Daily tests, rooms placed under glass bells, repeated isolation… Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, China has maintained very strong pressure on the population with a “Covid zero” policy, without hesitating to confine hundreds of thousands of people. as soon as a case of the disease appears.
But this severity weighs on citizens, and hundreds of people have protested in recent days against the restrictions in force for almost three years, but also against the Chinese government. Such a widespread uprising is extremely rare in China, given the crackdown on any form of opposition to the government. Due to its extension in the territory, this mobilization seems the most important since the pro-democratic riots of 1989.
Where do these manifestations originate?
The current protests stem from a deadly fire that took place in northwest China’s Xinjiang on Thursday. Ten people were killed and nine injured in a fire at a residential building in Urumqi. Since then, 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.
Vigils in honor of the victims and rallies followed the tragedy, in Urumqi, but also in other Chinese cities, such as Shanghai. In Beijing, where more than 400 Chinese youth gathered for several hours on Sunday night, chants such as “We are all Xinjiang people!” could be heard.
This event was the catalyst for the anger that had hovered over China for several months. Sporadic and sometimes violent protests had already taken place in the previous days, in particular at the world’s largest iPhone factory located in Zhengzhou (center), against excessively strict confinements and restrictions, which weigh too heavily on the Chinese population.
In early November, residents of the city of Guangzhou (Canton) also took to the streets to protest against an extension of the lockdown.
· What are the protesters demanding?
Protests against the lockdowns broke out in the early hours of Sunday in Shanghai and hundreds of people demonstrated on Sunday night in Wuhan, the city where the first case of Covid-19 in the world had been detected. The protesters demand an end to the excessively strict restrictions and more freedoms for the population that has suffered, psychologically and economically, for three years.
“There are no tests for Covid, we want to eat!” chanted the protesters gathered in Beijing, the country’s capital, on Sunday.
“We sang the national anthem and the International, and we chanted: ‘Freedom will triumph’, ‘No to PCR tests, we want food’, ‘No to confinements, we want freedom’,” said a witness present at rallies in the capital.
“Don’t forget those who died in the bus accident in Guizhou, don’t forget freedom!” For example, launched a protester, referring to a tragedy that occurred in September in which this vehicle was transporting residents to a quarantine center and left 27 dead. “Remember the pregnant woman from Xi’an who died, those who did not have access to medical treatment in Shanghai,” shouts a second, citing other tragedies linked to the strict sanitary measures in force in China for almost three years.
· What is the other message of the protesters?
In the demonstrations of the last few days, originally against the Covid restrictions, along with the protests against the “Covid zero” policy, messages calling for more freedom have been heard. So on Sunday at Tsinghua University in Beijing, students began protesting the restrictions, and amidst the chants came other demands.
A witness reported that a female student began by holding a sheet of white paper and was joined by other women. This gesture is a way to circumvent censorship in China, but also to protest against it. Also in Nanjing, images of people waving white sheets in protest were shared on social media, the agency reported on Sunday. Reuters.
And among the slogans chanted in different cities, “Xi Jinping, resign! CCP (Chinese Communist Party, editor’s note), stand down!” they have been heard. A video showing students in Beijing chanting “Democracy and rule of law, freedom of expression” was quickly removed from the internet.
“In recent years our freedom of expression and the different ways of expressing ourselves have been blocked,” says a protester in Beijing, “I didn’t think there would come a day when we could gather in the streets to express our demands.”
· How did the Chinese government react?
Images of detained protesters have circulated on social media. In Shanghai, at night, dozens of policemen in yellow vests cordoned off the streets where the demonstrations had taken place, and the AFP witnessed several arrests when they asked the protesters to leave.
On Monday morning, a police presence was seen in Beijing and Shanghai, near the meeting places of the previous day. The Shanghai police, questioned several times, remained unanswered on Monday about the number of arrests over the weekend.
Britain’s BBC media group said on Sunday that one of its journalists in China, covering the anti-Covid zero protests in Shanghai, had been arrested and “beaten up by police”. British Enterprise Secretary Grant Shapps called the violence “unacceptable” and “worrying.”
Beijing said on Monday that the man did not identify himself as a journalist and “did not voluntarily present his press credentials,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said, calling on foreign media to “respect Chinese laws and regulations when ( remain) in China”.
Authorities have also been quick to restrict online discussions of the protests. The expression “Urumqi road” – location of the protests in Shanghai – was thus censored on the Weibo platform, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, almost immediately after the dissemination of the images of the demonstrations.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry also accused forces with hidden motives on Monday “of establishing a link between the fire in Urumqi and” the local response to Covid-19 “, according to its spokesman Zhao Lijian. Under” the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and (with) the support of the Chinese people, our fight against Covid-19 will be a success,” he said.
Source: BFM TV
