BEIJING (Reuters) – Seemingly muddled accounts from authorities in China about the case of a woman who appeared in a video chained up in the cold have infuriated many members of the public and stirred debate about the role of local authorities and domestic abuse.
The plight of the woman came to light last month when a video was posted on social media showing her apparently in a confused state and with a chain around her neck, dressed in light clothing despite freezing winter temperatures.
As her case drew an increasing amount of public attention, various authorities in the city of Xuzhou and at the county level in the province of Jiangsu issued statements about the woman, who city authorities said has a husband and eight children.
But their accounts were often contradictory, with even the woman’s name unclear, to the growing frustration of social media users, many of whom suspected human traffickers had abducted the woman and authorities were failing her.
“Xuzhou, you’re taking us all for fools,” said one user of the WeChat social media platform.
Xuzhou city authorities said on Monday evening they had found out the woman, identified by county authorities by her surname Yang, was actually called Xiaohuamei and was from a village in Yunnan province, in southwest China.
But that name sounds like a nickname and it was not clear if Xiaohuamei was her real name.
County-level authorities, in the first of two statements they issued, had said the woman had been diagnosed with a mental illness and dismissed suggestions of human-trafficking.
Xuzhou authorities said on Monday the woman 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.
In a previous 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.
(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Stella Qiu; Editing by Robert Birsel)