14 break out of Web-addict camp
By Wang Xiang |
June 8, 2010, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
POLICE have arrested 14 teenage boys and young men in Jiangsu Province who broke out of an Internet-addict boot camp after they attacked their teacher and tied him up in bed.
Two taxi drivers reported them to police after eight of them dressed in military camouflage uniforms hired their cabs to go to Xuyi County at midnight on June 3 and couldn't pay the fares, Yangtze Evening News reported yesterday.
Before police questioned these boot camp escapees who were aged between 15 and 22, they told the officers that they just escaped from a camp for Internet addiction in Huai'an City where the rigid controls were insufferable.
They told police that 14 of them escaped from the boot camp. They had planned the escape over many days, practicing knots, after they found the camp life boring and exhausting.
Five of them attacked the night watch teacher in his dormitory, tied him up and left him wrapped in his quilt.
The report said the teenagers kept saying "sorry" when they were beating the teacher, who only suffered a nose bleed.
The young men said they were sent to the boot camp by their parents who paid 18,000 yuan (US $2,635), hoping to rid their children of their Internet obsession. But the camp treated them cruelly, forcing them to work out every day and the food was awful, the report quoted one escapee as saying. He said physical punishments were very common.
Net difficulties
Most of the escapees were from single-parent families. One mother spent three years of her annual wage to get her son into the boot camp, local police said.
Police sent all 14 back to the camp after receiving their parents' permission.
Internet addiction has been a topic of heated discussion since 2009, when even electric shock therapy was considered a cure in some rehab camps.
A 16-year-old boy named Deng Senshan was beaten to death by his camp instructors in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in August 2009. After Deng's death, the Ministry of Health banned the use of physical punishment to wean teens off the Web.
Two taxi drivers reported them to police after eight of them dressed in military camouflage uniforms hired their cabs to go to Xuyi County at midnight on June 3 and couldn't pay the fares, Yangtze Evening News reported yesterday.
Before police questioned these boot camp escapees who were aged between 15 and 22, they told the officers that they just escaped from a camp for Internet addiction in Huai'an City where the rigid controls were insufferable.
They told police that 14 of them escaped from the boot camp. They had planned the escape over many days, practicing knots, after they found the camp life boring and exhausting.
Five of them attacked the night watch teacher in his dormitory, tied him up and left him wrapped in his quilt.
The report said the teenagers kept saying "sorry" when they were beating the teacher, who only suffered a nose bleed.
The young men said they were sent to the boot camp by their parents who paid 18,000 yuan (US $2,635), hoping to rid their children of their Internet obsession. But the camp treated them cruelly, forcing them to work out every day and the food was awful, the report quoted one escapee as saying. He said physical punishments were very common.
Net difficulties
Most of the escapees were from single-parent families. One mother spent three years of her annual wage to get her son into the boot camp, local police said.
Police sent all 14 back to the camp after receiving their parents' permission.
Internet addiction has been a topic of heated discussion since 2009, when even electric shock therapy was considered a cure in some rehab camps.
A 16-year-old boy named Deng Senshan was beaten to death by his camp instructors in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in August 2009. After Deng's death, the Ministry of Health banned the use of physical punishment to wean teens off the Web.
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