The assault of a group of men on women who were inside a restaurant sparked outrage in China, especially since video footage documented the attack, which was described as “brutal”.
And the Chinese authorities arrested 8 people in the northeastern city of Tangshan, after a group of 3 women who were eating in a restaurant were attacked, according to the British newspaper, “Daily Mail”.
The footage, which was spread on the Chinese Twitter-like Weibo platform, shows a man approaching a table in the restaurant and placing his hand on a woman’s body in an act of harassment, but the woman pushed him away before he beat her, but he resisted him by throwing a water bottle on his head.
Her two friends who were with her at the table did not stand idly by, so one of them hit the aggressor with bottles as well, then a number of his friends who were with him intervened and beat the second lady, while the first lady was dragged on the ground outside the restaurant, where she was brutally kicked and utensils smashed on her body.
One of the woman’s friends outside the restaurant was thrown to the ground very violently, after she tried to stop the assault on the woman.
Despite some timid attempts to stop the assault, the first assailant in the restaurant continued to beat the woman he tried to harass inside, kicking her in the face with his foot.
The physical assault on the woman lasted about 3 minutes, and later the assailants disappeared in a side road before the victims pursued them.
The local police said that two women had sustained non-life-threatening injuries and were receiving treatment in hospital, according to “Reuters”.
The local public security bureau said in a Weibo post that the police had arrested the nine suspects in the case by noon today and the investigation was still underway.
Discussion of the attack dominated Chinese social media and ranked in the top six most controversial topics on Weibo.
“Such brutal cases of gross violations of women’s rights and interests should be zero-tolerated,” said a comment published by the All-China Women’s Federation website, which deals with Chinese women’s news.
And in February, the appearance of a woman from Feng County in east China’s Jiangsu Province tied by the neck in a video clip that went viral on social media sparked a huge public outcry in China.