Online outrage over Chinese anti-gang campaign targeting mentally ill and parents of dead children
- A poster by a neighbourhood association in Xiangtan city, Hunan province, listed the stigmatised groups as people to monitor
- Images shown on Weibo drew widespread condemnation and the posters have come down
A neighbourhood association in central China’s Hunan province has caused a social media uproar because its anti-gang poster campaign targeted mental health patients and “shidu families”, parents who have lost their only child.
Created by the Guangchang Street neighbourhood association of the city of Xiangtan, the poster, titled “10 key tasks in removing gangs and crimes”, included the monitoring of patients with severe mental illness as well as families who have lost their only child.
Images of the poster were uploaded to the social media site Weibo on Tuesday, drawing widespread condemnation. They had since been removed from the streets, the news portal Thepaper.cn reported.
The district’s health commission apologised to the families affected by the poster and said it was investigating the incident, the commission’s deputy director, Chen Jianguang, told Thepaper.
China’s one-child policy, in effect from the early 1980s to 2015, created “shidu families”, parents who have lost their one child and could not have another, because of age or other factors. (Shidu is shorthand for “lose the only child”.)
