Migrants' school forcibly closed
From this blog we found an article that had been taken from news.163.com about a school for the children of migrant workers' in Shanghai that was forcibly shut down by the police. The Jian Ying School (建英学校) on Dan Ba Lu (丹巴路）was given an ultimatum on January 5 that the school had to be shut down by January 8. On Monday morning around 6 am, people, including parents, onlookers, and journalists, gathered around the school. The police brought large buses that they used to take the students away (where?), and as tension escalated people surrounded the bus and argued with the police.
A journalist surnamed Lu was filming the situation with a DV video camera until a policeman confiscated the camera, while Lu protested that he was a journalist. Four policemen then attacked Lu, hitting him in the chest. The report stated that some of the children, who watched the whole episode, began to cry. The school was founded in the 1990s and served 1995 students, 80 percent of whom are children of migrant workers from Anhui.
A follow-up report states that the reason why the school was closed was simply because it had not acquired the necessary permits. It was located in an old factory in the Putuo district, and was not exactly an ideal place for a school. The city government claims that all the students at the Jian Ying school have now been moved to the Cao Yang school (曹杨学校). Click on the link above to see some pictures of both schools. Supposedly, the kids will not have to pay any extra fees, and will have school buses to pick them up and drop them off for free. They even get that one thing that isn't supposed to exist: a free lunch.
Photo from news.163.com.
