Child protection officials are working with police to locate the man filmed whipping his infant daughter on the streets of Hanoi.
A video went viral on social media last Saturday showing 26-year-old Dao Duc Khiem lashing a leather belt against the body and head of his screaming daughter, who looks to be roughly five-years old.
The video drew broad public outrage since previous videos featuring Khiem had attracted broad sympathy and donations.
The videos also cirulated on social media and depicted Khiem as a caring father who rummaged through trash bins at night with a toddler on the back. Khiem told the camera his wife had abandoned him and his children after a business partner swindled him of all his money.
In the most recent and unsolicited video, Khiem had taken the girl and two other children to eat bun cha on the street and commenced to whipping the child, dressed in Christmas clothes, supposedly to teach her a lesson.
“I brought you into this life so I can take you out,” he was heard saying in the video, while swearing at the wailing child.
Khiem stopped shortly after the woman filming the abuse confronted him over his brand of “education.”
“No one has the f*cking right to tell me how to educate my children,” he said after sitting down with his three kids to commence feeding them.
All other bystanders captured in the video declined to intervene in the beating.
Pham Thi Hai Ha, deputy head of the child care and protection department under the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said it is cooperating with police to locate Khiem and isolate him from his children.
Ha described the beating as “cruel,” saying her unit might put the children in a government care center to protect them from their father.
Ha said Khiem no longer lives at his registered address in Long Bien District.
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