Protests erupted across China on Saturday, including at universities and in Shanghai where hundreds chanted “Get down, Xi Jinping! Resign, Communist Party!’ in an unprecedented show of defiance against the country’s strict and increasingly costly zero-Covid policy.
A deadly apartment building fire in Urumqi, the capital of the western region of Xinjiang, which killed 10 people and injured nine on Thursday, acted as a catalyst to ignite public anger as videos emerged that appeared to suggest that the lockdown measures had delayed the firefighters from reaching the victims.
On dozens of university campuses, students held rallies or put up posters to mourn the dead in the Xinjiang fire and speak out against Zero Covid. In several cities, residents in neighborhoods that had been locked down tore down barricades and took to the streets, after massive anti-blockade protests swept through Urumqi on Friday night.
Such widespread scenes of anger and defiance – some stretching into Sunday – are extremely rare in China, where the ruling Communist Party ruthlessly cracks down on any expression of dissent. However, three years into the pandemic, many people have been pushed to the brink by the government’s relentless use of lockdowns, Covid testing and quarantine.
The acceleration of restrictions in recent months, combined with a series of heartbreaking deaths attributed to overzealous policing of controls, has brought things to a head.
The anger has led to notable acts of defiance in the financial hub of Shanghai, where many of the city’s 25 million residents harbor a deep grudge against zero-Covid after being put under a two-month lockdown in the spring.
Late on Saturday night, hundreds of residents gathered for a candlelight vigil on Urumqi Street, named after the city, to mourn the victims of the Xinjiang fire, according to widely circulated – and promptly censored – videos. on Chinese social media and a witness. account.
Around a makeshift memorial with candles, flowers and placards, the crowd held white sheets of white paper – in a traditional symbolic protest against censorship – and chanted: “You need human rights, you need freedom.”
In several videos seen by CNN, people could be heard shouting for China’s leader Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to “step down.” The crowd also chanted: “Don’t want Covid tests, want freedom!” and “Don’t want a dictatorship, you want a democracy!”
Some videos show people singing China’s national anthem and The Internationale, a standard of the socialist movement, while holding banners protesting the country’s ultra-strict measures against the pandemic.
Lines of police, who were initially watching from the outside, began moving to push back and divide the crowd around 3 a.m., sparking tense confrontations with protesters, according to a witness.
The witness told CNN they saw several people being arrested and taken to a police vehicle next to the makeshift memorial after 4.30am. They also saw several protesters being grabbed by police from the crowd and led behind the police line. The protest gradually broke up before dawn, the witness said.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of Shanghai residents returned to the site to continue the protests despite a heavy police presence and road blockades.
Videos showed hundreds of people at an intersection chanting “Free the people!” in a demand that the police release the detained protesters.
This time, the police appeared to have taken a more hardline approach, moving faster and more aggressively to make arrests and disperse the crowds.
In one video, a man holding a bunch of chrysanthemums gave a speech while walking on a crosswalk as a police officer tried to stop him.
“We must be braver! Am I breaking the law by holding flowers?’ asked the crowd, who shouted “No!” in response.
“We Chinese must be braver!” he said to applause from the crowd. “So many of us were arrested yesterday. Is it jobless or familyless? We should not be afraid!”.
The man struggled as more than a dozen police officers forced him into a police car as the angry crowd chanted “Free him!” and rushed to the vehicle.
Other videos show chaotic scenes of police pushing, dragging and beating protesters.
In the evening, after a protester was forcibly taken away, hundreds of people shouted “triads” at the police, according to a live feed.
Many of the protests have erupted on university campuses – which are particularly sensitive politically to the Communist Party, given the history of the student-led Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
In the early hours of Sunday, around 100 students gathered around a protest slogan painted on a wall at the prestigious Peking University in Beijing. One student told CNN that when he arrived at the scene around 1 a.m., security guards were using jackets to cover the protest sign.
“Say no to lockdown, yes to freedom. No to Covid testing, yes to food,” read the message scrawled in red paint, echoing the slogan of a protest that took place on a Beijing overpass in October, days before a major Communist Party meeting in which Xi secured a third term in office.
“Open your eyes and look at the world, zero-Covid potential is a lie,” read the protest slogan at Peking University.
The student said security guards later covered the slogan with black paint.
Students later gathered to sing The Internationale before being dispersed by teachers and security guards.
In the eastern province of Jiangsu, at least dozens of students from the Communication University of China, Nanjing gathered on Saturday night to mourn those who lost their lives in the Xinjiang fire. The videos show students holding up sheets of white paper and cell phone flashlights.
In one video, a university official could be heard warning students: “You will pay for what you did today.”
“And you, and so is the country,” shouted a student in response.
Demonstrations on campus continued on Sunday. At Tsinghua University, another top university in Beijing, hundreds of students gathered in a square to protest zero Covid and censorship.
Videos and images circulating on social media show students holding up sheets of white paper and chanting: “Democracy and the rule of law! FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!”
In one video, a female student could be heard shouting to cheers from the crowd: “From today on, I will no longer perform oral sex for state power!”
Elsewhere in the country, residents protested against lockdowns in their neighborhoods, after sweeping protests in Urumqi forced authorities to announce the gradual easing of a lockdown that had lasted more than 100 days.
On Friday night, hundreds of Urumqi residents marched toward a government building chanting “end to lockdowns,” with some holding the Chinese flag, according to videos circulating on Chinese social media and a Urumqi resident. Smaller protests also broke out in residential communities across the city, which saw residents break down lockdown barriers and clash with officials.
Throughout the weekend, anti-blockade protests rocked neighborhoods in cities from Beijing, Guangzhou and Wuhan to Lanzhou.
According to social media videos, residents in several residential communities in Beijing defied lockdown orders. In one compound, residents marched and chanted: “Say no to Covid tests, yes to freedom!”
In the northwestern city of Lanzhou, residents rushed out of gated communities on Saturday to roam the streets freely. Videos sent to CNN by a resident show some overturning a tent of Covid workers and smashing a testing chamber.
Earlier this month, residents of the same neighborhood took to the streets to demand answers from the authorities over the death of a 3-year-old boy. He had died of gas poisoning after his father was prevented from rushing him to hospital.
This area and other parts of Lanzhou have been blocked since October 1.
