A female thief was caught stealing from a shop red-handed at a clothing market in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, and was publicly shamed as a result. The incident is reminiscent of public shaming during the Cultural Revolution, the torturous period in China’s history from 1966 to 1976.

In photos uploaded to the internet, a woman believed to be in her 40s wearing a blue blouse was seen with a placard hanging around her neck that reads, “I am a thief, and I deserve to be beaten”. The shop owner then allegedly paraded the thief around the market and forced her to kneel down and kowtow for forgiveness in public, reports said. During the shaming, onlookers snapped several photos.

The woman was eventually handcuffed and taken away by security shortly afterwards.

This is not the first case in which thieves were shamed, abused and even stripped after being caught. One female thief was shamed in Taizhou in 2011, while a male thief was stripped to his underwear and paraded around on the street with “thief” written over his body in 2010.

Some Weibo users were quick to support the shaming ritual. One user said: “This is how you do it. Those few soft-hearted commentators are the ones that have not been stolen from yet. If you send a thief to a police station, after a few days he will be out again. It’s better to learn from some other countries where thieves’ hands are chopped off when caught. Just the thought of my things being stolen by a thief is infuriating enough. At the city where I studied, I watched all sorts of thieves growing up.”

Another user wrote, “The shop owner is quite smart, and misspelled the Chinese character 小偷 (meaning “thief” in English) on purpose. This is quite merciful already”.

One went further and declared that thieves do not deserve any kind of human rights. They said, “Human rights are not reserved for those thieves. Do not abuse people’s Buddhist hearts”.

Still, a few users rebuked the abuse and showed sympathy towards the thief. A commentator said: “I think a due amount of legal punishment is enough. There is no need to parade the thief and publicly bash her. Judging by her looks, she must be a mother. How can she ever rebuild her image again in front of her child?”

Photos: Chutian Metropolis Daily; Sihai Net