Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Sunday it has suspended some staff following a worker’s claim on the company’s intranet that she was sexually assaulted by her boss and a client.
The lady’s account, distributed by means of an eleven-page PDF that circulated widely online, provoked an online media storm on China’s Twitter-like microblogging site Weibo. Police in the city of Jinan said on Sunday morning that they were investigating the occurrence.
“Alibaba Group has zero-resistance strategy against sexual wrongdoing, and guaranteeing a safe working environment for every one of our representatives is Alibaba’s first concern,” a representative said in a statement.
“We have suspended concerned parties associated with abusing our policies and values, and have set up an exceptional internal team to examine the issue and support the ongoing police examination.”
Late on Saturday, a female Alibaba staff member’s account of an occurrence she said occurred while on a work excursion became an online sensation on Chinese online media, with reactions to her account figuring among the top-trending items on Weibo starting on Sunday morning.
The lady, who didn’t reveal her identity, affirmed that her manager forced her into going on a work excursion with him to meet one of her group’s clients in the city of Jinan, around 900 kilometers (560 miles) from Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou.
As indicated by the lady, on the evening of July 27, the client kissed her. Subsequent to consuming liquor, she woke up in lodging the next day with her garments removed and no memory of what happened the previous evening.
CCTV film she acquired from the lodging showed that her manager went into the room multiple times throughout the evening, she added.
After getting back to Hangzhou, she said she revealed the occurrence to HR and upper administration on Aug. 2, asking her manager to be terminated and for time off. While HR at first concurred, at last, they didn’t get it done, she said.
Alibaba President Daniel Zhang reacted to the commotion late on Saturday on the company’s internal message board, as per an individual who saw the post; however, the company didn’t formally unveil the material posted on its intranet.
“Not simply HR ought to apologize. The connected business division directors additionally hold liability and ought to apologize for their quietness and inability to react in an ideal way,” Zhang said.
“Beginning from me, beginning from the executives, beginning from HR, everybody at Alibaba should sympathize, and make a move.”
Alibaba declared on its intranet that the lady’s boss, her contact at HR, and direct management of those people had been sent on suspension, as per the individual who saw the posts.
Last month another sex outrage shook China when Chinese-Canadian pop artist Kris Wu was freely charged by an 18-year-old Chinese intern of initiating her and different young ladies, some of them younger than 18, to engage in sexual relations with him.
The occurrence restored conversations of the #MeToo movement in China, and police in Beijing arrested Wu, who has denied the allegations.
