From Reuters:
“Protests erupt in Xinjiang
and Beijing after deadly fire”
Public anger in China towards
widening COVID-19 lockdowns across the country erupted into rare protests in
China’s far western Xinjiang region and the country's capital of Beijing, as
nationwide infections set another record. Crowds took to the streets on Friday
night in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi, chanting "End the lockdown!"
and pumping their fists in the air, after a deadly fire on Thursday triggered
anger over their prolonged COVID-19 lockdown according to videos circulated on
Chinese social media on Friday night. Videos showed people in a plaza singing
China's national anthem with its lyric, "Rise up, those who refuse to be
slaves!" while others shouted that they wanted to be released from
lockdowns. Reuters verified that the footage was published from Urumqi, where
many of its 4 million residents have been under some of the country's longest
lockdowns, barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days.
In the capital of Beijing 2,700
km (1,678 miles) away, some residents under lockdown staged small-scale
protests or confronted their local officials over movement restrictions placed
on them, with some successfully pressuring them into lifting them ahead of a
schedule. A crucial spark for the public anger was a fire in a high-rise
building in Urumqi that killed 10 on Thursday night, whose case went viral on
social media as many internet users surmised that residents could not escape in
time because the building was partially locked down.
Urumqi officials abruptly held a
news conference in the early hours of Saturday to deny COVID measures had
hampered escape and rescue, but internet users continued to question the
official narrative. "The Urumqi fire got everyone in the country
upset," said Sean Li, a resident in Beijing. A planned lockdown for his
compound "Berlin Aiyue" was called off on Friday after residents
protested to their local leader and convinced him to cancel it, negotiations
that were captured by a video posted on social media. The residents had caught
wind of the plan after seeing workers putting barriers on their gates.
"That tragedy could have happened to any of us," he said. By Saturday
evening, at least ten other compounds lifted lockdown before the announced
end-date after residents complained, according to a Reuters tally of social
media posts by residents. A separate video shared with Reuters showed Beijing
residents in an unidentifiable part of the city marching around an open-air
carpark on Saturday, shouting "End the lockdown". The Beijing
government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
ASKING TOUGH QUESTIONS Dali
Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said the comments
from authorities that the residents of the Urumqi building had been able to go
downstairs and thus escape was likely to have been perceived as victim-blaming
and further fuelled public anger. "During the first two years of
COVID, people trusted the government to make the best decisions to keep them
safe from the virus. Now people are increasingly asking tough questions and are
wary about following orders," Yang said. 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
labour in internment camps. China strongly rejects such claims.
China defends President Xi
Jinping's signature zero-COVID policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent
overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it
despite the growing public pushback and its mounting toll on the world's
second-biggest economy. China said on Friday it would cut the amount of cash
that banks must hold as reserves for the second time this year, releasing
liquidity to prop up a faltering economy. The next few weeks could be the worst
in China since the early weeks of the pandemic both for the economy and the
healthcare system, Mark Williams of Capital Economics said in note this week,
as efforts to contain the current outbreak will require additional localised
lockdowns in many cities, which will further depress economic activity.
For Friday, the country recorded
34,909 daily local cases, low by global standards but the third record in a
row, with infections spreading numerous cities, prompting widespread lockdowns
and other curbs on movement and business. Shanghai, China's most populous city
and financial hub which endured a two month lockdown earlier this year,
tightened testing requirements on Saturday for entering cultural venues such as
museums and libraries, requiring people to present a negative COVID test taken
within 48 hours, down from 72 hours earlier.
^ This is Covid Under Communism.
China has long completely wrongly dealt with Covid (despite it coming from
China) and not only allowed it to spread from its borders to affect, sickened
and kill Millions around the World.
Now their Zero Covid Policy
proves to be out-of-date 3 years later and finally the ordinary Chinese people
are starting to stand-up for themselves.
China has to learn to live with
Covid (like the rest of the World) otherwise there were be even more protests
and more senseless death and violence. ^
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