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Video of violent beating causes school protest

By Ma Zhenhuan and Li Xinzhu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-27 10:48

Protesters put a huge poster of an angry face on the main gate of Shanghai Nanhu Vocational School in the Hongkou district yesterday afternoon.[China Daily/Gao Erqiang]

Video of a schoolgirl violently attacking another girl was first released on video-sharing website Ku6 on Friday. Shown here are four screen grabs.

SHANGHAI: The posting of a video of a school girl violently attacking another girl resulted in about 200 people gathering in the front of the girls' school yesterday afternoon to show their anger and demand that the school severely punish the attacker.

On Friday, a video clip titled "Shanghai girl beaten" was first released on the video-sharing website Ku6. The five-minute clip, shot with a mobile phone videocamera, shows the attacker furiously beating another girl - slapping her face, and kicking her in the waist and belly.

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The video was then released on other major websites and online forums over the weekend. Netizens began searching the Internet for the attacker's personal details such as her name, her school, and her home address. People discovered that the attacker went to school at a branch of the Shanghai Nanhu Vocational School in the Hongkou district.

Some of the angry netizens published all the girl's personal information on the Internet.

Then they decided to launch a mass protest yesterday, and spread the announcement of the protest through KDS, a regional forum popular among netizens in Shanghai, and chatrooms of Baidu was well.

During the protest, the protesters shouted, "The school needs to apologize to the public."

"She can't just beat the poor girl. She has to pay for it," said a boy in his 20s, who did not want to reveal his name.

Protesters put a huge poster of an angry face on the main gate of the school.

Students of the school, apparently frightened by the mass gathering, chose to stay inside their classrooms even when the school day was over. About 20 policemen soon rushed to the site to keep the chaos under control.

Sun Xiaofeng, a teacher from the school, said the school's headmaster had visited the home of the attacker, whose surname is Xiong. In the video, she goes by a nickname "Sister Xiong".

"Everything is under investigation. We are not sure about anything so far," she added.

"She is a nice girl usually, and we can't imagine why she had this violent behavior," said Qiao Renguo, a security guard for Xiong's community.

The beating is believed to have arisen from jealousy over a boyfriend's affections.