Beijing, Shanghai or Nanjing have experienced important demonstrations against the quarantines and confinements promoted by the Chinese government, in a country that registers its highest infection data
The protests against restrictions imposed by China in its ‘zero covid‘ were extended this weekend to major cities such as BeijingShanghai or Nanjing, after the death of 10 people in the fire in an apparently confined building in Urumqi (northwest) on Thursday.
According to videos and testimonials circulating on social media, the outrage that flooded the heavily censored Chinese internet on Friday turned yesterday into vigils in memory of the victimswho, according to some commentators, spent the last 100 days of their lives confined to their homes.
While the official press does not report the incidents, some recordings showed how Dozens of people ripped off the fences with which the authorities close the confined urbanizations yesterday in the vast Tiantongyuan residential complex in northern Beijing, sometimes described by the Chinese media as the largest in Asia, with some 700,000 residents.
The Chinese capital, especially armored against outbreaks since 2020, now experiencing its highest levels of infections: According to the latest official report, this Saturday more than 4,300 new cases were detected, of which 82% are asymptomatic according to the standards of the health authorities.
Vigil with critics in Shanghai
These figures, low by international standards but intolerable for the Chinese authorities, have resulted in restrictions Y lockdowns that affect a large part of the population of the capitalas has already happened this year in other parts of the country such as the aforementioned Urumqi or the eastern megalopolis of Shanghai, which experienced a harsh confinement this year that lasted for more than two months in some areas.
Precisely in that city, and precisely on Urumqi street, hundreds of people gathered last night to celebrate a vigil in memory of those who died in the fire which passed in a mostly peaceful manner, according to testimonies on networks, among which some affirm that there were arrests.
Recordings show groups of protesters chanting “Those who refuse to be slaves, rise up” – a stanza from the Chinese national anthem – or ‘The Internationale’, shouting “we want freedom”, “we don’t want to do PCR tests” or “fuck the QR codes”, in reference to the obligation to scan the health QR codes with a mobile application at the entrance of any establishment or even in parks so that, when the authorities detect a contagion, they can determine who has had contact with that person at all times.
At one point in the night, a group of people came to shout “Down with the Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping“a rare public display of disapproval of the country’s leader’s policies.
According to the specialized portal What’s On Weibo, Numerous commentators on the Weibo social network -the local equivalent of Twitter, censored in the country- showed support for the vigil but, above all, they asked the participants to protect themselves, before the platform’s censors prohibited commenting on the label used to talk about the subject.
university protests
That same portal indicates that, in a university in the eastern city of Nanjing, numerous students gathered on campus last night and turned on the flashlights of their mobile phones as a vigil for the deceased in Urumqi.
Meanwhile, at another university, in this case in Xi’an (downtown), a city that has also experienced harsh lockdowns, a group of students took to the streets of the campus to show their discontent with the anti-covid lockdowns, which have also been a major drag on the national economy this year.
The Asian giant, practically isolated from the rest of the world since the beginning of 2020, has suffered since the beginning of this year numerous waves of outbreaks attributed to the contagious variant ómicron, which has jeopardized the national strategy of zero tolerance against the coronavirus by causing numbers of infections higher than even those at the beginning of the pandemic.
According to data from the National Health Commission, China broke its infection record for the fourth consecutive day of covid when detecting almost 40,000 new infections this Saturday, although more than 90% of them are considered asymptomatic and do not add to the official balances of confirmed cases.
The institution’s figures show that about 1.8 million people currently remain under quarantine, since the guideline involves transferring those infected – including those who are asymptomatic – to hospitals or isolation centers and also, although separately, people who have had contact with them.