A high school student in Guiping, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was recently expelled for putting photos online of a teacher punishing students by forcing them to kneel on the ground, the Nanfang Daily said Tuesday.

The schoolgirl, surnamed Li, told the local newspaper that she witnessed a female teacher ordering 20 junior high school students to kneel down on the playground on Friday afternoon. Li quickly snapped several photographs with her cell phone and uploaded them to her QQ account.

"I just wanted to record the case, but I experienced retaliation from the school," said Li. About half an hour after she uploaded the pictures, a teacher from the office of moral education ordered her to delete the online photos and then to "tidy up her desk and go home".

Li then posted a thread with photos of the students kneeling, along with the information that she had been expelled for exposing the case. The post was then transmitted among many netizens, after which Li was called and told she had been reinstated in the school.

The director of the school's office of moral education, surnamed Gan, confirmed the teacher's actions, though the school does not intend to give the teacher an administrative penalty.

Yang Tianhe, a lawyer from the Guangzhou Deli Law Office, said that punishing students by forced kneeling was illegal behavior. Teachers should show respect for the dignity of juveniles, and physical punishment is legally prohibited, Yang said.