(Bloomberg) -- China has charged dozens of people, including police officials, after a violent attack on female diners at a restaurant reignited debate on gender inequality in the world’s second-largest economy.

A group of 28 people were facing prosecution, officials in the northern province of Hebei said in a statement on Monday. The charges included direct involvement in the attack in Tangshan in June and others related to criminal activities such as running casinos and robbery dating back to 2012.

Eight police officials have also been detained on allegations they provided protection for the criminal activities of the people who carried out the attack and also took bribes, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the graft-fighting agency in Hebei.

People across China were outraged in June, when video clips appeared online showing the men beating female diners at a barbecue restaurant, with one woman getting dragged by her hair outside and then beaten. Nine suspects were arrested afterward, and the government of Tangshan pledged to “severely punish” anyone involved.

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That vow did little to quell public anger or silence a renewed debate about gender inequality that the nation’s ruling Communist Party has in the past repeatedly suppressed, viewing it as a vehicle for spreading liberal Western values.

The episode is still attracting attention in China. A hashtag for news of the charges against the 28 people has been viewed some 31.5 million times on Weibo as of Tuesday.

Many people cheered the prosecutions and called for courts to hand out stiff sentences. Some users questioned why police had been allegedly protecting criminals. “Ten years of doing crimes, and they were never caught,” one person wrote on Weibo.

Another said that “if they had not beaten these women, maybe they would still be abusing their power.”

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