SHANGHAI, China — Hundreds of people took to the streets in Shanghai and Beijing on
Sunday to protest
China’s zero-COVID policy in a rare outpouring of public
anger against the state.
اضافة اعلان
China’s hardline
virus strategy is stoking public frustration, with many growing weary of snap
lockdowns, lengthy quarantines, and mass testing campaigns.
A deadly fire on
Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region, has
become a fresh catalyst for public anger, with many blaming lengthy lockdowns
for hampering rescue efforts. Authorities deny the claims.
On Sunday night,
police clashed with groups of protestors in central Shanghai, an AFP reporter
saw, as officers tried to move people away from the site of an earlier
demonstration.
A crowd had
gathered earlier in the day, with video showing protesters chanting “
Xi Jinping,
step down! CCP, step down!” The video was widely shared on social media and
geolocated by AFP.
Police dispersed
the demonstrators by morning but in the afternoon, hundreds gathered in the
same area to hold what appeared to be a silent protest, an eyewitness told AFP.
Demonstrators
holding blank pieces of paper symbolizing censorship and white flowers stood
silently at several intersections, the person said under condition of
anonymity.
Social media
videos from the area that appeared to be taken in the late afternoon showed the
crowd chanting.
Footage from
several different angles showed a man holding a bouquet of yellow flowers being
dragged into a police car at one intersection as onlookers shouted.
By evening,
dozens of policemen in yellow high-vis jackets formed a thick line, cordoning
off the streets where the protests had taken place.
Their colleagues
asked people to leave the area, but some still milled around, and AFP saw
multiple people arrested.
More officers
subsequently arrived.
A live stream on
Instagram showed a wall of policemen closing in on a group of people from both
sides of the street, forcing them to the pavements.
A foreigner who
wished to remain anonymous told AFP he had seen a standoff as police directed a
crowd away from the location of the protest.
“The police
appeared to be looking for individuals suspected of leading the protests,” he
said.
On Sunday night a
protest was taking place in central Beijing, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
University protests
Earlier in the day, hundreds also rallied at Beijing’s elite
Tsinghua University to protest against lockdowns, one witness who wished to remain
anonymous told AFP.
“At 11:30am
students started holding up signs at the entrance of the canteen, then more and
more people joined,” they said, estimating there were 200–300 people present,
some holding blank bits of paper.
Participants sang
the national anthem and “the Internationale” — a standard of the international
communist movement — and chanted “freedom will prevail” and “no to lockdowns,
we want freedom”, they said.
A video that
appeared to be taken in the same location showed students shouting, “Democracy
and the rule of law, freedom of expression”, and was quickly taken down.
Other vigils took
place overnight at universities across China, including one at Tsinghua’s
neighbor Peking University, an undergraduate participant told AFP.
Speaking
anonymously as well for fear of repercussions, he said some anti-COVID slogans
had been daubed on a wall in the university.
Some of the words
echoed a banner that was hung over a Beijing bridge just before the
Communist Party Congress in October.
Videos on social
media also showed a mass vigil at Nanjing Institute of Communications, with
people holding lights and white sheets of paper.
Hashtags relating
to the protest were censored on Weibo, and video platforms Duoyin and Kuaishou
were scrubbed of footage.
‘Lift lockdowns!’
China reported 39,506 domestic COVID-19 cases Sunday, a record high but
small compared to caseloads in the West at the height of the pandemic.
The protests come
against a backdrop of mounting public frustration over China’s zero-tolerance
approach to the virus and follow sporadic rallies in other cities.
Hundreds of
people massed outside Urumqi’s government offices after the deadly fire,
chanting: “Lift lockdowns!”, footage partially verified by AFP shows.
AFP verified the
video by geolocating local landmarks but was unable to specify exactly when the
protests occurred.
It is the latest
in several high-profile cases where emergency services have been allegedly
slowed down by COVID lockdowns, which have catalyzed public opposition.
The
Qatar World Cup has also proved a flashpoint, as scenes of maskless fans provoked outrage
on social media.
China’s state broadcaster
has started cutting close-ups of supporters and replacing them with shots of
officials or players.
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