In an 11-page essay initially published on the company’s internal website, the employee said she was pushed to drink excessively by her male supervisor during a client event in late July, and was groped before being assaulted by her boss.
Alibaba, one of the world’s e-commerce giants, has announced the firing of one manager accused of sexual assault by a female colleague, CEO Zhang Yong said in a memo published on the company's intranet yesterday (August 9).
“Alibaba Group has a zero-tolerance policy against sexual misconduct, and ensuring a safe workplace for all our employees is Alibaba’s top priority,” a company spokesperson said when asked about the memo.
In an 11-page essay initially published on the company’s internal website, the employee said she was pushed to drink excessively by her male supervisor during a client event in late July, and was gropedthen later assaulted by her boss.
She claimed the suspect sexually assaulted her on several occasions in her hotel room, and that when she reported the incident, Alibaba staffers asked for video evidence before they would consider an investigation.
The unidentified employee, who works in the company’s fresh food delivery service, said senior managers to whom she reported the incident on Aug. 2 didn’t take any action.
No investigation commenced, and the woman felt she had no alternative but to share her story on the company intranet.
Zhang said the manager admitted that he and the female employee had been overly intimate while drunk, according to the preliminary results of an internal probe.
The man has also been barred from further employment within Alibaba, while the company is waiting for the results of a police investigation to see if the man would be charged with rape, Zhang added.
Alibaba will conduct company-wide training for the prevention of sexual harassment and launch a channel for staff to report incidents, Zhang said in the memo. It will also issue a formal, zero-tolerance anti-sexual harassment policy.
Zhang also said Alibaba is staunchly opposed to “the ugly culture of forced drinking”.
The #MeToo movement first came to prominence in China in 2018 when allegations against a professor at a Beijing university were published on social media.
Since then, a number of allegations have been made against academics, environmentalists and journalists.
Ever since the #MeToo movement began globally, women in China also spoke out about their experiences of sexual harassment at school or at work.
In a landmark move, China made it recently possible for women to bring civil sexual harassment complaints, and earlier this year a plaintiff won one of the first such civil suits against a colleague.
Tags: #Alibaba, #China, #sexualassault, #MeTooMovement