Two “left-behind” children were murdered in their home on August 4 in Bijie, Guizhou.The two victims were a 15-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy. Bijie is already well-known in China as being the location of the recent tragic suicide of four left-behind children in June, this year. This had already roused mass public interest in the problems facing the millions of children left at home while their parents look for work in urban areas.
The day after the childrens’ bodies were discovered, two suspects were put into custody. They later admitted to the police that they had also sexually assaulted one of the victims. The incident occurred in the southern rural area of Bijie, where most of the adult population work in cities and leave the villages with only old people and children. According to the villagers, the suspects, 20 and 17 years old, are relatives of the victims. The young female victim was sexually assaulted by them. To cover up the crime, they killed both victims. The father of the victims works as a construction worker in Guiyang, a city not far away from Bijie. Local reports also say the female victim was mentally ill, and had been sexually assaulted by a 60-year-old man the year before, but the father settled the case with the perpetrator and received 30,000 yuan in compensation.
