“Long live the people, may the dead rest in peace!” chant students at the Nanjing Institute of Communication and Media in eastern China. In Beijing, students at the prestigious Tsinghua University hung blue masks smeared with red paint on the stair railings of the Film Academy.
At Harbin Agricultural University in the northeast, messages written in red are taped to the windows of dormitories. “Without freedom, we prefer death – silent tribute to the victims of Urumqi,” says one of the posters. The young people are referring to the ten people killed in the fire in a building in the provincial capital of Xinjiang, last Thursday (24). According to residents, the anti-covid measures made it difficult to access the emergency exits of the place.
In Wuhan, in the southeast, students at the University of Technology lit candles forming the numbers 24 and 11, marking the day and month of the tragedy in Urumqi. On social networks, videos of acts performed by university students multiply, but the recordings are quickly censored and deleted.
Contradictions about the lockdown in Urumqi
According to investigations, the fire in Urumqi would have started after a short circuit in the electrical outlet of an apartment on the 15th floor. State agencies point out that the building was in a low-risk Covid-19 zone and therefore would not be completely isolated. However, residents told international media that they could only leave the apartments for short periods during the day and that exits were controlled by the authorities.
Videos on social media showed security workers removing barriers around the building so fire trucks could pass through and fight the flames. Images like these have been circulating and waking up a youth exhausted from confinement on university campuses.
Faced with the multiplication of protests, some universities even anticipated the Lunar New Year holidays, which begin in January 2023. The decision was taken with the probable aim of preventing the movement from gaining strength.
silent tributes
For now, tributes at universities are mostly silent due to fear of consequences. This Sunday (27), hundreds of people demonstrated silently in the center of Shanghai, waving flowers and white sheets of paper. The gesture became a symbol of protest against censorship. International journalists who witnessed the act stated that there was no violence, but the crowd was quickly dispersed by the police.
At a protest in the Changping neighborhood of Beijing on Saturday (26), a pregnant woman who is due to give birth soon told RFI’s report that, despite the requirement to carry out three Covid tests a day, she fears that she will not be able to leave her residence to go to the hospital.
“We don’t have any cases of Covid in my building, so why do I have to be locked up? Our rights have to be respected. This confinement is irrational”, he declared.
In Huilongguan, another neighborhood in the Chinese capital, a man says he does not understand the reasons for the lockdown imposed on an entire residential complex due to a positive case.
“We are in a region where the risk is low, so we should be able to enter and exit our homes normally. We were told there was only one positive person in the entire condominium, but we don’t know who, in which building, so there is no reason to that all the area is isolated,” he said.
Covid zero policy
Despite the various vaccines available, and unlike the rest of the world, China continues to impose strict lockdowns as soon as a single case is detected. Those who test positive are forced to undergo drastic isolation in quarantine centers. To access public places, daily negative tests are required.
The first to be subjected to confinement, in early 2020, the Chinese no longer hide their tiredness, after three years of continuous lockdowns. The zero Covid policy, effective at the beginning of the pandemic, has been showing its limits for months in the face of the more contagious omicron subvariants.
In recent weeks, the government has been releasing almost daily records of new cases. This Sunday (27), 39,506 contaminations were registered across the country, a low number in relation to the number of infections registered in other countries. So far, the Chinese government has not reacted to the protests.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
