]]>Her death is the latest example of military-style boot camps – intended to cure China’s supposed millions of internet addicts – gone horribly wrong. Ever since China classified internet addiction as a mental disorder in 2008, parents have been sending their children to camps that promise to cure them through military-style training and discipline. Estimates for the number of these internet-addiction camps, some of which employ former Chinese military personnel, range from 65 to 300. …
A report in the Chinese newspaper Legal Evening News says there have been at least 12 cases of physical abuse at such centers over the last few years, with seven of them ending in deaths. That includes a teenage boy that was beaten to death at an internet addiction camp in 2009. That same year, China’s Ministry of Health had to order a hospital in Shandong province to stop using electric shock on internet-addicted youths, after it used the so-called treatment on some 3,000 patients.