China: a new public assault relaunches debate on violence against women

A month earlier, a violent aggression had aroused questioning about the safety of women in China.

video surveillance images shocked Chinese Internet users: in a Henan bar, in the center of China, the gateway to the toilet opens suddenly and a young woman tries to escape before being caught up by a man who grabs him, then drags it through the hair towards the toilet before closing the door. Customers, all men, hesitate. Until a woman decides to open the door, soon helped by other customers. On the evening of the facts, the attacker and the victim were heard by the police, and released in the process. The video surveillance images had to be broadcast online, arousing the indignation of the Chinese public, so that the police relaunch the investigation.

For many Chinese, these images were all the more painful since they recalled others: on June 10, in the middle of the night, several women had been taken to task by a group of men tipped in A restaurant in Tangshan, east of Beijing. After refusing their advances, they had suffered a real unleashing of violence. The relentlessness of the aggressors, filmed by the omnipresent surveillance cameras in China, and the impunity they seemed to enjoy (they were only arrested after the broadcast of images to the general public, the day after) had aroused a Important debate, relating to both violence against women and on security in the country in general. The authorities justify the limits to individual freedoms and generalized surveillance, as a sacrifice necessary to ensure the security of the people.

An assertion called into question by these regular various facts. In Tangshan, the police were criticized for having taken more than half an hour to intervene. Nine people were certainly arrested the following days, but the Internet users noticed their mafia style and the fact that one of them at least was already known to the police for acts of violence, sequestration and illegal Paris. After this attack, in the considerable impact, the Tangshan police had led a great demonstration of force and dismissed a police officer.

of important gaps

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the question of violence against women is an increasingly discussed subject in China, but considered to be sensitive by the authorities, who watches all rights to define rights. In Tangshan, the state media preferred to emphasize hooliganism and mafia gangs, which China seeks to “eradicate”, than to talk about the security of women in particular.

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/Media reports.