Police in Shenzhen arrested a migrant worker suspected of trying to indecently assault a young woman on Thursday, with a 30-second video of the alleged incident shocking viewers when it went online.
The video, believed to be from a CCTV camera, appears to show the 30-year-old, surnamed Ye, loitering naked in the narrow corridor of a condominium in Shenzhen’s Baoan district that has been subdivided into rental rooms. He grabbed the woman, surnamed Wu, when she left one of the rooms, and tried to drag her off to his own quarters.
Clearly startled, the woman was putting up stiff resistance and yelling for help when the video cut out. Online viewers were concerned about her welfare and whereabouts, but Baoan Public Security Bureau said police had been alerted by a neighbor and had rescued the woman.
A police statement said the woman suffered bruising but no serious injuries. She has been taken to a secure interim housing unit and is receiving counselling. The incident is being treated by police as an attempted rape.
China has seen a spike in indecent assaults and rapes in major cities, with many occurring in districts where migrant workers and recent college graduates rent cheap subdivided rooms without real estate management. These do not have proper security surveillance systems.
However, government efforts to clamp down on unauthorized rental units in Beijing and other big cities and drive “low-end” workers out to reduce public security risks have also attracted a backlash.