Parents of a 10-year-old couldn’t believe their ears last month when they found out that for the last 18 months, their child had not just been beaten but also made to drink urine and forced to lick the private parts of two of his classmates, aged nine. The three boys shared a dormitory. Having kept this torture to himself for so long, the child was actually contemplating suicide. Somehow, he opened up to his grandmother.
After his father complained, an investigation was conducted by officials from the education, police and judicial departments. The two bullies as well as their parents were made to apologise in writing to the victim and his parents. They were also forced to go for counselling. The principal of the school, two vice-principals and two class teachers were dismissed. The school was also asked to reduce its enrolment next year. Interestingly, the school’s website reveals that it invested 500 million yuan in the construction of its fancy campus. The website boasts that the strength of primary classes is limited to 36 students per class with two teachers supervising them to ensure “better communication”.
The authorities seem satisfied with the way they’ve handled the incident. But everybody’s wondering if this is enough. Like in India, in China too, there’s a demand that juveniles be tried as adults if their crime is heinous. In fact, Chinese law allows offenders aged 14 and above to be charged with criminal offences. But in this case, the offenders are just nine.
In such cases, the offender’s parents are usually made to monetarily compensate the victim. But this 10-year-old victim’s parents want a public apology from the school management and the offenders’ parents. That may not happen.
Bullying in schools is such a serious concern that the government has thrice come up with guidelines on tackling it, the latest being in 2021. Surveys show that while a substantial number of schoolchildren face bullying, at least half of them don’t tell anyone. While the 10-year-old above was saved in time, a 13-year-old, whose body was found in a pond in 2021, might have actually killed himself. After his death, a video surfaced showing him being beaten in a restroom while students cheered, a day before he went missing. It later turned out that this wasn’t the first time such cruelty had been inflicted on him. His family knew nothing. In 2015, it was only when a 15-year-old landed in hospital with a ruptured spleen that his mother, who worked in another city, discovered that he was regularly being beaten. The perpetrators were arrested, then let off after their families paid a hefty compensation.
The most susceptible to bullying, surveys show, are children of migrant workers in cities, as well as ‘left behind’ children in villages whose parents migrate for work. One such 11-year-old told an interviewer that there was no point complaining about the bullying he faced because in his teachers’ eyes, he was a ‘nobody’. Neither could his parents give them gifts on festivals, nor was he good at studies. What was worse, his grandparents looked down on him for not being able to ‘give it back’ to the bullies. There’s little hope for sufferers like him because rural teachers are among the most overworked in China. Not that more privileged, urban teachers are more sensitive. A 16-year-old gay student posted on social media that when he reached out to his teachers about being bullied by classmates, they told him to cope or get transferred to another school. The offenders were punished — albeit by being made to write self-critical essays and copy down school regulations.
