Tensions persist in China where fresh clashes have pitted protesters and police in Guangzhou, despite authorities’ calls for “repression” to contain the national movement of anger against health restrictions and for more freedoms.
The authorities are facing the most widespread protest movement since the pro-democracy mobilizations of 1989. The demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square had been bloodily repressed.
In this context, Charles Michel, President of the European Council – the institution representing the Member States of the European Union – is expected in Beijing on Wednesday where he will meet President Xi Jinping in particular on Thursday.
For his part, the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, affirmed that the populations of all countries have the right to “voice their frustration” by demonstrating peacefully. “When we see the government taking massive crackdowns to prevent it, it’s not a sign of strength but a sign of weakness,” he continued.
On Tuesday, the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CCP), which oversees law enforcement, said, without mentioning recent events, that “resolutely suppress, in accordance with law, the actions crimes aimed at breaking the social order and resolutely protecting social stability”.
The protest comes after nearly three years of harsh health restrictions against Covid and against a backdrop of public frustration with the Chinese political system.
In Beijing, Shanghai, but also Wuhan and other cities across the country, protests unfolded over the weekend, catching the powerful security system off guard, which has since tightened the screws to prevent any new gatherings.
Shields
However, new clashes between demonstrators and police erupted overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday in the metropolis of Guangzhou, according to witnesses and videos published on social networks and verified by AFP.
Footage shows police dressed in full white protective suits and equipped with riot shields, advancing in serried ranks down a street in Haizhu district.
On the videos, geolocated by AFP, cries are heard, while orange and blue barricades are knocked down.
People are also seen throwing objects at the police then, on another extract, a dozen individuals, their hands tied, seem to be arrested by the police.
A Guangzhou resident told AFP that he saw around 100 police converge on the village of Houjiao, which is part of Haizhu district, and arrest at least three men on Tuesday evening.
Several districts of Canton lifted restrictions in certain confined neighborhoods on Wednesday afternoon, according to announcements from the authorities.
Students from universities in the city said they were forced out of their dormitories overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday or risk being placed in Covid quarantine rooms, according to messages posted on social media.
“Give me freedom”
Following protests on campuses last weekend, a growing number of universities declared the early start of vacation, pushing their students to return to their families.
The trigger for this national mobilization was the fire in an apartment building in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region (northwest), which killed 10 people.
Internet users have accused the health restrictions of having prevented the rapid arrival of help, an argument swept away by the authorities.
But some protests have also taken a political turn, with some demanding the departure of President Xi Jinping.
A heavy police presence in Beijing and Shanghai discouraged any attempt to demonstrate there.
But other sporadic gatherings were able to take place on Monday and Tuesday.
In the oldest university in Hong Kong (south), a semi-autonomous territory, more than a dozen people led the crowd to chant slogans like “give me freedom or give me death”.
“We are not foreign forces, we are Chinese citizens. China should allow different voices,” one protester said.
Problematic vaccination
In Hangzhou, 170 kilometers southwest of Shanghai, small demonstrations broke out on Monday evening, despite the police force.
A witness told AFP “about 200” police and law enforcement officers surrounded the demonstrators, before getting protesters into a van.
The authorities’ strict control over information and health restrictions on travel within China make it difficult to assess the total number of protesters in the country.
But such a widespread uprising is rare, given the crackdown on any form of frontal opposition to the government.
If Beijing maintains its strict health policy for the moment, some gestures of relaxation have appeared in recent days, while the authorities have promised to accelerate the vaccination of the elderly.
The insufficient rate of vaccination in China, particularly among seniors, is one of the government’s arguments for maintaining its measures.