The Anglophone Chinese state medium CGTN is Wednesday with an e-mail came out that would come from the missing top tennis player Peng Shuai.
In that email, Peng denies having experienced sexual assault. On November 2, she had just made an extensive accusation about this on the Chinese social medium Weibo. She said the sexual assault was perpetrated by former Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli, who is 40 years older than Peng. The exceptionally high position of Zhang, previously one of the nine most powerful men in China, and Peng’s fame make the case in China very sensitive.
Also read: #MeToo accusation against high-ranking party member of China
After November 2, nothing more was heard from her. In the mail now published by CGTN, she states that she is not missing at all. “I was just resting at home and everything is fine,” the email said.
She also refers to a recent statement by the international association for women tennis players, the WTA, in which the WTA is drawing attention to her case. “The news in that statement, including the allegation of sexual assault, is not true. I am not missing, and I am not unsafe,” the email reads.
WTA wants verifiable evidence
The WTA has serious doubts whether the e-mail really comes from Peng. “The statement released today by the Chinese state media about Peng Shuai raises my concerns about her safety and where she is,” said chairman Steve Simon. on the WTA . website.
“I find it hard to believe that Peng Shuai actually wrote that email,” he continues. “Peng Shuai has shown incredible courage in writing an allegation of sexual assault against a former top executive of the Chinese government. The WTA and the rest of the world need independent and verifiable proof that it is safe,” Simon continued. “I have tried repeatedly to reach her by various means of communication, without success.”
China may have felt compelled to come out with this message from Peng Shuai because her disappearance is causing more and more controversy internationally. Japan’s Naomi Osaka also stood up for Peng. She wrote on Twitter Among other things: “I only learned that a fellow tennis player was missing shortly after she confessed that she had been sexually assaulted. Censorship is never okay anyway.”
Mail may have been written under pressure
Peng may have written the email himself, but under great pressure. China now has a long tradition of ‘voluntary’ statements by people who, sometimes in front of Chinese state television, contradicted previous accusations against the Chinese government or confessed to a crime they never committed.
Perhaps the most infamous the forced confessions from a group of booksellers in Hong Kong who sold books depicting Chinese leaders displeasingly.
Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin, who ironically himself was investigating these false public testimonies, was also the first foreigner to be forced to commit suicide in 2016. making such a confession.
#MeToo
Peng previously accused former Deputy Prime Minister Zhang of forcing her to have sex. She says about herself: “I’m not a good girl, I’m a very bad girl”, she indicated that she finds the matter very confusing and unclear and that she has also voluntarily had sex with Zhang before. “Even if it . . . looks like a moth flying toward a flame, provoking its own destruction, yet I will tell the truth about you,” she wrote at the time.
The post was only on Weibo for about twenty minutes before it was censored, but in that short time the post went viral. Peng has over half a million followers on Weibo. It is now also difficult to search for words like “tennis”, and many references to Peng have been removed from the net.
#MeToo is not having an easy time in China. Women increasingly dare to speak out in public, but they are rarely proven right. This is how Zhou Xiaoxuan finally managed to to start a lawsuit against the famous television host Zhu Jun. He allegedly sexually abused her while she was doing an internship at the state broadcaster. But the case came to nothing, because the judge found that the evidence was insufficient.
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