Thousands of people took to the streets of northwestern China’s Urumqi on Friday night to protest months-long epidemic prevention measures in the city after a deadly fire.
Protesters blamed the city’s lockdown for the delay in relief efforts during the fire that claimed 10 lives and called for an end to the restrictions.
China’s Covid-19 ‘zero cases’ strategy includes locking down entire neighborhoods and cities. Condominiums are sometimes fenced in with gates and the access gates locked. Images posted on social media show that the fire truck was initially unable to enter the neighborhood, as the access gate was locked, and that residents were also unable to escape from the building, whose gate was locked.
Authorities have denied some of the allegations about the fire and pointed out that certain online images of closed doors are false, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The same source acknowledged that there were access problems by firefighters, but blamed the cars parked in front of the neighborhood.
Protests at the government headquarters in the city of Urumqi, in Xinjiang province, drew thousands of people and were widely reported on Chinese social media, despite the efforts of censors.
The outrage reflects broader frustration in China with the ‘zero cases’ strategy of Covid-19, which has kept the virus in check for nearly three years but faces strong pressure from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
On Saturday, the country recorded nearly 32,000 new cases, the third consecutive daily record.
In recent weeks, restrictive new lockdowns have been implemented in Beijing, Guangzhou and dozens of other smaller cities in China.
Physical confrontations between residents and health workers are becoming more frequent. In the middle of this month, groups of Guangzhou residents escaped the blockade of their neighborhoods, overturning a police vehicle and the barriers placed around condominiums, prompting the intervention of riot police. This week, thousands of workers at a factory for Foxconn, the group that assembles Apple’s iPhones, clashed violently with security officers.
In Beijing, several residents also took to the streets to demand an end to the blockade in their neighborhoods.
Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy organization, said it has registered dozens of protests in China related to the lockdowns in recent months.
Urumqi police said on the Weibo social network that they had arrested a woman for “spreading rumours” about the number of victims of the fire. An initial investigation found that the fire was caused by a short circuit in an electrical extension cord in the bedroom of one of the 15th floor apartments.
Parts of Urumqi, a metropolis of four million people, have been in lockdown for several months. But after the protests, officials announced that the city had “fundamentally zeroed transmissions within communities” and “restored the normal order of life for residents in low-risk areas in a gradual and orderly manner.”
Source: TSF
