The reporter “was held for several hours before being released. During his detention, he was beaten and kicked by the police,” the chain’s statement said.
A journalist from the British network BBC was arrested on sunday in shanghai (this) after being “hit and kicked & rdquor; by Chinese police officers while filming the wave of protests against anti-covid policies that shake the Asian giant.
Cameraman Ed Lawrence was covering the protests in the Chinese megalopolis this Sunday when was “attacked & rdquor; by several agents of the local police forcedenounced the British media today.
“The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment our journalist received Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai,” a spokesman for the state channel said in a statement.
The reporter “was held for several hours before being released. During his detention, he was beaten and kicked by the police.. This happened while he was working as an accredited journalist,” the letter added.
During this Sunday they circulated through social networks recordings showing a man with western featuresidentified as Lawrence by other accredited journalists in China, being handcuffed by the police.
In its statement, the BBC stated that it had not received any kind of explanation for what happened.
“We have not had any official explanation or apology. from the Chinese authorities, beyond a statement by the officials who later released him that they had arrested him for his own good in case he caught covid in the crowd & rdquor ;, the BBC reported.
Shanghai is, along with Beijing, Nanjing or Wuhan, one of the big Chinese cities where in recent days there have been protests against the restrictions imposed by China in its ‘zero covid’ strategy.
Many of the mobilizations began from vigils and acts in memory of the ten people who died Thursday in a fire in an apparently confined building in Urumqi (northwest), the capital of Xinjiang.
According to videos and testimonials circulating on social media, the outrage that flooded the heavily censored Chinese internet on Friday were transformed 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 Hundreds of people marched through the streets of different cities while holding up blank sheets of paper representing their opposition to censorship.
The demonstrators chanted “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 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.
In some of the cities, groups of people they even shouted “Down with the Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping“a rare public display of disapproval of the country’s leader’s policies.
The numbers of new covid infections broke their record for the fifth consecutive day after the National Health Commission reported today 40,347 cases detected the day before, of which 36,525 (more than 90% of the total) are asymptomatic according to the institution’s standards.
These figures, low by international standards but intolerable for the Chinese authorities, have resulted in restrictions and confinements 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 Shanghai, which experienced a harsh confinement this year that lasted for more than two months in some areas.