China erupts with fury over footage of women being assaulted in hotel

SOCIAL media has erupted with fury over sickening footage of a young woman being assaulted at a Beijing hotel — while watched on bystanders did nothing.

A YOUNG woman who was choked, violently assaulted and almost kidnapped in a hotel in China has sparked a social media firestorm after sharing security footage of the sickening attack.

The video has attracted more than two billion views — more than the number of people in China — and has become one of the most hotly debated topics in the country.

Uploaded on China’s Twitter equivalent, Weibo, on Tuesday by a woman using the name Wanwan, the surveillance footage shows a woman being grabbed and dragged across a hotel corridor by a man.

Even worse, the attack at the Yitel hotel in Beijing unfolded in full view of bystanders who did nothing to stop it.

The footage shows the woman’s assailant choke her, yank her hair and attempt to abduct her while she shouts, “I don’t know you, let go of me!”.

A hotel staff member assumed that they were a couple quarrelling and watched them for several minutes before asking them to take their fight elsewhere, the woman said.

The woman is dragged to the ground by the man as a bystanders watches on.

After a failed attempt to flee through the elevator, the woman was eventually rescued by a female stranger.

“The whole incident lasted five to six minutes, in a place entirely covered with surveillance cameras, yet not a single security or hotel management staff member came out to help me,” Wanwan said.

Wanwan said she called police multiple times but was told the incident “wasn’t their business”. They eventually opened an investigation.

In a separate post, Wanwan said the hotel had offered her money to take down her post but she refused.

Protesters have rallied outside the Yitel hotel in Beijing demanding more protection for women. Picture: AFP / STR

The video attracted more than two million comments on Weibo and set off a flurry of hashtags, including the hashtag “Girl attacked at Yitel”, which has been used more than two million times and viewed by two billion users.

Many Weibo uses have flooded the platform with self-defence tips.

China passed its first ever law against domestic violence in December, despite government statistics stating that nearly a quarter of all married Chinese women have fallen victim to it, AFP reports.

The day after the video posting went viral, women held a protest outside the hotel demanding hotels do more to protect women guests.

Yitel’s parent company Homeinns issued a statement saying: “We deeply apologise to the person involved and the general public.”

Yitel hotel manager Liu Hongni addresses the media as video footage of the assault goes viral on social media. Picture: AFP / STR

The incident revealed “insufficient security management and customer service”, among other issues, it admitted.

Much of the furore has been directed at a cultural reluctance in China for bystanders to come to the aid of strangers.

That may be because of a number of high-profile cases in which injured parties have tried to extort money from those who have helped them.

In a globally infamous 2012 incident, a toddler named Yue Yue in Guangdong province was run over by two separate vehicles and later died after being ignored by more than a dozen passers-by.

In another well-known case in 2009, a driver who assisted an elderly woman who had been hit by a car was ordered by a court to pay her $20,000 — on the grounds that he would not have helped if he wasn’t the one who hit her.