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By Cai Siyun, Vision Times
Following the mysterious death of a high school student in China’s Henan Province, heavy police suppression and reports that the victim’s family has gone missing have triggered a wave of public anger. In recent days, two documents titled “Letter to Compatriots” have gone viral on social media, condemning the handling of the case and calling on the public to “awaken “and speak out against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authoritarian grip.
On Jan. 8, a 13-year-old male student surnamed Zhu collapsed and died suddenly at Jinshi Tsinghua Garden Senior High School in Henan’s Xincai County. But before his parents arrived, school officials had already moved the body without authorization. The boy’s uncle rushed to the scene and managed to stop the transfer.
MORE ON THIS: Sudden Death of Henan Student Sparks Outrage as Authorities Rule Out Foul Play
Numerous leaflets titled “A Letter to Our Compatriots” were found in packages delivered to a residential communities in China. (Image: Screenshot via social media)
Body moved without consent
When the family later viewed the body, they found blood at the corners of the boy’s mouth and a nail-sized puncture wound in his chest. School authorities offered no explanation for these injuries and immediately ruled out foul play before conducting any type of investigation.
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On Jan. 12, information circulating on overseas social media said that after the suspicious death, the family demanded answers and local residents gathered to support them. Authorities responded by deploying large numbers of armed police, sealing off the school and surrounding roads.
On Jan. 8, 2026, a high school student in China’s Xincai County, Henan Province, suddenly died while on school grounds. He had needle marks on his left chest and blood at the corners of his mouth. A large number of parents gathered at the school gate demanding answers despite the school ruling out foul play. (Image: Online Screenshot)
When a lawyer hired by the family attempted to conduct an independent investigation at the school, official personnel smashed his phone and wiped its account data, according to the reports. It was later reported that the victim’s family could no longer be contacted.
A parent identified as Xiao Liu wrote online: “The family can’t be found anymore. The videos are gone. Anything posted from Henan is either throttled or taken down directly, accounts are disabled. We are treated like weeds. Why speak out? So they know that even a blade of grass has a temper. Parents in Henan are still watching.”
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Another parent, Xiao Qi, said angrily: “Once the official notice comes out, it rubs our intelligence into the ground. They don’t care whether you believe it or not; they just ask whether you submit. This is an industrial chain that doesn’t treat ordinary people as human beings. On the highway, trucks dumped loads of dirt to block the road completely. There were more armed police at the school gate than parents.”
Official explanation sparks furyLess than 24 hours after the incident, the local education bureau — acting in place of the police — issued a rushed statement claiming that criminal involvement had been ruled out. Two days later, a joint investigation team from Xincai County announced that Zhu had died of “cardiac-related disease.” The statement said the puncture in his chest resulted from forensic blood sampling for toxicology, and the red liquid near his mouth was bodily fluid that emerged when the body was turned during examination.
These explanations were widely questioned. Medical professionals wrote that the round hole in the chest looked more like direct cardiac puncture using a thick needle, a technique sometimes associated with obtaining high-activity blood samples under time pressure.
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On Jan. 12, overseas social media users reported that two pamphlets, “Letter to Compatriots” and “Letter to Compatriots II,” had appeared in residential mailboxes inside China, directly addressing the student’s death and calling for resistance to authoritarian control.
‘Letter to Compatriots I’“Letter to Compatriots | The Tsinghua Garden Student Death Case” states: “We are angry — not only because a child is gone, but because everything happened too fast. The conclusion came too fast, the silencing came too fast, the stability-maintenance came too fast… The school, the education bureau, the forensic doctors, the police and courts all belong to the same system.”
Numerous leaflets titled “A Letter to Our Compatriots” were found in packages delivered to a residential communities in China. (Image: Screenshot via social media)
The letter continues: “When the family made the most basic request, bringing in a third party, independent forensic experts, independent investigators, the response was not openness, but rejection. If you are truly innocent, what are you afraid of?”
It asks pointedly: “A single student’s death mobilized hundreds or thousands of armed police — not to protect the truth, but to control voices… If a student’s death cannot be fairly investigated, what safety remains for any of us?”
The letter concludes: “When a regime must rely on high pressure to maintain silence, it has already lost the ability to make people believe in it. Today it is a family at Tsinghua Garden; tomorrow it could be you or me. We speak out not because we are brave, but because if we are silent today, tomorrow the ones crying may be ourselves.”
‘Letter to Compatriots II’“Letter to Compatriots II: When Appeals No Longer Work” describes developments after the student’s death, stating that the family has been placed under control, the road where the incident occurred sealed off, and the lawyer’s phone deliberately destroyed. After he posted on Douyin and Xiaohongshu, his content was quickly erased.
The letter states: “We have seen an extremely clear path: the family is controlled, the scene is sealed, the investigation is blocked, and records are erased. This is not a failure of one link—it is every path to the truth being closed simultaneously.”
It also reflects on the broader reality by pointing out: “We live in an absurd reality where power and violence are openly intertwined, and when an ordinary person’s child dies, even approaching the scene becomes impossible.”
The letter argues that such incidents are not isolated: “Wage arrears, vanished savings, students dying at school, missing children, none of these are isolated cases. Forced demolitions, unfinished housing projects, campus accidents, medical disputes, wrongful convictions, food safety scandals may look scattered, but they all stem from the same structure.”
It adds: “(This regime) tramples 1.3 billion people underfoot through physical torture, speech suppression, kidnapping of children, families disappearing, and deaths without cause.”
The letter emphasizes: “Equality is not begged for on one’s knees. Fairness is not granted through pleading.”
It notes that reasoning with “bandits and thugs” only invites heavier fists. While acknowledging that ordinary people may lack the courage for direct confrontation, it urges simple acts—sharing materials, slipping leaflets into packages, posting them in blind spots or restrooms—calling this “the final redemption for ourselves, our families, and our children.”
Netizens reactOnline commenters echoed the anger. “If you stand by today, one day when you are fish on the chopping block, no one will speak for you,” said one user, while another added, “The greatest enemy of the Chinese people is the Communist Party, not Japan or the United States. More people have died at the hands of the Party than at the hands of foreign enemies.”
Another comment read: “Arise, all who refuse to be slaves!” while another said, “Only by overthrowing the CCP can China’s social problems be fundamentally resolved. Otherwise these tragedies will happen every year.”
The death of a 13-year-old student in Henan, and the silencing that followed, has become more than a single case. As the “Letter to Compatriots” warns, it has emerged as a symbol of a system in which truth is suppressed, families vanish, and public trust collapses, raising the question of how long silence can hold in the face of growing public outrage.
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