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On Monday, a number of activists wore t-shirts emblazoned with the query “The place Is Peng Shuai?” to a match at Wimbledon as a way to elevate consciousness in regards to the Chinese language tennis star. Peng has been absent from worldwide media following her pressured disappearance, pressured re-appearances, and pressured retirement within the wake of a sexual assault allegation towards former Chinese language Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli that she posted final November. Peng received a Grand Slam title at Wimbledon in 2013, however dialogue of the injustice towards her was unwelcome on the event this week. As Emine Sinmaz from The Guardian reported, the activists had been confronted by Wimbledon safety guards who warned them to not strategy anybody on the venue:
Will Hoyles, 39, one of many campaigners, mentioned: “We got here attempting to lift a little bit of consciousness however Wimbledon have managed to make it worse for themselves by harassing us …
“They had been asking a great deal of questions on what we had been going to do, why we had been right here, you understand, what we’d already carried out and so forth. And we advised them we’d simply been wandering round and we’d spoken to a couple folks and that’s after they appeared to get fairly suspicious.”
He mentioned that the workers advised them they “mustn’t strategy anybody to speak to them”. “They mentioned repeatedly the membership doesn’t wish to be political,” he added. [Source]
Regardless of citing “political neutrality” to justify tamping down the present of assist for Peng Shuai, Wimbledon selected to ban 16 athletes from Russia and Belarus in April, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’ assist for the invasion. An identical controversy occurred in January, when the Australian Open ejected activists trying to lift consciousness about Peng Shuai’s disappearance, however that group later reversed its determination beneath widespread public stress. The Girls’s Tennis Affiliation, one of many few main tennis organizations that has adopted via on its supportive rhetoric of Peng, has canceled all of its occasions in China because of her continued absence from public life.
Good to see a small group of activists right here at #Wimbledon right this moment sporting “The place is Peng Shuai?” t-shirts.
There was solely silence since Peng was trotted out as a prop for the Olympics in February.
Questions stay, and China stays on the ATP’s 2022 schedule.
— Ben Rothenberg (@BenRothenberg) July 4, 2022
Off the court docket, different #MeToo circumstances are slowly making their manner via China’s judicial system. On June 22, a Chinese language court docket sentenced Zhang Guo, a person accused of sexually assaulting a former Alibaba worker, to 18 months in jail. The previous worker, surnamed Zhou, alleged that Zhang and her former supervisor, surnamed Wang, had pressured her into ingesting an excessive amount of alcohol at a consumer dinner final August and raped her later that night time. After Zhou revealed her story on an inside company message board, Alibaba fired Wang, however then did an about-face and fired ten different staff for “leaking” Zhou’s accusation to the general public. Zhou finally misplaced her personal job as nicely. This week, within the wake of Zhang’s sentencing, Zhou referred to as out inconsistencies within the police assertion in regards to the case. Huizhong Wu from the Related Press reported on Zhou’s on-line submit criticizing Wang’s lenient judicial therapy:
Zhou criticized the official police account for turning her supervisor from “somebody who objectively has legal intention, a rapist with precise legal intentions, into an excellent boss caring for his drunk feminine subordinate.”
“And as for me? … I’ve develop into a slut who’s falsely accusing the male boss that she was carrying on with,” she continued.
[…] She wrote that her former supervisor had stolen her ID card to get the resort to make him a key for her room, asking the workers to checklist him as a fellow traveler. She additionally mentioned that police had concluded she couldn’t categorical herself clearly when the entrance desk referred to as to get her consent for giving him a key.
“He voluntarily cancelled his taxi on the app, carried my stolen ID card, went again to the resort and added himself to my room, sexually violated me,” she advised the AP, elaborating on her submit. “All these items present that not solely did he deliberately attempt to rape, but in addition he dedicated a legal act.”
A police assertion final August mentioned that Wang had the important thing made with Zhou’s consent and that he had her ID card, with out saying how he had gotten it. [Source]
Two days after Zhang was sentenced to jail, a four-hour public listening to for a sexual assault case involving the chief of one other highly effective Chinese language tech firm came about within the U.S. The sufferer, Liu Jingyao, has accused Liu Qiangdong, the billionaire founding father of Chinese language e-commerce big JD.com, of raping her after a dinner and drinks occasion in 2018. On the time, Liu Jingyao was an undergraduate on the College of Minnesota. The listening to revolved round a movement to add punitive damages towards Liu Qiangdong and JD.com, and the official jury trial is scheduled to start on both September 26 or October 3. In a current overview of the case printed by a WeChat account supportive of girls’s rights, mates and supporters of Jingyao who attended her listening to shared extra particulars in regards to the trial, and criticized the double requirements utilized to female and male habits in sexual assault circumstances:
Within the court docket of public opinion, victims are on the receiving finish of boundless scrutiny and distrust. Why don’t we ask Liu Qiangdong, or the one that organized the occasion, why a dozen middle-aged males would invite a younger twenty-something lady to a ingesting occasion? Why did Liu Qiangdong carry Jingyao to his villa within the first place? Liu Qiangdong is a married man, so why wasn’t he extra circumspect about his phrases and habits? Folks are inclined to instinctively provide you with excuses to justify the habits of wealthy and highly effective males. However as a lady, until you occur to suppose like a wonderfully rational automaton, folks will are inclined to exaggerate the “irrational” elements of your habits. [Chinese]
This week, comparable public vilification was heaped on Yu Xiuhua, a lady born with cerebral palsy who has develop into well-known for her poems about love, sexuality, incapacity, and feminine id. In a Weibo submit (deleted two hours after it was printed on Wednesday), she accused her estranged husband Yang Zhuce of home violence, alleging that he bodily assaulted her a number of occasions in the middle of their two-month marriage, after she requested him if he was having an affair with one other lady. Whereas a few of Yu’s followers had been sympathetic or outraged on her behalf, different netizens criticized her for being an attention-seeker, alleged that she “had it coming,” or made her the goal of on-line bullying and dying threats. The writer of a WeChat submit archived by CDT detailed how ladies that suffer sexual violence usually obtain harsher public scrutiny and criticism than their male abusers:
This has develop into a standard apply on-line. When a lady suffers home abuse, the primary query folks ask is, “What did she do [to provoke it]?”
Within the absence of different proof, the thoughts conjures up varied and vilifying potentialities:
“Did the person discover out that their youngster wasn’t his?”
“Was she imply to her in-laws?”
“Was she too bad-tempered?”
That is notably true within the case of Yu Xiuhua, a headstrong, high-profile lady with many enemies. Some will discover it straightforward to know why a person would possibly beat her: they’ll say she had it coming, she introduced this humiliation on herself, she knew the dangers and went into it along with her eyes large open.
“You’re previous, disabled, and ugly—why would you suppose such a younger man might really love you?”
The heartless home abuser has up to now averted the storm, whereas Yu Xiuhua, the one who was overwhelmed, finds herself within the eye of the storm, the item of public censure. [Chinese]
Translation by Cindy Carter.
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