(Shanghai) The censorship of the Chinese authorities was at work on Monday to erase all traces of the wave of demonstrations that took place the day before against health restrictions and for more freedoms, gatherings on a scale unprecedented for decades.
On Sunday, a crowd of demonstrators, responding to calls on social networks, expressed their anger in particular in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, catching the police off guard.
Among the slogans chanted in unison: “No COVID-19 tests, we are hungry! », « Xi Jinping, resign! CCP (Chinese Communist Party, editor’s note), withdraw! “, “No to confinements, we want freedom”.
By its extent on the territory, the mobilization, whose total number of participants is difficult to verify, seems the most important since the pro-democracy riots of 1989.
PHOTO ASSOCIATED PRESS
Police block a street in Shanghai.
It is the culmination of popular discontent that has been growing in recent months in China, one of the last countries in the world to apply a strict “zero COVID-19” policy, which implies confinements to repeat and almost daily PCR testing of the population.
The deadly fire in Urumqi, capital of northwestern Xinjiang province, has sparked anger among many Chinese, with some blaming health restrictions for blocking relief work.
But the demonstrations this weekend have also brought out demands for more political freedoms, even for the departure of President Xi Jinping, who has just been reappointed for an unprecedented third term at the head of the country.
Police presence
Monday morning, a police presence was visible in Beijing and Shanghai, near the places of gatherings the day before, noted AFP journalists.
Near the Liangma River in Beijing, where more than 400 young Chinese had gathered for several hours on Sunday evening, with cries including “We are all people of Xinjiang! ‘, police cars were parked and officers were patrolling along the canal.
In Shanghai, one of the streets occupied by the crowd during the night was now surrounded by blue palisades along the sidewalks to prevent any further gathering.
PHOTO PROVIDED, VIA REUTERS
Between 200 and 300 students from the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing also demonstrated on their campus on Sunday.
On Sunday, clashes took place between demonstrators – some wearing flowers or white sheets as symbols of censorship – and the police, and several people were arrested.
On Chinese social media, any information about the protests appeared to have been scrubbed Monday morning. On the Weibo platform, a sort of Chinese Twitter, searches for “Liangma River” and “Urumqi Street”, two of the places of protest the day before, did not yield any results related to the mobilization.
Videos showing students singing and protesting in other cities had also disappeared from the WeChat network. They were replaced by messages stating that the post had been flagged “due to sensitive or violating the rules”.
On Weibo, the search for the keyword #A4 — in reference to the white papers held up during rallies — appeared to have been modified to return only a few results from the previous days.
” Boiling point ”
Chinese authorities’ strict control over information and health restrictions on travel within the country make it difficult to verify the total number of protesters over the weekend.
But such a widespread uprising is extremely rare in China, given the crackdown on any form of opposition to the government.
Demonstrations also took place on Sunday in Wuhan (center) – where the world’s first case of COVID-19 was detected almost three years ago – in Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hong Kong.
The People’s Daily published a text on Monday warning of “paralysis” and “weariness” with the zero COVID-19 policy, but did not call for an end to it.
“People have now reached a boiling point because there is no clear direction on the way forward to end the zero COVID-19 policy,” COVID-19 expert Alfred Wu Muluan told AFP. Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore.
“The party underestimated the anger of the population,” he adds.
The protests worried investors, and Asian stock markets were down sharply at the open on Monday.
As for the number of COVID-19 cases in China, it reached a new record since the start of the pandemic on Monday, with 40,052 cases, even if the vast majority are asymptomatic. And the figure remains minimal compared to the Chinese population (1.4 billion inhabitants).
BBC denounces the arrest of one of its journalists in China
Britain’s BBC media group reported on Sunday that one of its reporters in China, who was covering protests in Shanghai against the regime’s draconian “zero COVID-19” policy, was arrested and “beaten by police”.
“The BBC is very concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence who was arrested and handcuffed while covering protests in Shanghai,” a spokesperson for the group said in a statement provided to AFP. .
According to him, “he was beaten and hit by the police” while working as an accredited journalist in the country.
The spokesperson explained that the BBC had had “no official explanation or apology from the Chinese authorities, beyond an assertion by officials, who subsequently released him, that they had arrested him for his own well in case he caught COVID-19 (in the middle of) the crowd.”
“We don’t consider that to be a credible explanation,” he added.