China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region eases some restrictions after pandemic lockdown demonstrations

Authorities in western China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region opened several districts of the capital Urumqi on Saturday. This comes after residents staged unusual late-night demonstrations against the city’s “no coronavirus” lockdown that has lasted for more than three months.

Public displays of defiance were fueled by anger over a fire in an apartment complex that killed 10 people, according to the official death toll. It took him three hours for paramedics to extinguish the flames. Antivirus.

Demonstrations and online public outrage are the latest signs of growing dissatisfaction with China’s forceful approach to controlling COVID-19. It is the only major country in the world fighting the pandemic through mass testing and lockdowns.

During the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region lockdown, some residents elsewhere in the city had their doors chained shut, one of whom spoke to the Associated Press but declined to give his name for fear of retaliation. Many in Urumqi believe that such brute-force tactics may have prevented residents from escaping Friday’s blazes, and that the official death toll is underestimated.

Authorities denied the accusations, saying the building had no barricades and residents had been allowed to leave. Police cracked down on dissent and said she had arrested a 24-year-old woman for spreading “false information” about the death toll online.

“Open, open”

Anger erupted after Urumqi city officials held a press conference about the fire.

“Some residents were too weak to help themselves,” said Li Wensheng, chief of fire department in Urumqi city.

The people of Urumqi marched peacefully on cold winter nights wearing large overstuffed winter jackets.

A video of the protest showed people holding up Chinese flags and shouting “Open, open!” Despite heavy censorship, they spread rapidly on Chinese social media. In some scenes, people yelled and pressed against a line of men in white full-body protective suits worn by local government workers and pandemic prevention volunteers, according to the video.

By Saturday, most had been removed by censors. The Associated Press was unable to independently verify all the videos, but two Urumqi residents, who could not be named for fear of reprisal, said mass protests took place on Friday night. One of them said he had a friend who attended.

AP has located two videos of protests in various parts of Urumqi. In one video, police in face masks and hospital gowns confronted screaming protesters. In another example, a protester addresses the crowd about their demands. It is unclear how widespread the protests were.

Given China’s massive security apparatus, protests are dangerous anywhere in the country, but they are unusual in Xinjiang, which has been the target of a brutal crackdown on the security for years. Huge numbers of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities were squeezed into a vast network of camps and prisons, instilling terror in the region to this day.

Most of the protesters in the video were Han Chinese. A Uyghur woman who lives in Urumqi said she was too scared to go out on the street even though the Uyghurs were angry.

“Han people know that they will not be punished for opposing the blockade,” she said, declining to give her name out of fear of retaliation against her family. If you say anything, they will take you to prison or a concentration camp.”

change public opinion

In one video that the AP could not independently verify, Urumqi senior official Jan Huasen told angry protesters that low-risk areas of the city would be opened the next morning.

That promise came true the next day, with Urumqi authorities announcing that residents of low-risk areas would be allowed to move freely within the neighborhood. Yet many other areas remain under lockdown.

Officials triumphantly declared on Saturday that they had essentially achieved “social zero COVID.” This means that community spread has stopped and new infections are being detected only in people already under health surveillance, such as those in central quarantine facilities.

Social media users greeted the news with disbelief and irony. “Only China can achieve this speed,” one user wrote on Weibo.

On Chinese social media, where trending topics are manipulated by censorship, the announcement of “Zero COVID” was the number one trending hashtag on both Twitter-like platform Weibo and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. did. The apartment fire and protests have become a lightning rod for public outrage, as millions of posts have been shared, questioning China’s handling of the pandemic and ridiculing the country’s draconian propaganda and stringent censorship controls. rice field.

The outburst of criticism marks a sharp shift in public opinion. Early in the pandemic, China’s approach to controlling COVID-19 was hailed by its own citizens as minimizing deaths as other countries suffered devastating waves of infections. rice field.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has touted the approach as an example of the superiority of the Chinese system compared to Western countries, particularly the United States, which has struggled to politicize the use of face masks and enact widespread lockdowns. I was.

But support for “zero COVID” has plummeted in recent months as the tragedy sparked public outrage. did. She suffered vomiting and diarrhea during quarantine at a hotel in Zhengzhou, and she died after being delayed in seeking treatment.

The government is doubling down on policies while easing some measures such as shortening quarantine times. The central government has repeatedly said it will stick to ‘zero COVID’.

Backlash in Beijing

Meanwhile, in Beijing, health authorities reported 2,454 new COVID-19 cases in the last 15 hours on Saturday. Much of the capital is also in lockdown.

In many residential areas in the northeast suburbs of Beijing, residents have banded together to oppose local authorities or unelected community associations locking their gates and imposing mandatory quarantines on their neighbors.

Police responded, but no violence is known to have occurred. Yutianxia community on Saturday allowed three neighbors who tested positive to quarantine at home instead of being taken to a government facility following an hour-long standoff between police, residents and Communist Party neighborhoods We have reached an agreement to do so.

Much of Xinjiang has been under lockdown since August. Most people are not allowed to leave their homes, and some report dire conditions, such as spotty food deliveries starving residents. On Friday, the city reported 220 new cases, most of them asymptomatic.

A Uyghur woman from Urumqi said she had been locked in an apartment since August 8 and was not even allowed to open the windows. On Friday, her neighbors defied her orders by opening windows and voicing protests. she participated.

“No more lockdowns! No more lockdowns!” they shouted.