A man in China has been sentenced to death precisely a year after he set his ex-wife on fire while she was live-streaming on the Chinese version of TikTok.

The victim, who is a Tibetan woman identified as 30-year-old Lhamo, was a farmer and live streamer in a Tibetan autonomous prefecture in the southwestern province of Sichuan. She was reportedly streaming a video of herself last September when a man exploded, poured gasoline on her, and set her on fire right in her father’s house. She died two weeks later.
The culprit is her ex-husband, Tang Lu. He was immediately arrested and found guilty of murder, sentenced to death, and ordered to pay compensation in court on Thursday, according to the state broadcaster.

The case infuriated Chinese women after media reports suggested that Lhamo had been suffering from Tang’s frequent beatings since the two married a few years ago. Her older sister said Lhamo called the police at least twice, but officers refused to interfere because it was a “family matter.”

CCTV reported that the court found that his crime was “extremely brutal” and “deserves severe punishment.”

According to CCTV, before getting divorced in June 2020, Tang has a history of physical abuse towards Lhamo, allegedly beating her several times. In the months that followed, he repeatedly sought her out and asked to remarry, but she refused – leading to murder.

The matter was widely covered in national and international media, drawing attention to the gruesome nature of Lhamo’s death, as well as the larger problems surrounding women and violence in China. On Chinese social media, it is hotly debated how the country’s legal system often fails to protect victims while readily forgiving perpetrators of abuse.

Part of the problem, many activists and women said, was the lingering and deep-rooted belief that domestic disputes are a family’s problem – which can often mean that officials are reluctant to get involved, or that women should One faces social stigma for speaking out. Until 2001, when China amended its marriage law, abuse was not considered grounds for divorce.

China only enacted its first national law in 2015 prohibiting domestic violence, a key piece of legislation defining domestic violence for the first time, and that includes psychological abuse as well as physical violence.

Themes of domestic violence, abuse, and dissatisfaction with the system were already circulating in public discourse when Lhamo was murdered, fueling growing outrage.

A few months before her death, China passed a controversial law that requires couples wishing to divorce to first undergo a one-month “cooling-off” period – raising concerns that it could further harm victims of abuse. could put them in danger and prevent them from leaving a dangerous relationship.

Capital punishment for those who committed serious crimes has strong public support in China despite protests from human rights groups. The country is believed to carry out the most death sentences in the world, although the exact number of executions is unknown.

The death penalty for Tang has been welcomed on Chinese social media, with many women hoping it could set an example for future rulings on intimate partner violence, which has often been met with lenient punishment, if any, under China’s patriarchal culture.