Justice appears headed for the female victim of the April 3 attack at the Heyi Hotel in Beijing. The suspect was arrested by authorities on Friday morning in Xuchang City, Henan Province.
The Guardian identified the suspect as a 24-year-old man named Li. Xuchang in over 750 kilometers from Beijing where the assault against Wanwan_2016 happened. Homeinn, the operator of the hotel notorious for sex trade, has apologized to the victim and is conducting an investigation on the incident.
As coverage of the incident has become international, views of the viral video original posted by Wanwan in Sina Weibo has gone up to 6.5 million.
BBC reported that the hashtag #Girl attacked at Yitel has been used more than 2 million times and viewed more than 2 billion times. The incident also led to the circulation of a video campaign #WhoWillYouHelp made by the Ontario government in 2015 to battle sexual harassment.
The incident as sparked a debate on how safe women are in the capital city when business establishment staff would not help them when attacked even if the victim had sought assistance. The online rage is being turned into action by women’s group who held a protest outside the hotel located at the 798 Art District.
Li Tingting, one of the protester and a feminist campaigner, said, “As a woman, I could feel what the woman at the scene was feeling. I could feel her helplessness, too.”
Many Chinese admit they do not intervene in similar incidents because they thought it was a domestic incident involving a lover’s quarrel. Some people also cited past experienced when the injured victim they helped even blamed them for intervening which caused the injury.