Tu Ling likes to draw pictures for his father and dreams of being reunited with his mother. The 10-year-old is completely unaware that he will never live with either of them again. Tu’s father has been jailed for life for murdering his mother.
The boy is one of dozens of Chinese children living at Sun Village, an institution in the suburbs of Beijing set up by a former prison officer who says she wanted to give the offspring of inmates a chance for a fresh start.
“I realized what the prisoners were concerned about the most was not themselves, but their children and families,” Zhang Shuqin, the founder of Sun Village, said in an interview at the facility.
PHOTO: AFP
Zhang, 62, was inspired to start Sun Village after interviewing dozens of inmates for the prison administration bureau’s internal newspaper in northern Shaanxi Province.
Moved by their heartbreaking stories about being separated from their children and their distress at not knowing where they were, Zhang opened the first village in 1996 in Shaanxi.
Since then — and with no government funding — she has built another five villages, including the one in the Beijing area.
“Some kids were missing, some had been sold and others had been taken away by relatives. Some had no one to protect them when they were very young,” Zhang said.
Children as young as four months old are sent to Sun Village centers after their parents have been sentenced to serve time. Many have been abandoned by their relatives who are too old or poor to care for them.
Before arriving at the village, some children have been living on the streets for months, or even years, scavenging for food and resorting to crime to survive.
Ma Yufei, 12, said he has spent half his life at the village. Police brought him here from Hebei Province after his father was sent to prison. He says he doesn’t know where his mother is and is too traumatized to discuss his father’s crime.
“The children have various problems when they arrive — some hate the police for taking away their parents and others have a strong wish for revenge,” Zhang said. “Some have bad habits like stealing, telling lies or being violent because they have been living on the streets. We try to rectify these behaviors and give them counseling.”
The children live in brightly painted dormitories surrounded by vegetable gardens, orchards and playgrounds. Each dormitory has a live-in “mother” who cares for the children.
Zhang said the children attend local schools and then, if they pass the entrance exams, are sent to university or attend technical colleges to prepare them for adult life.
“It’s not enough to just feed and house the children. They must acquire skills so they can find a job in the future,” Zhang said.
With no help from the government, Zhang relies on donations from generous individuals and businesses to feed, clothe and educate the children.
“I like living here because there are lots of children, older brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles,” said Cao Xiangqian, 12.
Zhang said she has helped more than 2,000 children since starting Sun Village 14 years ago, but she knows it is only a drop in the ocean.
A government survey in 2005 found 600,000 children of prisoners needed help, she said. As China’s prison population grows, the situation is getting worse, so more Sun Villages are in the works, Zhang says.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS