A male attacker assaulted a woman on Sunday night at the hallway of a Beijing hotel notorious for prostitution. The hotel, Home Inns, owned by Yitel Hotel, is located at the popular 798 Art District.
Wanwan_2016, a user of Sina Weibo and the victim, posted on Monday the surveillance video of the attack which occurred before 11 p.m. The video became viral on Weibo and raised concern over the safety of women in the capital city, especially at night.
Beyond the attack, what was disturbing was that neither the hotel employees nor bystanders stopped to help the victim during the attack. Another issue raised is the lack of media coverage of the incident, reported Whatsonweibo.
Thanks to social media, the video has been shared almost one million times and it has elicited thousands of comments within 48 hours the clip was posted. The video was actually a video taken by the victim when she was showed the surveillance clip of the assault.
The woman is heard commenting and crying when she viewed the footage. It showed the man assault her by grabbing the victim’s throat as she was about to leave the hotel. Then he dragged her out to the street which was no longer within the CCTV’s range.
Fortunately for the woman, another female customer of the hotel intervened and stopped the male attacker. Had she not stepped in, the victim could have been kidnapped by the man.
China.org suggested that the reason why bystanders did not stop the attack was they thought it was a lover's quarrel. That attitude has led on Weibo user to comment that Chinese tolerate men beating their wives or children. As a result, a lot of suspects “pretend to be spouses or head of the household, so that bystanders don’t care about their cruel acts.”
Hotel Inns, in a statement it issued 12 hours after the attack, said it has established a special team to investigate the incident when it learned how Wanwan suffered. The hotel said it tried to contact her but had difficulty finding the victim.