Chinese Farmer Executed For Setting Ex-Wife On Fire

Tang Lu, a man who killed his ex-wife on a live streaming session was executed in China.  Tang Lu was executed by a court in the Southwestern Sichuan province. Tang’s ex-wife Lhamo was a farmer and a livestreamer in the Tibetan autonomous prefecture.

Tang and Lhamo have a past of domestic violence in their relationship which ultimately lead to Lhamo divorcing Tang in 2020. Since then Tang had repeatedly pleaded his case to Lhamo about reconciling their relationship with no such luck.

As Tang struggled to come to terms with Lhamo’s decision he retaliated in September 2020, when Lhamo was on her livestream. Tang snuck into Lhamos property and doused her with  gasoline before ultimately lighting her on fire on livestream for her viewers to watch. She died two weeks later in hospital from the attack.

Tang was arrested and after the attack and sentenced to the maximum penalty of a death sentence. Tang was allowed to see his family before the execution. The case was covered all over national and international media as a look inside China’s lack of protection of the abuse and mistreatment of women in China.

China is a slow moving ship when it comes to the fairness and rights of people within its country as its misogynistic and older philosophies still flood the government system and how it enforces its laws. China has recently just recognized physical and mental abuse as grounds for divorce as of 2015, but it doesn’t touch on sexual violence of same sex partners yet.

China continues to enforce laws that protects perpetrators of domestic violence instead of its victims but there has been more and more eyes focusing on this in recent years and a glimpse of further change may be in the near future.