16-year-old ties mother to chair and leaves her for a week in protest at beatings and abuse she suffered at internet addiction treatment centre - stock picture

A Chinese teenager tied her mother to a chair and starved her to death in revenge for sending her to an abusive internet addiction boot camp.

The 16-year-old girl from northern Heilongjiang province was arrested on manslaughter charges after tying her mother to a chair and leaving her there for a week, according to local media.

It is believed she tortured her mother after her parents sent her to a treatment centre for internet addiction, where she was beaten and abused, Chinese news site The Paper reports.

She took photographs and filmed her mother tied up in the chair and demanded her aunt send ransom money so she could move to Harbin city to go to study physics.

Although the money was sent, the girl discovered her mother was already dying and called an ambulance, which arrived too late to save her.

The girl had previously stabbed her father during an argument about her dropping out of school to work in a nightclub.

Her father was hospitalised and an aunt suggested she be sent to an internet addiction boot camp.

In February, she was abducted by two men and driven to the Shadong Science and Technology Defense Training Institute in Shangdong province

In a blog post written after she escaped four months later, she described her experience at the boot camp, saying students were regularly beaten for no reason and made to eat in front of a latrine pit if they did not behave.

"I am angry. People point at my nose and call me unfilial and worse than a beast," she wrote. "It was them who sent me there. It was them who cursed me and beat me, it was them who sabotaged my life and libelled my character; but it was also them who said they loved me.

"My friends here, if it were you, what would you do?

"I will use their money to practice boxing and martial arts, and ambush them later. I will make them disabled, if not die."

After the girl's story was published, it was shared widely in China and led to other former students of the boot camp complaining to The Paper of abductions, beatings, and corporal punishment at the school.

Online Editors