Governments sued over left-behind children fund
Print Edition
A lawsuit filed by the prominent whistleblower Zhou Xiaoyun against governments that refuse to publicly disclose how 177 million yuan (US$26.87 million) allocated for assisting left-behind children has been spent has been accepted by a court in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, the Beijing Times reported yesterday.
The city government of Bijie allocated about 60 million yuan every year since 2012 to help children left by their parents after five boys, whose parents died, remarried or left home for work, suffocated while trying to keep warm by burning charcoal in a trash bin on November 16, 2012.
But similar tragedies followed.
On June 9, 2015, four siblings, aged between 5 and 15, committed suicide by swallowing pesticide a year after their mother left home and three months after their father went away for work. “Death is my dream,” eldest brother Zhang Qigang said in a farewell letter.
On August 4, a 15-year-old girl was raped by two relatives, aged 17 and 20, when her migrant worker father was away. They then killed her and her 12-year-old brother.
Zhou wondered why the plight of left-behind children in Bijie had not been addressed, and on June 16 he demanded full disclosure of how and where the funds had been spent.
On July 26, the city government announced that 177.24 million yuan had been allocated over three years to improve students’ living conditions, but no details were disclosed.
“They are just general figures,” Zhou told the paper. “I want to know exactly where the fund goes and how it is spent.”
On October 8, Zhou asked the provincial government to order the city government to provide a detailed account of the spending, but his request was rejected on December 7.
He then filed a lawsuit against the two governments, demanding full disclosure. The Intermediate People’s Court in the provincial capital Guiyang will soon hear the case, the paper reported.
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