A Chinese mother-of-eight has been found chained by the neck in a freezing shed sparking outrage in the Communist country.
The woman, identified only as ‘Little Plum Blossom’ was found in the wooden shack on the outskirts of Xuzhou city in Jiangsu province last month wearing thin clothing in the middle of winter and a metal brace around her neck.
Authorities quickly dismissed concerns about abduction or trafficking before desperately trying to censor critical comments online about their failure to protect her.
In the video, a young boy says he brings the woman food to her every day, and she appears unable to communicate.
Local reports say she is married to a local man and has given birth to his eight children, but her hometown is in the faraway southwestern province of Yunnan, raising fears of trafficking.
The footage was first posted on Chinese social media sites by an online blogger who found the woman while visiting the area to advertise charity efforts in rural parts of the country.
A Chinese mother-of-eight who has been found chained by the neck in a freezing shed has sparked outrage in the Communist country
The woman, identified only as ‘Little Plum Blossom’ was found in the wooden shack on the outskirts of Xuzhou city in Jiangsu province
Muddled statements from Chinese authorities have prompted further outrage from the public in a country where dissent is rarely allowed to foment.
It has also led to questions over the treatment of women and the failure to crack down on alleged abuse.
One woman said she tried to visit the mother but was stopped by police and told she had been sent to hospital.
Some have called for a boycott of products from Fengxian, while others have made signs of support reading: ‘The world has not abandoned you. Your sisters are coming.’
Local reports say she is married to a local man and has given birth to his eight children
The activism has prompted alarm in the totalitarian country that it could grow into a Chinese #MeToo case, which authorities have previously clamped down on.
Bride trafficking is a major problem in China after decades of family planning resulted in a shortage of boys.
Under Chinese law, buying a trafficked woman carries a sentence of less than three years in prison.
The alleged father of the eight children had previously been praised for the size of his family amid China’s declining population, but the mother was never previously mentioned.
‘Xuzhou, you’re taking us all for fools,’ said one user of the WeChat social media platform.
Footage was posted on Chinese social media sites by an online blogger who found the woman while visiting the area to advertise charity efforts
Some comments and articles are already being censored online, and the blogger who first posted the footage has had his account removed.
The clumsy and contradictory statements from authorities have only fuelled the anger, with the Fengxian propaganda department initially giving her the wrong name and asserting: ‘There was no abduction and trafficking.’
Days later, a second statement said chains were only being used to restrain the woman when she is unstable, while a third statement said her name was Xiao Huamei, but it remains unclear if this is just a nickname.
They also said her missing teeth were the result of periodontal disease and she had been sent to the region by her family to find a husband.
They claimed she had been suffering from ‘abnormal speech and behaviour’ in 1996 and was then brought to Jiangsu by a fellow villager for medical treatment and to find a husband, but then went missing.
The case has sparked protests online, with some calling for a boycott of products from Fengxian
But in a separate statement, county authorities had said the woman was rescued by her husband’s late father while begging for food in 1998 and got married two months later.
‘Three statements which all read differently. Where’s the government’s credibility?’ a user of the Weibo social media platform asked.
Xuzhou authorities promised that lessons had been learned.
‘Party committees and governments at the city and county levels will learn from this incident… and further strengthen support and guarantees for various groups that are in difficulty,’ they said.
Authorities have not directly commented on the video that triggered the outcry but have said the police are investigating the woman’s husband.