Chinese man executed for setting ex-wife ablaze during live-stream

A Chinese man, Tang Lu, has been executed after being found guilty of setting his ex-wife, Lamu, ablaze while she was live streaming on the social media platform Douyin.

The husband and wife separated in June 2020 after eleven years of being married to each other. According to local media reports, Tang was physically abusive towards the victim, which is why she divorced him.

Tang did not want a divorce and kept trying to persuade her to remarry him, but Lamu rejected the idea. He set his wife ablaze in September 2020 as she was live-streaming on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok owned by the same parent company. The woman died of her injuries a few weeks later at a hospital.

She used to share snippets of her life and the Sichuan countryside on Douyin. She was ethnically Tibetan and would often wear traditional Tibetan dresses in the videos, reports The Global Times.

On the day of the horrific attack, Tang appeared in the video and started to pour gasoline on Lamu and set her on fire as she kept screaming. He was arrested soon after and sentenced to death in October 2021.

Tang had appealed against the decision, but the court rejected his appeal in January this year. He was executed on Saturday and was allowed to meet his family before the execution in the southwestern Sichuan province, per a statement by the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture intermediate people's court.

Lamu's case drew widespread condemnation and outrage, with people calling for laws that would allow victims to get an automatic divorce.

According to a 2013 All-China Women's Federation survey, about one in four married Chinese women have suffered domestic abuse. The country had also reported an increase in domestic violence cases during Covid lockdowns.

Hubei province, which was at the heart of the initial Covid outbreak saw a threefold increase in domestic violence cases, per a report in The Diplomat.