‘Kneel or we’ll beat you to death’: elderly cleaner in China forced down on knees to apologise for accidentally sweeping rubbish onto luxury car
- A man and a woman in China are filmed making a street cleaner apologise for sweeping rubbish onto their car and threatening him
- Cases of low-income workers being bullied by the wealthy elite in China are a common source of anger as more cases are filmed and posted online
A video of a couple forcing an elderly street sweeper to kneel on the ground and beg for forgiveness after he accidentally swept rubbish onto their luxury car has gone viral in China and outraged the public.
The incident, which occurred last week in the city of Ningbo, in Zhejiang province in eastern China, escalated after the couple refused to accept the unnamed worker’s explanation, an anonymous local government official told Jiupai News.
The man and the woman then allegedly demanded the street cleaner kneel in front of their car and apologise. They threatened him by saying: “Kneel or we’ll beat you to death”.
The government official said the worker was too afraid to argue and complied with the couple’s demand.
The sanitation company which hired the worker said it had offered the man support following the incident and was trying to find the car owner to obtain an apology.
The video of the cleaner in an orange hi-vis vest with a broom kneeling before the black car has been viewed more than eight million times on Douyin and generated substantial public anger in China.
“We should expose these two and find out who they are and why they are so arrogant,” wrote one person on Douyin.
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“They humiliated the sanitation worker just for such a trivial matter. They are ignorant of the law and don’t have morals. They would be taught a lesson by society,” another commenter said.
One person on Weibo asked:“Do they have parents? How can they bear to make an old man kneel for them?”
Cases of low-income workers being bullied by the wealthy elite in China have become a common source of anger as more cases are caught on videos and posted online.
A viral video from three years ago captured a woman driving a luxury car hit an economy model car when she made a U-turn. The woman stopped her car, got out and slapped the male driver of the other vehicle before saying he was driving “a beggar’s car”. The man slapped her back.
The woman was later fined hundreds of yuan by traffic police, not for the assault, but because she was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and high-heeled shoes while driving.
In 2016, a courier driver in Beijing was slapped six times and abused verbally by a 57-year-old man after the worker’s electric pedicab slightly scratched the man’s car.
The assailant was later detained under a 10-day detention order for “picking a quarrel and making trouble” after a public backlash.
