Study reveals the high percentage of women victims of violence 4:15
(CNN) -
Tata, a 34-year-old woman in the Chinese city of Chengdu, was scrolling through social media in her office Friday when she came across a heartbreaking video that shook her to the core.
Surveillance footage shows three women dining at a restaurant when a man walks up to their table and puts his hand on the back of one of them.
The woman pushes him away, but the man refuses to back down and reaches for his face again.
When she brushes her hand away from him, the man slaps her across the face, knocking her to the ground as she struggles to defend herself against it.
Video of Women Being Brutally Attacked Sparks National Outrage in China
Her friends try to help her, but they are also attacked by the man and his friends, who run into the restaurant when the violent episode begins.
The men then drag the first woman by her hair out the door, hit her with bottles and chairs, and repeatedly stomp on her head as she lies on the sidewalk, her clothes stained with blood.
The outrage over the video in China
The video is so explicit and the assault so brutal that Tata had to stop it halfway through.
"I was immediately filled with outrage and horror. I was able to totally relate to her, the terror she must have felt at the time," he said, asking to be mentioned only by her English name.
"And this could happen to any of us."
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Outrage and anger spread widely as the video spread like wildfire on Chinese social media.
By Friday night, the attack, which occurred around 2:40 a.m. that day in the city of Tangshan, was already shocking the entire country, generating hundreds of millions of views and dominating online discussions that continued throughout the day. Weekend.
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Many were horrified that a woman would be beaten so brutally simply for refusing sexual harassment from a man.
Others lambasted the police for not taking action until the incident went viral.
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Following widespread outrage, the Tangshan Police issued a statement on Friday saying they had identified the suspects and would "spare no effort" to arrest them.
On Saturday afternoon, authorities announced the arrest of nine men believed to be involved in the attack, including four who fled some 600 miles south of Jiangsu province.
Two women were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries and are in stable condition, according to the Police.
The debate on gender violence is revived
The attack also reignited the debate on violence against women and gender inequality in China.
A country that critics say continues to have a highly patriarchal society with pervasive misogyny, despite growing awareness of gender issues among young women.
What is the key to preventing violence against women?
"What happened at the Tangshan restaurant was not an isolated social incident, but part of systemic gender-based violence. We need to...recognize that we still live in an environment that supports, encourages and drives men to engage in violence against women. women based on gender," read an article widely shared on social media.
In recent years, a series of shocking incidents of violence against women has sparked outrage in the country.
Last year, a Tibetan vlogging woman died after her ex-husband set her on fire while she was livestreaming her social media followers.
The man was sentenced to death in October.
Earlier this year, a mother of eight was shown on video chained by her neck in a shed in rural Jiangsu province.
After authorities initially repeatedly denied it, they finally admitted that she was a victim of human trafficking.
"Of course we should take legal action to punish specific offenders and perpetrators. But if we don't address systemic gender oppression, if we don't change the social norms that promote male chauvinism and encourage violence, our fury will simply continue to the next incident." ”, pointed out the article spread on social networks.
The Chinese government seems to be bothered by the discussions after the video
However, such discussions did not appear to sit well with the Chinese government, which has long used heavy-handed measures against the country's feminist movement, arresting and silencing activists and censoring online debates.
The article, which was posted on WeChat along with other social media content on gender issues, has been removed from the internet.
10 actions that are also violence against women (although it is difficult to recognize them)
Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, said in a statement on Saturday that it had blocked 992 accounts for violations including "deliberately provoking a gender confrontation" in discussing the Tangshan attack.
The official Weibo account shared some of the posts from users they blocked, which included violent and derogatory language towards Chinese women.
However, other posts that Weibo censored, and which CNN was able to capture, were from users expressing concern about violence against women and urging people to "keep speaking your mind."
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Initially, some state media reports downplayed the man's act of sexual harassment, saying he was "trying to strike up a conversation."
This caused a negative reaction from the readers.
Authorities and state media have sought to portray the attack as an isolated event, and to shift the focus from gender issues to local gang violence.
Five of the suspects had criminal records, ranging from illegal detention offenses to intentional harm to others, according to the state-run China National Radio.
This Sunday, the Tangshan authorities launched a two-week campaign to crack down on organized crime.
"This will not confront violence against women"
Lv Pin, a prominent Chinese feminist now living in New York, said that by decoupling the Tangshan attack from a gender perspective, the government distances itself from the responsibility it should bear for not addressing issues of gender inequality and violence. in society.
"When we talk about systemic problems, the responsibility must lie with the government. But now, the government is using its heavy hand [against organized crime] to bolster its legitimacy. This kind of campaign-style crackdown will not address the problem of gender violence, he said.
Feng Yuan, founder of Equality, a Beijing-based women's rights group, said that to eliminate systematic gender-based violence, China should start by incorporating more content about gender equality into education.
"It's not just about teaching kids mottos and abstract concepts, but about showing them how to apply them in real life, like showing mutual respect," he said.
Security forces should also put aside their passivity when it comes to cases of gender-based violence, Feng added.
"In many domestic violence cases, the police response was often perfunctory, while a large number of sexual assault cases were easily dismissed because there was insufficient evidence," he said.
Relatively light punishments
Relatively light punishments for gender-based violence also do not deter offenders.
After the Tangshan attack, social media users re-shared state media reports of a similar incident in 2020. In the eastern province of Zhejiang, a group of men beat a 25-year-old woman until she died. passed out in a restaurant, after she rejected sexual harassment from a man.
The victim was hospitalized for 15 days, while the men were detained between 10 and 13 days.
No further charges were filed.
Tata, the office worker in Chengdu, said the attack on women in Tangshan showed that gender-based violence can happen to anyone.
"Chinese women have long suffered from the shame of being victims of gender-based violence. But the young women who were assaulted in Tangshan are 'perfect' victims. They did not go out alone and were not scantily clad," she said, referring to the accusations that are often directed at victims of sexual assault in China.
"All they did was try to protect themselves and their friends. But even though they did everything right, they were still subjected to such brutal violence. That's what scares so many of us."
