BEIJING (CAIXIN GLOBAL) - After a video of a woman shackled to the wall of a shed caused public uproar over the Lunar New Year, a video shot by the same social media user in the same village showing a second woman in an apparently similar situation has emerged.
In a since-deleted video posted to China's TikTok equivalent Douyin, a woman in Feng county's Dongji village is seen lying on the dirt floor of a home. She appears to be unable to communicate clearly.
According to the vlogger, who goes by Xuzhou Brother Yixiu, the woman, surnamed Zhong, had been lying on the floor for 20 years.
In the first video shot in the Jiangsu province village, which went viral earlier this month, the shackled woman is also apparently unable to communicate well. The county authorities have released statements on the first case, in which they say that the mother of eight previously spent time in a mental hospital and that the police were looking into whether her husband had broken the law.
According to Dongji residents, the second woman, surnamed Zhong, is the mother of two children, one of whom is now an adult.
A local official who declined to be named told Caixin that Zhong had previously been treated at a local psychiatric hospital. Caixin has learned that the local authorities are investigating whether Zhong had been trafficked.
According to a person familiar with the family, her husband made contact with the vlogger after the first video went viral, in the hope of receiving donations. The person said that Zhong's husband bought her for 1,000 yuan (S$211) and had been fined an equivalent amount by the village authorities.
Zhong's eldest son told a person involved in charity in the area that his mother was ill and stayed on the ground to avoid falling from bed.
Villagers said Zhong's husband abused her. "Her husband often beat her in the early years. Everyone in the village knows it," one person told Caixin.
Human trafficking, especially of women in rural areas, remains a significant problem in China. There were up to 6,668 confirmed women and children victims of human trafficking in 2017, according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The State Council issued a third action plan to combat human trafficking in 2021, saying a unified standard for the examination of evidence and the handling of criminal cases of human trafficking should be established.
In China's Criminal Law, abducting and selling women and children is subject to fixed-term imprisonment of five to 10 years in addition to a fine. In serious circumstances, the death penalty and confiscation of property may be applied.
Luo Xiang, a well-known professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, said in an article on his official WeChat account that he "always advocated increasing the punishment for the crime of buying and selling abducted women and children."
This story was originally published by Caixin Global.
