Surveillance footage has surfaced purportedly showing 22-year-old Yuan Liya entering Jingwen Mall in south Beijing on the night of May 2. She would fall to her death several hours later — not seen on tape — in what police have ruled was a suicide.

Authorities reportedly blocked Yuan’s family from seeing this footage last week, which was one of the reasons cited for an unusually large protest in front of Jingwen on May 8 that caused gridlock and an increased police and paramilitary presence through the city center.

The edited footage has been broadcast on several news shows, which you can watch above. Yuan reportedly entered Jingwen and went up to the 7th floor at 10:34 pm on the night of the 2nd. A figure in the video, wearing a white skirt, walks from room to room, turning on lights and turning them off.

According to SCMP, netizens are less than convinced:

In the video footage, she is seen wearing a white skirt, but photos taken of her body when she was found the next morning show her wearing a dark-coloured or black skirt. The news report did not explain the contradiction.

Many sceptical comments and juxtapositions of the two photos were promptly deleted on Chinese microblogs. Searches for the name of the mall, Jingwen, are still blocked on Sina Weibo, the country’s largest microblogging platform.

The only arrest made in this case remains that of a 28-year-old woman surnamed Ma, charged with spreading a false rumor on Sina Weibo that Yuan was raped in Jingwen.

Yuan Liya, 22, of Anhui

The headline says it all, but here’s the story:

The Beijing police say they have arrested a woman for spreading online rumors in connection with the death of a migrant worker that touched off a rare protest in the Chinese capital on Wednesday.

A 28-year-old Beijing woman surnamed Ma was arrested Thursday for writing on Sina Weibo, China’s largest Twitter-like microblog service, that the dead woman had been raped by seven security guards at a clothing market and then jumped from the building.

This Beijing protest on Wednesday.

The victim has been identified as Yuan Liya of Anhui.

The police have said that their investigation found no indication that Ms. Yuan had been drugged, raped or murdered and suggested that her death was a suicide.

“We found no evidence she had been in contact with any strangers before the incident,” Zi Xiangdong, a spokesman for the Beijing police, told the state-run China Daily. “There were also no suspicious signs discovered in checks at the scene or in the autopsy report.”

In a statement posted online, the police said Ms. Yuan’s family had not questioned their assessment.

The police have ruled out homicide. There were early reports about the family not being allowed to look at surveillance footage, but now we wonder whether any footage actually exists. (UPDATE, 5/13, 2:29 pm: police have released edited footage.)

On Friday, that online censorship eased somewhat to allow discussion of the case. Ms. Yuan’s death was a leading topic on Sina Weibo, but suggestions of rape and murder were still being deleted. The trending term “Case of the Anhui girl who fell to her death” was appended with a notice that the police have said her death was not a homicide.

(NYT)

At the start of this POV video taken at Wednesday’s protest near Jingwen Shopping Mall in Beijing’s Fengtai District, the people chant kangyi, “protest.” As a collective they rock back and forth, like a wave. It surges in fits and starts, apparently toward uniformed officers. There is safety in numbers — civilians outnumber cops — so individuals feel little hesitancy to shout whatever they please.

But there is also a kind of muted chaos. The occasional peals of protest are not what one would call violent or scary. At the 2:12 mark, a voice close to the camera implores — again, without conveying any sense of danger — “Stop crowding, move forward, move forward” — something you might hear in a subway station during rush hour. At the 2:30 mark, a voice says, “They’re fighting, they’re fighting.” “They’ve stopped again.” “They’re fighting.” “They’ve fought twice!” More shouting. And then some meandering.

“There’re too many people!” one young-sounding man says. There is a lot of watching and filming on cell phones. “They’re fighting again, fuck!” a man says, but we don’t see any of it. Officers mingle with the crowd, which forms bubbles of various sizes and shapes before dispersing and coming together again, maybe. There is laughter toward the end, as if all this were a spectacle.

It is, really: a spectacle. One can’t help but get the feeling that the crowd mostly comprises those who, on their separate ways, happened to spot a group of impassioned and purposeful people convened at the front door of a busy shopping mall and decided to check out the fuss. Whatever inferences we want to draw about the level of pent-up anger and frustration of “the people” which might cause a small gathering to snowball into a mass rally and then into a — dare we say it? — revolt, we draw at our own risk. The evidence is not in this video, that’s for sure.

Then again, the video is only one point of view. We don’t know what octave of protest could be heard in other parts around Jingwen, or how high emotions ran. We don’t know if, somewhere in the crowd, a riot cop lost his bearing, or a bereaved relative lost his cool. There was a large, notable gathering on Wednesday late-morning/afternoon in Beijing, that’s all we can be sure of at this moment. Now it is nightime, with most people almost assuredly back home. We’ll wait to see what the morning brings.

The above video was uploaded nine hours ago to Tencent, tagged “Leap off Jingwen building” (flagged by China Digital Times).

Bill Bishop has also tweeted a link to more pictures via DWNews.com. Sampling a few below:

May 10, 12:40 pm: Police have made an arrest in the case of the Anhui girl whose death ignited the protest… but not the arrest you’d expect. New York Times: “Woman Is Arrested In Rape Rumor That Ignited Beijing Protest.”

A massive police and paramilitary presence has descended upon Fengtai District around Jingwen Clothing and Apparel Shopping Mall, the scene of either a suicide or murder last Friday.

On May 3, a young woman from Anhui province fell to her death from the Jingwen building after allegedly being gang-raped. Police hastily ruled her death a suicide and refused her family’s request to see the surveillance footage.

This afternoon, thousands (edit: possibly only “hundreds”) of people — many who are migrant workers from Anhui — gathered in a planned protest between Jingwen and Yongdingmen, a gate just south of the Temple of Heaven on Second Ring Road (a few kilometers north of Jingwen). Hundreds of police have shown up in turn, many in riot gear. Traffic is reportedly backed up for miles.

As of this moment, Baidu searches for “Jingwen” are blocked “according to relevant laws, regulations and policies.”

Sina Weibo, meanwhile, is blocking searches for “Yongdingmen”:

One clever netizen, @伊莲娜月光手帕, has posted the following pictures with the comment: “今天北京YONG定门” (“Today at Beijing’s Yongdingmen,” with YONG written in English to elude censors). Please take note of the chat conversation that follows, which was posted about fifteen minutes ago. Our translation:

- Something big happened in Beijing.

- What’s the situation?

- Cops, SWAT, riot police, helicopters. All here.

- What happened?

- Across from me a shopping center, Jingwen. An Anhui girl was gang-raped by Jingwen security guards, then leapt from the sixth story.

The nearby cops say it was suicide, there’s no case. Jingwen boss has influence

Right now Anhui people, a few thousand others are preparing to march to Tiananmen.

If indeed a march to Tiananmen was planned, that might explain the above blockade.

We’ll give you updates as we learn more.

(H/T Nick A.)

UPDATE, 6:29 pm: The posts are disappearing fast from Sina Weibo, but here’s a screenshot:

7 pm: There are virtually two PLA soldiers on every block along Dongzhimen Outer Street. Very unusual. Anyone finding increased security in their neighborhoods?

7:25 pm: The first video has appeared, via NewChinaChannel:

8:15 pm: Don’t say authorities don’t know how to handle these type of situations. According to someone on the ground, traffic remains backed up because police have sealed off the area (caveat: though it’s sometimes hard to tell the exact cause of evening Beijing gridlock). “Small mobile clusters” of cops are roving and keeping watch on those approaching Yongdingmen.

8:37 pm: Via the Beijing Public Security Bureau’s Sina Weibo, timestapped 11:17 am (translating errors are mine):

May 8, 2013 at 10 am, approximately a hundred people from outside the city came to Beijing Fengtai District and gathered in front of Jingwen Shopping Center. The Public Security Bureau quickly mobilized with relevant departments and police to handle the situation. According to preliminary understanding, in the early morning on the 3rd of this month, a young woman from Anhui died after falling off the Jingwen building, and a segment of those who gathered today were from her hometown who went to Jingwen’s door to make the issue known. At present, police are maintaining order at the scene.

UPDATE, 5/9, 1:44 am: Another video (also please see the accompanying post), found by China Digital Times:

Also, cleaned up some typos, etc. End of updates.

More on this topic:

• “Woman Is Arrested In Rape Rumor That Ignited Beijing Protest”
• Police Release Edited Security Footage