Video of chained woman sparks outrage in China
Feb 27, 2022
Beijing [China], February 27 : The woman, identified as 44-year-old Xiao Huamei, originally from Yunnan province in China, in a video, was found chained by the neck to an outdoor shed, incoherent and shivering in the cold in rural eastern China.
At one end, China's glittering Closing Ceremonies were taking place and on the other end there was a furore in Chinese people over the woman, a mother of eight and victim of human trafficking reported the Washington Post.
She was the victim of human trafficking in Fengxian, a poor rural county in Xuzhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
This incident prompted a kind of activism that seems rare since Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power. The death of whistleblower Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang of covid-19 in February 2020 in China has seen such an outpouring of public anger.
However such kind of public outrage has not been witnessed since then until the video went public. Over the weekend, a woman had tried to visit the chained mother, reported the Washington Post.
She, in an online post, shared how she herself, upon trying to visit the chained woman was then detained, beaten and barred from using the bathroom while in police custody.
The woman's case was one of the top trending topics on the microblogging site Weibo as the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics began.
One viewer commented, "The ceremony really is beautiful. Will the chained woman be there? Where is she? Is she safe?"
People are trying to dig up information about the chained woman. Some have set up encrypted Telegram channels to share information about the woman to the public.
Others are organizing volunteers to go to Xuzhou and investigate similar cases, with the hope of rescuing abducted women.