A Chinese man was executed for murdering his ex-wife after dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire while live-streaming the crime. The victim, known as Lamu, was a social media personality Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Hundreds of thousands of fans followed her to watch videos in which she shared details of life in the mountains of southwest China’s Sichuan province.
The tragic case highlighted violence against women in the country. A survey shows that one in four women in the Asian giant has suffered domestic abuse.
Lamu, who left her two children orphans, reportedly went to the police to report the violence she suffered from her husband as soon as they were married, but was informed that it was a family matter.
The social network personality had nearly 800,000 followers, who followed upbeat posts about the simple rural lifestyle. The videos showed Lamu foraging for food in the mountains, cooking and skimming humorous songs, dressed in traditional Tibetan clothing. The publications accumulated more than 6.3 million likes.
When her ex-husband Tang Lu was sentenced to death, the court in Aba Province, a remote rural area in southwest Sichuan province where large numbers of ethnic Tibetans live, concluded the crime was “extremely cruel”. and that the social impact was “extremely bad”.
In June 2020, Lamu divorced Tang, whom the court found to have a history of violence against her. About three months later, he doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The blogger suffered burns on 90% of her body and died after two weeks.
The case caused outrage across the country and sparked debates about violence against women. Thousands of followers posted messages on Lamu’s profile on Douyin, while millions of users on the microblogging platform Weibo called for justice using hashtags that were later censored.
China criminalized domestic violence in 2016, but the crime remains common, particularly in rural areas. Activists fear that a mandatory 30-day “cool-off” period, recently introduced for couples seeking divorce, will make it harder for women to escape abusive relationships.
This text was originally published here.
