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Footage of chained Chinese woman leads to public uproar

A video of a woman who suffers from severe schizophrenia apparently locked against her will in a filthy shack has gone viral in China, prompting an investigation as well as a conversation about the country’s treatment of people with mental illness.

DPA WORLD
Published February 01,2022
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A video showing a chained woman in a dilapidated mud hut has caused great horror in China: Now the authorities have launched an investigation into the woman's husband.

There is an investigation underway, several media quoted from an official statement on Sunday. The woman herself is reportedly in hospital for treatment.

The two-minute-long recording was uploaded by a blogger to the video platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, on January 26.

In it, a woman is seen chained by her neck. Despite temperatures around freezing, she is wearing only light clothing. In total, the video and corresponding hashtags have been clicked over 200 million times.

According to local media, the authorities issued a first statement on the background of the case on Friday. According to the statement, the woman, who lives in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou, has been married since 1998 and is the mother of eight children.

She suffers from severe schizophrenia, which has repeatedly led to outbreaks of violence in the past.

A heated debate then developed on China's social media. This was mainly directed against the initial reaction by the authorities, who had not addressed the victim's obviously slave-like attitude in their statement.

"Do you even treat this woman like a human being?" was one of the most clicked comments.

Users also debated the lack of awareness of mental illness in China's rural provinces.