A deadly fire in northwest China’s Xinjiang has stoked anger on social media over Beijing’s strict “zero covid” policy, which netizens blame for slowing relief efforts. Ten people were killed and nine injured in a fire at a residential building on Thursday in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang, the agency said. new china.
Since Friday, the messages circulating on social networks in China and abroad ensure that the anti-Covid lockdowns in force in the city have made it difficult for firefighters to arrive at the scene of the tragedy. Meanwhile, videos showed groups of people taking to the streets of Urumqi to protest the restrictions.
“Remove the lockdowns!”
Boredom is growing in China in the face of the draconian policy of fighting the pandemic. Sporadic and sometimes violent protests have already taken place in several cities in recent days, including at the world’s largest iPhone factory in downtown Zhengzhou, owned by Taiwanese giant Foxconn.
Despite several available vaccines, and contrary to the rest of the world, the Asian country continues to apply strict restrictions to prevent infections and deaths. This policy consists of imposing lockdowns as soon as cases appear, quarantining people who test positive in centers and requiring almost daily PCR tests to access public places.
Images spread on social networks and partially verified by AFP show hundreds of people gathered at night in front of the Urumqi city hall chanting: “Remove the lockdowns!”
In another video, dozens of people can be seen marching through a neighborhood in the east of the city, chanting the same slogan, before confronting a line of law enforcement officers dressed in virus protection suits and booing profusely. AFP journalists verified the authenticity of these videos by geolocating the buildings featured in them, but were unable to determine the exact moment these demonstrations occurred.
wave of anger
A wave of anger simmered on the Weibo social network on Friday, with some saying parked electric vehicles that ran out of power during long lockdown periods had blocked fire trucks from accessing a narrow street that led to the burning building.
“It was also me who threw me from the roof, who was trapped in an overturned bus (in quarantine), who came out of isolation at the Foxconn factory,” one can read in a comment referring to several recent incidents attributed to “Zero.” Covid.” Chinese authorities, who censor politically sensitive online content, appeared to have removed several posts and hashtags related to the fire on Saturday morning.
Urumqi police said on Weibo on Friday that they had arrested a woman for “spreading rumors online” about the number of victims of the fire. An initial investigation showed that the fire started in a row of electrical sockets in a bedroom of one of the apartments, according to public broadcaster CCTV.
The justification of the authorities
Rescue attempts were complicated by “a lack of parking spaces and a large number of private vehicles parked on both sides” of the alley leading to the building, Li Wensheng, the city’s fire chief, said on Friday, according to CCTV. Extremely rare, the mayor of Urumqi, Maimeiming Kade, has formally apologized for the fire, according to CCTV. But authorities have also refuted some of the online claims that the building’s doors were sealed with cables to keep residents out during the lockdown.
Parts of Urumqi, a metropolis of four million people, have been in lockdown for weeks. But after the protests, authorities announced Saturday that the city “has fundamentally reduced social transmissions to zero” and “will restore the normal order of life for residents in low-risk areas in a gradual and orderly manner.” China recorded 34,909 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, the vast majority of which were asymptomatic, according to the National Health Commission.
Source: BFM TV
