Online videos and photographs of a woman being beat to death at a Shandong McDonald’s by six alleged members of the “All-powerful Spirit” religious cult have triggered anger from netizens who’ve criticized witnesses for doing nothing to prevent the killing.
The New York Times reports:
Cellphone video of the attack was posted on a Chinese website. It showed several people watching the attack, raising questions about why bystanders did not try to intervene and whether the police could have responded more quickly.
“Watching the video, I think the thing that is most frightening about the Zhaoyuan case is not that someone died, but the indifference of the bystanders,” Cairang Duoji, a Beijing-based humanitarian activist, said in an op-ed in The Beijing News. “Of course there are some special circumstances, for example, it happened suddenly, so bystanders may have not had time to respond or recover from their alarm. But from the eyewitness’s video you can see more than five strong young men walking about as if nothing happened, hiding by the doorway and craning their necks to watch the bloody slaughter.”
The McDonald’s is located across the street from a local police station, according to the DailyMail.
One of the attackers, a minor, can’t be charged as an adult. The rest are detained and being charged with intentional homicide.
By Aliaume Leroy
