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What is the bullying case in China that has led to rare protests?
China has vowed to crack down on school bullying.
Protest are a rare thing in China.
And for good reason.
Everyone knows about Tiananmen square in 1989, where the state ruthlessly stamped out political opposition.
But that hasn't stopped protests from erupting in Jiangyou in the country's southwest after a video of a schoolgirl being bullied by her classmates went viral.
This comes in the backdrop of bullying in China being a subject of public debate.
In 2024, a high-profile sparked discussion about the punishment being meted out to juvenile offenders.
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But what happened? What do we know? How have the authorities responded?
Let's take a closer look
What happened?
Videos on Chinese social media showed a young girl named Lai being pummelled with kicks and slaps in China's Sichuan province.
The culprits? Three other teenagers.
The video shows Lai, the victim, being forced to kneel in front of her assailants.
The incident, which occurred in July, was filmed by passers-by.
Videos purportedly show Lai being hit with a stick.
Lai warned her assailants she would call the police, only to be dismissed by her attackers.
One of the girls said she they were not afraid, while another claimed she had been to the police station over 10 times. She added that she had been let off in under 20 minutes.
Lai was left with multiple bruises on Lai's scalp and knees, according to the police.
The three suspects, all female, are 13, 14 and 15.
There are reports that the girl, Lai, had been bullied incessantly.
Her mother, who is reportedly deaf, had been pleading with authorities to act.
Things reportedly got bloody after the police used batons and cattle prods to disperse the crowd. Image courtesy: Human Rights in China/X
Police on August 4 said two of the attackers were being sent to a correctional
The onlookers and a third girl who participated in the abuse were 'criticised and educated', the police added.
They said the teens' guardians had been 'ordered to exercise strict discipline'.
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But not everyone is satisfied.
Those online have demanded more punishment for the teenagers who attacked Lai, particularly given the reports that the victim had been bullied for a while.
'The sentence is too light… that is why they were so arrogant,' one top-liked Weibo comment under the police statement read.
Then, on Monday, over 1,000 protesters took to the streets in Jiangyou. Protests were held outside local government offices. The demonstrators gathered till well after midnight.
How have authorities reacted?
By cracking down on protesters.
Things reportedly got bloody after the police used batons and cattle prods to disperse the crowd.
Video footage taken outside the city hall showed at least two people forcibly pulled aside by a group of blue-shirted and plain-clothes police officers; a woman in a black dress was also dragged away by her limbs.
'They're sweeping away citizens everywhere,' a person can be heard saying on the video, as the woman is dragged away.
More footage taken after dark showed the police wearing black Swat uniforms subduing at least three people at an intersection with hundreds of bystanders.
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Firstpost has not independently verified the authenticity of the videos.
On August 5, Jiangyou was the second top-trending topic on Weibo – China's version of X –before it and related hashtags were censored.
Police also denied that the assailants were children of a lawyer and police inspector.
They said two of the parents are unemployed, while two others are working outside the province. One is a local salesperson and another is a delivery driver, police added.
On August 5, local authorities said on WeChat that the police had punished two people for fabricating information about the school bullying case, warning the public against spreading rumours.
They said the posts have 'seriously disrupted public order and caused bad social impact'.
A Shanghai-based lawyer wrote on Weibo, 'The penalty for causing minor injuries is too mild, while the physical and mental trauma suffered by victims is overlooked by the law, which leads to a significant imbalance in the protection of their rights".
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This comes after a number of high-profile cases. In January, the death of the teen caused violent protests in northwest China. The protests saw demonstrators target police in Shaanxi province's Pucheng. Authorities claimed the teen died in an accident, but social media was rife with rumours of a cover up.
In December, a court sentenced a teenage boy to life in prison and gave another a long prison term for murdering a classmate.
The suspects, all aged under 14 at the time of the murder, were accused of bullying a 13-year-old classmate over a long period before killing him in an abandoned greenhouse and burying his body.
Another boy was given 12 years in prison, while a third whom the court found did not harm the victim was sentenced to correctional education.
With inputs from agencies
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