Amnesty International today called on the Chinese authorities to contain themselves in the face of protests against restrictive measures to prevent Covid-19.
“Instead of penalizing people, the government should listen to their pleas. The authorities should allow people to express their thoughts freely and protest peacefully without fear of reprisals,” said Hana Young, deputy regional director of the human rights organization.
Nearly a thousand people protested this Sunday, next to the embassy area in Beijing, against the restrictive measures to prevent Covid-19 in force in China, while some protesters directly criticized the government of the Chinese Communist Party.
The protests began with a vigil with candles and flowers, organized in memory of the victims of a fire in the city of Urumqi, which left ten dead. Amnesty called on the Chinese government to carry out a “prompt, effective and thorough” investigation into the incident.
The images spread on social networks of the fire in Urumqi show that the fire truck was initially unable to enter the neighborhood, since the access door was blocked, and that the residents were also unable to escape from the building, whose door was blocked, as a result of epidemic prevention measures.
Under the Covid-19 ‘zero case’ policy, China imposes the lockdown of entire neighborhoods or cities, the constant carrying out of massive tests and the isolation of all positive cases and their direct contacts in its own facilities, often in degrading conditions. .
Despite the measures, the number of infections has increased.
The protests in Beijing followed similar demonstrations in several cities across the country, including Shanghai, Nanjing and Urumqi.
According to Amnesty International, dozens of people were detained in protests on Saturday night and a woman was detained in Urumqi for “spreading rumours”.
Source: TSF
