Municipal bylaw enforcement officers in southwestern China stuck confiscated paper advertisements all over the bodies of two boys and paraded them after they were found dispensing the ads in Chongqing, phoenixtv.com reported on Friday.

Police officers covered the boys, 10 and 15, with the ads, in an attempt to publicly humiliate them.

The illegal adlets are everywhere, and have come to be known as 'urban psoriasis'. They are a thorny headache for government officials at all levels. Even in the Chinese capital, the adlets are found in walkways and overpasses.

The two boys admitted this is the second time they had been caught pasting the adlets around the city.

But using public humiliation to attempt to control the use of the adlets in China has met with strong criticism from the public.

"It is an insult to the boys," an anonymous local resident told the web portal, with another asking "how would these officers feel if their children had undergone a public parade?"

Publicly parading alleged criminals through the streets has met with a bombardment of criticism for its rights violations.

The debate peaked after police officers in Shenzhen on Nov. 29 last year publicly paraded around 100 women and their alleged johns through the streets, using loudspeakers to read out their names and the crimes they had been accused of.

Shanghai lawyer Yao Jianguo was outraged and wrote an open letter to the National People's Congress. In it, he charged that the Shenzhen parade was illegal under current laws and likely to have a "terrible influence" on the Chinese people and the country's reputation abroad.

"These people were just alleged criminals," Yao wrote.