Police brutality against migrant worker should be turning point

A video showing a police officer treading on the long hair of a female rural migrant worker, believed to have been beaten to death by police officers, not only shames the police in the city of Taiyuan, where the incident took place on Dec 13. It has also raised the question of how police officers should be prevented from using violence.

In this case, two police officers have already been detained on suspicion of beating the woman to death and injuring her husband. An autopsy was being conducted on Monday to determine the direct cause of death.

The woman named Zhou Xiuyun and her husband were among more than a dozen rural migrant workers from Central China's Henan province who were asking for the wages they were owed for their work they had done at a construction site in Taiyuan, the capital city of North China's Shanxi province.