Rare protests broke out in China’s far western Xinjiang region, with crowds shouting at hazmat-suited guards after a deadly fire triggered anger over their prolonged COVID-19 lockdown as nationwide infections set one other record.
Crowds chanted “End the lockdown!”, pumping their fists within the air as they walked down a street, in line with videos circulated on Chinese social media on Friday night. Reuters verified the footage was published from the Xinjiang capital Urumqi.
Videos showed people in a plaza singing China’s national anthem with its lyric, “Stand up, those that refuse to be slaves!” while others shouted that they desired to be released from lockdowns.
China has put the vast Xinjiang region under among the country’s longest lockdowns, with lots of Urumqi’s 4 million residents barred from leaving their homes for so long as 100 days. Town reported about 100 latest cases each of the past two days.
Xinjiang is home to 10 million Uyghurs. Rights groups and Western governments have long accused Beijing of abuses against the mainly Muslim ethnic minority, including forced labor in internment camps. China strongly rejects such claims.
The Urumqi protests followed a fireplace in a high-rise constructing there that killed 10 on Thursday night.
Authorities have said the constructing’s residents had been capable of go downstairs, but videos of emergency crews’ efforts, shared on Chinese social media, led many web users to surmise that residents couldn’t escape in time since the constructing was partially locked down.
Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference within the early hours of Saturday, denying that COVID measures had hampered escape and rescue but saying they might investigate further. One said residents could have escaped faster in the event that they had higher understood fire safety.
‘BLAME THE VICTIM’
Dali Yang, a political scientist on the University of Chicago, said such a “blame-the-victim” attitude would make people angrier. “Public trust will just sink lower,” he told Reuters.
Users on China’s Weibo platform described the incident as a tragedy that sprang out of China’s insistence on sticking to its zero-COVID policy and something that might occur to anyone. Some lamented its similarities to the deadly September crash of a COVID quarantine bus.
“Is there not something we will reflect on to make some changes,” said an essay that went viral on WeChat on Friday, questioning the official narrative on the Urumqi apartment fire.
China defends President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy as life-saving and obligatory to stop overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to proceed with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting toll on the world’s second-biggest economy.
While the country recently tweaked its measures, shortening quarantines and taking other targeted steps, this coupled with rising cases has caused widespread confusion and uncertainty in big cities, including Beijing, where many residents are locked down at home.
China recorded 34,909 day by day local cases, low by global standards however the third record in a row, with infections spreading quite a few cities, prompting widespread lockdowns and other curbs on movement and business.
Shanghai, China’s most populous city and financial hub, tightened testing requirements on Saturday for entering cultural venues corresponding to museums and libraries, requiring people to present a negative COVID test taken inside 48 hours, down from 72 hours earlier.
Beijing’s Chaoyang Park, popular with runners and picnickers, shut again after having briefly reopened.