In Shanghai, a city of more than 25 million people and which endured a two-month lockdown this year that caused food shortages, hundreds of people marched silently through the center of the city, the country’s economic and financial capital.
According to a witness, the demonstrators showed blank sheets of paper – a gesture that has become a symbol of protest against censorship in China – and white flowers. Police later arrived and dispersed them, said the person, who requested anonymity.
Hours earlier, a crowd had gathered near Wulumuqui Street – the Mandarin name for the city of Urumqi – with people chanting “Xi Jinping, resign, resign!” in a rare show of rejection of the Chinese president, who just of being enthroned as leader in perpetuity by the Communist Party.
In the Chinese capital, hundreds of students from the prestigious Tsinghua University and also from Peking University demonstrated on campus yesterday, according to witnesses and videos posted online.
Likewise, hundreds of more people demonstrated last night in Wuhan, central China and the place of the start of the pandemic in 2019, against sanitary restrictions.
According to videos broadcast live on social networks, a crowd of outraged residents demonstrated in that city, where the first case of coronavirus was detected in December 2019.
In Urumqi, in the Xinjiang region (west), ten people died in a fire on Thursday. The incident sparked outrage that spilled onto social media and led to street demonstrations because many believe the lockdowns made it difficult to rescue victims.
According to other recordings, there were demonstrations in Nankin (east), as well as in Xian and Canton (south).
Testimonials
A Shanghai protester, who also asked not to be named, said he arrived at a demonstration at 2:00 a.m. local time on Friday when “a group of people were paying tribute and laying flowers on the sidewalk, while another group was shouting slogans ”.
There were minor clashes, but, in general, the police behaved in a “civilized” way, he said.
“It’s moving to see so many like-minded people come together,” he added. “It’s impressive that under the current circumstances, there are still brave people standing up.”
“Xi Jinping, resign”, “Communist Party, resign”: these were the slogans shouted by the protesters in Shanghai, according to the BBC, which had journalists stationed in the place.
As soon as the videos of the protests began to be released, the authorities quickly deleted the messages on the networks.
A witness to the protest at Beijing’s Tsinghua University said that around 11:30 a.m. local time a student brandished a blank sheet of paper and other women joined her.
“We sang the anthem and the International and we shouted ‘freedom will triumph’, ‘no to the tests’, ‘we want food’, ‘no to confinement, we want freedom’”, added the witness.
Videos posted online showed a crowd outside the university dining hall, gathered around a speaker.
Another video, filmed at the same location, shows students chanting: “Democracy and rule of law, freedom of expression”, but the footage was quickly removed from the internet.
The witness added that the under-secretary of the Communist Party for the university was talking to the students and that many had started to leave, while the police had not yet arrived.
A hell
“This is not a normal life, we are fed up. Our lives were not like this before,” the speaker cried.
At Peking University, close to Tsinghua University, a vigil was also held in memory of the victims of the Urumqi fire. According to a student who participated, the protests started on Saturday night and between 100 and 200 people gathered.
“I heard people shout: ‘no to the covid tests, yes to freedom’”, he explained with images and videos that corroborated the facts.
The protests take place in the midst of the population’s weariness due to the government’s zero-tolerance strategy with the covid.
China is the last major economy that maintains the “zero covid” strategy, with confinements, extensive quarantines and massive tests to eradicate sources of contagion as soon as they appear.
The country registered 39,506 local infections of covid-19 yesterday, a record number for this country of 1.4 billion inhabitants.
Source: Ambito
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