Chinese City Tangshan Loses “Civilised” Status After Women Thrashed In Restaurant

Beijing:

After a group of men assaulted four women outside a restaurant in China recently, the Tangshan city has been stripped of its honorary “civilized” status. The assault on the women had sparked public outrage with many demanding justice.

Footage from the barbecue restaurant’s cameras on June 10 showed a man slapping and dragging a woman to the street by her hair after she appeared to reject his advances. Other men then joined in, assaulting her female companions and leaving two women sprawled on the side of the street.

Two of the women remain hospitalised in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), officials said this week, while authorities said they had arrested nine people involved in the attack.

The incident, which was caught on CCTV cameras, also renewed a national discussion on violence against women in China.

A hashtag on social media site Weibo started doing rounds after the incident in Tangshan in northern Hebei province. Soon after it grabbed the attention of the users, reported NBC News.

The video has been viewed hundreds of millions times. Hundreds of thousands of people commented after videos of the attack were posted online with many of them demanding action against the accused.

The Civilization Office of the Central Communist Party Committee on Wednesday removed the city from the nation’s honorary list of “civilised cities.”

According to the office’s official website, the “National civilised cities” are selected on eight criteria, including good social order and a healthy and upward-moving social atmosphere.

Tangshan has been awarded the status four times since 2011, most recently in 2020. The committee’s decision is the latest in a series of official responses to the attack and to the waves of anger it has provoked online.

Following the attack, the Hebei provincial security authority on Tuesday launched a disciplinary review and investigation into the Tangshan police bureau’s response to the incident.