Slashdot Mirror
China's Response To the Internet Addiction Death
eldavojohn writes "Last week, news broke of a tragic incident that resulted in the death of a 16-year-old boy at one of China's internet addiction camps. Details were scarce except for reports that the camp remained open. New reports are now coming in from China Daily that report 13 arrested and the camp closed down on Friday with 122 participants being sent home. The vice-chief of the district has stated that the authorities are working on the case to identify and punish the criminals involved in the death. Xinhua is reporting that the camp was unlicensed. This is directly in conflict with what the Southern Metropolis Daily reporter is saying, 'When the reporter arrived outside the rear wall of the school, children on the third and fourth floors started to stick notes into aluminum cans, drink bottles, and slippers, and others folded notes into paper planes. They tried to throw them over the wall, but owing to the distance, none of them succeeded. Some children had papers bearing the messages "SOS" and "beating" which they waved out the windows. Some wrote calls for help on their clothing, which they displayed to the reporter. Some even yelled for help. They were all stopped by the instructors.' Here is that original story in Chinese. Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?"
Basic freedoms are essential to preventing this though. If there was a larger presence of non-state-run media, could this have been brought to the attention sooner before this person died? Could people organize protests to give these "camps" such a bad name that no one is willing to send their child to them? If the Chinese government had allowed freedoms, could this have been prevented? I think the answer might just be a yes.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Pretty much anybody will turn into a willing torturer with the correct social cues.
I personally believe that education can inoculate people to a certain extent. So perhaps we could blame our schools curriculum for not include important, possibly life saving information.
Our legal system is behind as well - based on a very 19th Century notion of the rational human being. Problem is, that it really has no basis in fact.
You see, that's the very core of the problem - professionals know this stuff, yet society still has a blind spot. The results are tragic.
Blaming the perpetrators, and pointing out illegality is worse than useless. It creates a moral barrier between oneself and the crime - a barrier that we have no right to erect, and it's a barrier based on ignorance. Blaming is akin to saying "I wouldn't do it" - pointing out one's own virtue. This is part of a chain that allows the problems to persist.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right