China Sentences the Husband of Woman Found Chained in a Shed

Many younger Chinese who publicly called attention to the case described it as a wake-up call about broader injustices in China. Some, who said the chained-woman case spurred them into social activism for the first time, later participated in protests that erupted in many Chinese cities in November against Beijing’s stringent Covid-19 control policies.

Early on many suspected that the chained woman was a “bought wife,” a reference to a long-held but illegal practice to help rural men find brides—often involving human traffickers who lure or abduct poor women from remote regions. Authorities in Xuzhou, in Jiangsu province, at first denied she was a trafficking victim but later confirmed the public’s suspicions. They said the woman, whom they identified by the name Xiaohuamei, had been trafficked from the southern province of Yunnan, and had been sold as a bride two different times in 1998. 

Authorities hospitalized the woman and arrested the husband and a married couple who they said had been involved in her abduction. 

Friday’s court statement said the woman had eight children with

Dong Zhimin,

a local villager whose family purchased her as a bride for 5,000 yuan, or $727 based on current exchange rates, the court statement said. 

The sentencing of Mr. Dong and the five others by the Jiangsu Xuzhou People’s Intermediary Court was covered by all major state media outlets. The court statement said the two married traffickers were convicted of abducting and selling the woman, while three others were also sentenced for trafficking crimes related to her. In all, money exchanged hands three times—she was sold twice into marriage and once to other traffickers, the court said.

The court statement said that when the woman was first sold into Mr. Dong’s family, she was able to take care of herself and communicate with others but showed mild symptoms of mental illness, such as “silly laughter and staring into the air.” Such symptoms became more pronounced after she gave birth to her sixth child in 2017. After that, Mr. Dong abused the woman and tied her up with both ropes and the chain around her neck. She was often hungry and cold, the court statement said, adding that the shed had no water, electricity or sunlight.

“Her living conditions were horrendous. Dong Zhimin’s abuse seriously damaged Xiaohuamei’s personal health,” the court said. 

Mr. Dong wasn’t charged with the crime of buying an abducted woman because of a five-year statute of limitations, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday, citing a public prosecutor. 

While Chinese law stipulates a 20-year statute of limitation on serious crimes such as human trafficking, the country’s top prosecutor made an exemption in the case and approved charging the five traffickers to show “a harsh crackdown on the crime of trafficking in women,” Xinhua said.

Coercing a woman into marriage has long been against the law in China, but paying money for a wife didn’t become a criminal offense until 1997. The chained woman case has prompted calls on the country’s legislators to impose “equal punishment for buyers and sellers.”

After more than a year of medical treatment and care, the woman’s condition is stable, Xinhua said. She can get dressed and eat with the help of doctors and nurses and communicate with the medical staff, but there are still cognitive impairments, Xinhua said.

Xinhua cited the woman’s oldest son as saying, “Before she was admitted to the hospital last year, she sometimes didn’t even know me, but now she can not only recognize me, but also call me by my name.” 

A state television video clip from the trial of Mr. Dong, held on Thursday, gained nearly 8 million views on the Chinese microblogging platform

Weibo.

A main hashtag about the trial has garnered more than 700 million views and nearly 240,000 comments. 

“The chained woman has become a symbol for injustice in China,” said He Peirong, a longtime human-rights activist who until recently was based in Jiangsu, the eastern province where the chained woman was found.

Write to Liyan Qi at [email protected]