the country is 100,000 ~ 300,000.
Ironically, there was a survey report (2009)[7],[8], statistically stating that there were 24,042,000 young people who had so defined “internet addiction syndromes”, occuping 14.1% of all young people in the city areas around the country.
What are the consequences?
As per the case Yuzhang Academy, the local (administrative and educational) authorities had made an investigation on this case, when a netizen has disclosed the abuse and torture in there. However, as an initial result, the local authorities had just issued a simple, light-weight order to the institution: a warning paper to rectify ([9], disappeared on their official website, or here [10], and here [11]).
As of November 2nd, the latest news about this case is said that Yuzhang Academy will be canceled and dismissed (now being in the administrative process) [12]. However, there seems not any clues that the founders/leaders will be prosecuted or punished by law enforcement.
Overall, many institutions were treated like such, being closed, but the founders/leaders were out of law (at most they received fine) . They might make a comeback, setting up just another institution similar the one they established before. No one seems to remember they have records. The whistle-blower of this case, had written another article on his/her social network that this time he/she will not let the founder of Yuzhang come back again, by showing all the founder’s business registration information (He registered several educational companies with similar functions. [13]).
Why they still exist?
(to be continued…)