BEIJING: Hundreds of police lined the streets of a Beijing shopping district yesterday after a rare protest over a woman’s death in the Chinese capital, highlighting tensions between authorities and migrant workers.
More than 15 police vans holding dozens of officers were visible outside the Jingwen clothing market in the capital’s south, after hours-long demonstrations on Wednesday which locals said saw hundreds take to the streets.
Staff at the mall and surrounding shops said the protests were fuelled by police mishandling of the alleged suicide of a 22-year-old migrant worker from the poverty-stricken eastern province of Anhui.
Online commentators claimed that she had been gang-raped and thrown from the building to her death, but police say she jumped from the building and their initial investigations ruled out sexual assault and murder. Migrants have flocked to the capital for decades in search of higher incomes, but are denied the same access to health and housing services as Beijing residents and sometimes report discrimination from police. Police lined shop entrances around the Jingwen market, a maze of hundreds of tiny clothing stores, nearly all staffed by women who have moved to Beijing from poorer provinces. Family members of the 22-year-old, surnamed Yuan, accused police of withholding evidence, workers who witnessed the protest said. AFP
