Protesters in China protest with blank paper against regime

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Chinese protesters are resorting to blank sheets of paper to express their anger at the regime’s Covid-zero policy, in acts of dissent bringing together thousands who have taken to the streets of several cities across the country for a few days.

Images and videos circulating online show university students in cities such as Nanjing and Beijing holding blank sheets of paper in silent protests, a tactic used in part to evade censorship or arrest and which had previously been employed at pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The wave of protests, likely the biggest ever faced by leader Xi Jinping since taking power, was triggered by an apartment fire that killed 10 people on Thursday (24) in Urumqi. In this far western city some people were confined for up to 100 days, fueling speculation that Covid lockdown measures may have prevented residents from escaping. 🇧🇷

In Shanghai, a crowd that started to gather on Saturday night (26) to hold a candlelight vigil for the victims of Urumqi held up blank sheets of paper, according to witnesses and videos.

A widely shared video, which could not be independently verified, showed a lone woman on the steps of the China University of Communication in Nanjing city with a piece of paper before a man stepped in and took the paper.

Other images showed dozens of people walking up the university steps with blank sheets of paper, lit against the night sky by their cellphone flashlights. Later, a man can be seen berating the crowd for their protest.

“One day you will pay for everything you’ve done today,” he said, in videos seen by Reuters news agency. “The State will also have to pay the price for what it has done,” chanted people in the crowd.

Similar demonstrations had already occurred in Hong Kong in 2020, shortly after Beijing imposed measures that virtually eliminated protests in the territory. One was to outlaw the flags and banners with slogans used by activists in the previous year.

“This white piece of paper represents white terror,” 17-year-old student Carrie told the Philippines-based website Rappler, using a Chinese term for political persecution.

Widespread protests are rare in China, where the space for dissent has been virtually eliminated under Xi, forcing citizens to vent on social media, where they play cat-and-mouse with censors.

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