Thousands of people took to the streets in Beijing on May 8, 2013, in response to the suspicious death of a young migrant worker named Yuan Liya. Currently, all information regarding the death of Yuan Liya is unsearchable online in China.
The 22-year-old woman’s body was found lying outside Wenjing Shopping Mall around midnight on May 3. Yuan had come to Beijing to find work to support her family in Anhui. Both Yuan’s boyfriend and mother have demanded the Beijing police release the CCTV recording of Yuan’s death. However, the Beijing police claim that the case was a suicide and refuse any further investigation.
Among the thousands of protesters, most are migrants from Anhui province who work in Beijing.
A post titled “The Mysterious Death of a Girl in Wenjing” circulated on online forums on May 7 but was quickly deleted by internet censors. According to House News [zh], which is based in Hong Kong, the post said Yuan was in a room with many men before her body was found outside of the shopping mall on the pavement beneath the room. Most of the original posts have been deleted. Below is a cached version of a discussion of the original post in an online Baidu forum