A woman in China has been jailed for three and a half years for accidentally killing her husband in an act of self-defense after he attacked her because she would not have sex with him.

Zhang Ying, not her real name, from Shandong province in eastern China, was convicted of negligent homicide by a local court, Toutiao News reported.

The incident happened on March 4, 2022 when her husband, Zhang Bin, demanded intercourse. Although the couple had been married for 24 years, their relationship had not been good for some time, so Zhang Ying refused.

The man became enraged, hit his wife repeatedly, and pulled her by the hair. To protect herself, she fought back. During the violence, they fell onto the bed.

Zhang Ying said she used her elbow to hit him in the neck and head. Details of the time of death were not clear but Zhang Bin’s sister found him dead the next morning.

“I immediately called the police,” she said.

During the investigation, the sister said Zhang Ying claimed she was not at home that night, so she believed her brother had died of natural causes.

His family suggested conducting an autopsy, but Zhang Ying and her daughter were against the idea.

“She (the daughter) knelt and begged me not to have an autopsy for her father because she wanted to keep his body complete,” the deceased man’s sister said. But the autopsy went ahead.

On May 10 Zhang Ying was summoned by the local police. She told them she had pressed her husband’s neck for a few minutes, and walked away from him as soon as he released her hair from his hands.

The autopsy report revealed that Zhang Bin was pressed on the neck, mouth, and nose, and died from suffocation, leading to Zhang Ying being found guilty of negligent homicide.

The story has divided opinions on mainland social media. At the time of writing, the Weibo news video had attracted 2,137 comments.

“She clearly acted in self-defence,” one person said.

“What if it was premeditated murder? Nobody knows what really happened except her,” said another.

Domestic violence and sexual abuse in marriages regularly cause public outrage in China.

In July 2022, an associate professor in southern China was demoted and banned from teaching after the university confirmed his wife’s claims that he had abused her more than 1,000 times.

In November 2011, a man in southwestern China was arrested for allegedly burning his wife to death.

The All-China Women’s Federation, a women’s rights organisation closely associated with the government, found in 2021 that 30% of married women in China had experienced domestic violence.

Another 2021 study found that 77.6% of 223 prisoners in jail for assault or murder had committed the crime in a domestic dispute. – South China Morning Post