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China Daily carried four photographs yesterday that showed a few teenaged boys torturing a schoolmate in a classroom in Shanxi province. The scene in the high school was shocking. Three of the four photos showed two teenagers leaping high into the air to pound the victim with the force of their entire weight, while the others kept kicking him. The last photo showed the victim being kicked in the head and buttocks. What made the scene more grim and appalling, however, was the delight the teenagers demonstrated in contrast to the pain on the victim's face. The violence took place last month. It involved six students, including a girl who took the photographs "for fun". Apart from being angry, I feel perplexed. How can these teenagers be so heartless? It seems they did not thrash the poor kid because they hated him. They did it only over a minor quarrel or purely "for fun", according to different witnesses. The girl who took the photos said she had asked the assailants to "make exaggerated poses". And one of them confessed: "I thought it was cool to take the pictures." According to the students' teacher, the boy who was thrashed is a "slow" student. What a ruthless heart one has to have to bully and traumatize such a poor boy! How can these kids be so cruel, or "cool" as they call themselves? The incident is not isolated. In May, seven girls of a junior high school in Yunnan province "taught" another girl "a lesson" by beating her up in a toilet. They hit her with shoe heels and forced a dirty napkin into her mouth. They shot still and video photos of the incident, too, which continued for 10 minutes. Similar cases have been reported from many other places in recent years. | 
