A Chinese family comprising mother, father and son arrived at their hotel in Stockholm 1 day early on 2 September, 2018.
As a result, hotel staff allowed the family to wait in the lobby, however, after verbal threats were made, staff called the police and the family were forcibly removed.
During the incident, the family threw themselves to the ground crying and wailing, trying to deface the police and seek assistance from passing pedestrians.
At one point in the short video posted online, police are seen carrying a family member away from the hotel, while the son yells, “This is killing… This is killing”.
According to The Guardian, “Chinese Tourists Mistreated By Swedish Police” has been searched over 130m times and has a related 85,000 posts on China’s main microblogging site Weibo.
It has been assumed the incident would not have usually garnered such a media reaction had the Beijing government not demanded an apology from Sweden for “brutally abusing” Chinese citizens.
The incident has sparked huge discussion online, with some Weibo commentators talking of embarrassment while others are in favour of the apology.
“We only know that we have done everything we could do for this guest, but at the same time we cannot accept that our staff are exposed to threats and that other guests will suffer from a threatening situation”, the hotel manager told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
