Alibaba dismisses employees over leaked sexual assault allegations

Alibaba Group reportedly fired 10 of its employees for leaking to the public their female co-worker’s sexual assault claims against a former manager. The dismissals came as the Chinese e-commerce giant is working on probing and solving this case that has also shaken the country’s tech business sector.

Last week, Alibaba Group released an announcement to workers stating that it has fired a group of people for sharing the distressing account of a female employee that was posted on a forum. The employee was only referred to as Zhou, her surname.

In her accounts, she claimed that a former manager raped her, and this was reportedly shared with the public by some of her colleagues. Now, Alibaba Group has dismissed them for offenses that include the distribution of screenshots showing Zhou’s post. Another three staff were said to have been scolded for leaving inappropriate comments in the public forums where Zhou’s post was shared.

According to Bloomberg, Alibaba stressed the employees’ actions violated the company’s policies when they exposed the content of Zhou’s post on forums, and this was why they were removed. In any case, Zhou’s story went viral and turned Jack Ma’s company into a high-profile symbol of abuse which is said to be widespread in tech companies and other businesses in China.

The case is now a much talked about matter not only in the Chinese business community but in the public as well, with many ordinary citizens condemning the abuses, especially sexual harassment of women.

With this, Alibaba was under a lot of pressure after a massive backlash as it did not take action until Zhou’s story was publicized, thus it has already dismissed the accused manager. It turned out that the female employee submitted a complaint to Alibaba’s human resource office and her superiors as well, but it appears that they did not take the matter seriously.

Finally, Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s current chief executive officer, admitted that the company’s response and handling of Zhou’s complaint was a “humiliation.” It was further revealed that two other senior executives have also voluntarily resigned from their posts due to this incident.