HONG KONG — Police in southwestern China scuffled this week with protesters demanding greater justice for a 14-year-old girl bullied by her schoolmates, the latest in a series of such incidents that have drawn national attention.
The unusual public outrage was set off by videos widely shared on Chinese social media showing a group of teenage girls verbally and physically attacking the victim in Jiangyou, a city in Sichuan province.
Local residents, some of whom were spurred by what authorities said were false reports that the families of the alleged attackers had official ties, have faced off with police they accuse of letting them off too lightly.
“Your children will meet children of officials who are more senior than you. What if they beat your children?” one man said from behind a barricade in a video verified by NBC News.
Other verified videos, many of which were swiftly taken down by Chinese censors, showed a large crowd gathered in Jiangyou on Monday night, at times singing the Chinese national anthem as the police presence grew. Some people could be seen struggling with police officers on the ground before being taken away.
Reached by phone on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Sichuan Public Security Department declined to comment and referred to earlier statements.
According to local police in Jiangyou, the incident took place on July 22, when a 15-year-old girl surnamed Liu and two others, ages 13 and 14, assaulted the 14-year-old victim, surnamed Lai, in a vacant building. Bystanders recorded the incident and uploaded it online, police said in a statement Monday.
The assault caused multiple contusions to Lai’s scalp and knees, police said, though all injuries were “minor.” Following investigation, authorities “promptly” expressed sympathy for the victim and took action, the statement said.
Liu and another alleged perpetrator, who were subject to “public security penalties,” are being sent to a special school for corrective education, the police said, while the remaining bystanders were “criticized and educated.”
It was not immediately clear what exactly the punishment entails and why one of the three alleged abusers was not penalized. Under Chinese law, anyone who engages in severe group fighting can be detained for up to 15 days and fined up to 1,000 yuan ($139), but juvenile offenders are exempted from detention and sent for corrective education instead.
Cyber police in the city of Mianyang, which administers Jiangyou, said in a statement Tuesday that the parents of the three alleged attackers were not lawyers or police officers, but that “two are unemployed, two work outside the province, one is a local shop assistant, and one is a local food delivery worker.”
They said two internet users accused of posting the false information had been “administratively punished.”
The attack has been widely discussed on Chinese social media, where commenters expressed anger over what they considered relatively light penalties.
“Only a heavy penalty can serve as a warning,” one user wrote on the popular Chinese social media platform Weibo. “This is really abhorrent.”
“It’s truly infuriating and heartbreaking,” another said. “If such behaviors go unpunished, we will eventually pay a heavy price.”
More than 50% of Chinese students have endured school bullying, including verbal abuse, social exclusion and threats of violence, according to a recent survey by the state-backed China Youth & Children Research Center.
The issue of bullying has been getting more attention in China after several high-profile cases.
In January, violent protests erupted in the northwestern province of Shaanxi over a teenage student who fell to his death at a vocational school after a “verbal and physical altercation” with another student. Investigators ruled out any crime.
Last December, a Chinese court in the northern province of Hebei sentenced one teenager to life imprisonment and another to 12 years over the murder of their 13-year-old schoolmate, who was buried in an abandoned greenhouse after being killed by a shovel.
A third suspect, who like the others was 13 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to corrective education.
Chinese authorities acknowledge that some minors take advantage of the lower penalties generally available to those under 16 and commit multiple offenses before that age, state-run broadcaster CCTV News reported in June.
The country’s top legislature passed an amendment the same month that would allow minors ages 14 to 16 to be detained over “serious and harmful” offenses starting next year.
