A Chinese video blogger has allegedly been killed by her ex-husband who set her on fire after splashing her with petrol while she tried to live stream a video.
Local press says the influencer who is known as Lamu endured burns on 90 per cent of her body and died two weeks after the incident took place.
The social media star’s ex-husband is said to have broken into her home with a cleaver and petrol in the middle of September before launching an attack on her while her relatives were present.
Lamu had carved out a big following of thousands of people on Douyin - the Chinese equivalent of popular video-sharing app TikTok - accruing millions of likes on her videos.
State press, the Beijing Youth Daily, reported that Lamu's screen went black quickly after she began live-streaming on 14 September. The paper reports her former husband, who has only been named by his surname Tang, had a history of domestic violence.
The 30-year-old influencer is reported to have divorced her ex, who she had two children with, back in May - with Tang afterwards allegedly threatening to kill one child if Lamu did not get married to him again, according to the paper.
The influencer then remarried him but wound up fleeing him - with her former husband then reportedly beating her sister after he interrogated her about where Lamu was and she did not disclose her location. Relatives claim this incident was reported to the police but they did nothing.
Lamu, who was famed for penning happy posts about life in the countryside, is said to have gone on to have divorced him again.
The saga has sparked an outpouring of discussion online in China - with more than 70 million people using a hashtag which refers to her death.
China saw a threefold increase in cases of domestic abuse reported to police stations in February during the coronavirus lockdown in comparison with the year before.
But women in dire need of fleeing their homes were not able to access permits to leave the city and escape their abusers – with the hashtag #AntiDomesticViolenceDuringEpidemic #疫期反家暴# gaining traction on social media.
While discussions about domestic abuse in China have become more common, the first law which directly targeted the issue was only implemented five years ago in 2015.
