Story By: John Feng, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report
AsiaWire
This is the moment a Chinese woman in a red dress and knee-high boots is dragged out of a supermarket and pinned to the ground after allegedly refusing to wear a mask as the country deals with the coronavirus outbreak.
Mobile phone footage dated 29th January shows the shopper, identified only by her surname Qiu, resisting two uniformed officers as they eject her from an aisle of the Space supermarket in Shenzhen, in South China’s Guangdong Province.
The local government, responsible for some 113 million inhabitants, had announced a province-wide mask order effective on 26th January, making it a punishable offence to be in a public space without a surgical mask.
Qiu, 51, reportedly refused to comply with the temporary law aimed at stopping the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, which has killed 213 people and infected nearly 10,000 in mainland China.
According to supermarket staff inside the Kingkey Banner Center shopping centre, Qiu was confronted by a number of other shoppers who asked her to wear a face mask or leave.
A verbal argument broke out, during which Qiu is said to have spat at other shoppers as well as arriving police.
The video shows her kicking arresting police officers as they tie her hands behind her back and pin her to the floor in front of witnesses.
The authorities said Qiu was taken to Kangning Hospital, which confirmed she was not infected with the novel coronavirus.
She was to be discharged and handed back to Shenzhen police for further questioning, but it was not immediately clear whether she would be jailed for refusing to wear a surgical mask.
A Space supermarket spokesperson told local media that all their shops are being disinfected once every two hours amid concerns over the pneumonia-like outbreak.
The World Health Organization has declared the Wuhan coronavirus a global health emergency at a meeting held on 30th January.
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