Murder at the 'reboot' camps

By Lan Tian in Beijing and Zhu Yanting in Guangxi (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-12 10:03

Local police last week detained 13 suspects, including Xia, for inflicting intentional injuries, while investigations also found the camp was run illegally. It has since been closed down and 122 juvenile trainees sent home.

"We will try our best to solve the case and severely punish the criminals in accordance with the law," said Zhang Shuhui, vice director of Nanning's Jiangnan district.

Deng Senshan's wrists bruised for the handcuffs he was forced to wear. [Courtesy of Deng Fei]

The incident has sparked anger among medical, psychology and sociology experts, who have blasted the government for failing to properly supervise IA institutions.

"The sector is out of control," said Jiang Pu, director of New Taste Family Education Institute, an IA recovery organization at Peking University in Beijing. "There are so many kinds of institutes advocating various therapies to parents blinded by their child's IA.

"A special department should be set up to regulate these clinics as, at the moment, the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and other relevant ministries don't have a clue who is responsible."

Xia Lingxiang, a psychology professor at Southwest University in Chongqing, agreed and added: "The overlapping supervision is to blame but it cannot be changed quickly. There is no national standard on whether IA is a mental disease and, until then, it's impossible to make just one department responsible."

An official in the MOH press office, who gave only her surname Zhao, said the health policy bureau, which falls under the MOH, was responsible for the governance of IA rehab camps, but added on Tuesday: "Currently, there are no legal IA rehabilitation institutes as all of these institutes have not reported to and been recorded by the MOH. Therefore, the MOH cannot be blamed for the supervision or regulation lacking for these institutes."

The MOH failed to respond to further questions from China Daily about the official number of IA clinics or whether new regulations were being drafted to enhance supervision.

"The MOH has not released relevant regulations in terms of IA treatment or supervision of institutes, apart from the ban on the practice of electrical stimulation therapy for treating Internet addicts last month," she said.

The use of electro-convulsive therapy on teen Net addicts was only banned after it was discovered doctors at the Linyi Psychiatric Hospital in Shandong province had administered it to more than 3,000 patients.

A statement on the MOH's official website said research had found both the safety and the effectiveness of the method was unclear. It warned: "To use the therapy during clinical treatment is inadvisable as little clinical evidence can be found at home or abroad."

The Linyi facility has halted its electric shock therapy but still offers other treatments for Internet addicts, said Yang Shuyun, head of publicity.

However, it was not the only controversial technique uncovered last month. A rehab camp in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, was also criticized for sending 135 "Net-addicted" adolescents on a 28-day, 850-km march to a prairie in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

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