A fire broke out at a residential high-rise building in Urumqi, a city notorious for repression of Uighur citizens in western China, where temperatures dropped below freezing after dark.
The fire is believed to have started with a faulty electrical socket in a bedroom on the 15th floor, before quickly spreading to flats on higher levels in an inferno of burning flames, thick smoke and toxic fumes.
Amazingly, the houses were full of families enduring their third month of the Covid lockdown, who found themselves up in flames due to the brutal health restrictions of a dictatorial regime.
Videos on social media showed water splashing from fire trucks cascading down the building as rescuers were stopped by pandemic control barriers and parked cars believed to have been abandoned by drivers in quarantine.
The recordings show the screams of dying people trapped in their homes and cries for help from families facing suffocation. They detail the agony of neighbors unable to help, attempts to separate cars disrupting fire crews and even reportedly tying raw wires through doorways to prevent people leaving homes. Wrapped around the handle.
The protests highlight a growing mood of frustration in the world’s only major country still fighting Covid using the old weapons of mass lockdown and routine testing after nearly three years of restrictions.
Ten people, including young children, were confirmed dead, while nine others were injured – although rumors are circulating on Chinese social media that the true death toll could be more than four times that.
Now these horrific deaths have ignited extraordinary protests in at least eight other Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, in the most daring outburst of defiance against the repressive Communist regime in years.
It is highly unusual for people to vent their anger publicly at Communist Party leaders in China, where direct criticism of the government can result in harsh punishments, including years in prison.
But protesters are challenging President Xi Jinping’s pig-headed determination to continue with strict ‘zero Covid’ lockdown policies on the country that originated the pandemic.
The fire is believed to have started from a faulty electrical socket in a bedroom on the 15th floor, before quickly spreading to flats on higher levels in an inferno of burning flames, thick smoke and toxic fumes.
The protests highlight a growing mood of frustration in the world’s only major country still fighting Covid using the old weapons of mass lockdown and routine testing after nearly three years of restrictions.
Some bold protesters are even calling for the ouster of their all-powerful president, just a month after Xi won his third term as party chief, which has cemented his position as China’s most prominent leader since Chairman Mao. I have earned my status.
In the financial hub of Shanghai, police beat and blackmailed youth activists who chanted “Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party, step down” as well as chanted “unlock Xinjiang, unlock China” Responded with pepper spray.
The big question, as outrage mounts on social media and protests reportedly grow on at least 50 university campuses, is whether growing frustration over Xi’s tough COVID policies now pose a serious challenge to his ultra-autocratic rule Can give
To be sure, they offer a significant rebuke to an arrogant leader who has hailed his approach to Covid as evidence of China’s government superiority after the initial missteps and cover-ups that left the planet a pandemic. had spread
Shockingly, the houses were full of families in their third month of the Covid lockdown, who found themselves engulfed in a blazing fire due to the draconian health restrictions of an authoritarian regime.
The protests first flared up in Urumqi, where many of its four million residents have been unable to leave their homes since early August. Citizens wearing face masks confronted officers, pushed past a barrier guarded by police and shouted slogans demanding an end to the lockdown.
One protester said, ‘Everyone thinks that the Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, they have no courage.’
‘I thought the same thing. But then when I went there, I found that the atmosphere there was such that everyone was very brave.
The authorities hastily apologised, promising an investigation and softening local restrictions, though they denied their actions led to the deaths. A fire service officer blamed residents for failure to ‘protect themselves’.
More protests followed the next day in cities such as Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing and Xi’an, while state censors adopted their ‘whack a mole’ strategy of trying to remove internet posts criticizing lockdown policies and praising protesters. .
According to social media posts, about 2,000 students gathered at Beijing’s Tsinghua University – Xi’s alma mater – to demand an immediate easing of anti-virus controls and the introduction of free speech. They raised slogans of ‘democracy and rule of law’.
In Shanghai, protesters lit candles to honor the victims of the fire. One participant said they sang the national anthem and even felt free to break the taboo of talking about the 1989 massacre of Tiananmen Square protesters.
Hundreds of people returned to the street yesterday, despite police trying to break up the gathering with pepper spray, beatings and tying protesters in their vans. ‘I know what I am doing is very dangerous, but it is my duty,’ said one.
Hundreds of people returned to the street yesterday, despite police trying to break up the gathering with pepper spray, beatings and tying protesters in their vans. ‘I know what I am doing is very dangerous, but it is my duty,’ said one.
Some held blank sheets of paper to send a silent message of defiance to the authorities – a gesture mimicking the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which have been crushed by Xi’s brutal puppets. Others carried white flowers, a symbol of mourning in Chinese culture.
Some held blank sheets of paper to send a silent message of defiance to the authorities – a gesture mimicking the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which have been crushed by Xi’s brutal puppets. Others carried white flowers, a symbol of mourning in Chinese culture.
In Wuhan, the central city where the pandemic originated in late 2019, residents of at least two neighborhoods joined together in the streets, some forcing their way past control barriers erected to enforce the lockdown.
Amnesty International appealed to Beijing to allow peaceful protests.
‘The tragedy of the Urumqi fire has inspired remarkable bravery across China,’ said Hannah Young, the human rights group’s regional director. ‘These unprecedented protests show that people are at the end of their tolerance for excessive COVID-19 restrictions.’ These events are arguably the most important challenge to Communist Party leaders since the Tiananmen protests. Certainly they present a major headache for the control freak Xi in terms of a full-frontal assault on his national purview and his signature zero-Covid policy.
China, home to about a fifth of the world’s population, claims it has seen just over 5,000 deaths from Covid – although the higher death toll suggests it is a dictatorship with a dark record of misinformation in the pandemic. And it’s cheating.
The tide of anger on social media is reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic, when the death of a whistleblowing doctor in Wuhan – reprimanded by police for trying to warn his colleagues to take precautions – sparked deep fury over a state cover-up did.
Since then, Beijing has tightly controlled the response to contain outbreaks, implementing strict lockdowns, digital enforcement and regular mass testing to hide critical data on the origins and early cases in Wuhan from outside investigators.
Now cases are at a record level. Five days ago, China reported nearly 30,000 new locally transmitted COVID infections, with every region containing the outbreak. By yesterday this figure had increased to 40,000
As the rest of the world resumed normal life, an arrogant Xi – concerned by the comparatively low vaccination rates among elderly people and the efficacy of Chinese-made vaccines – refused to change policies that had been in conflict with his regime. were recognised.
Now cases are at a record level. Five days ago, China reported nearly 30,000 new locally transmitted COVID infections, with every region containing the outbreak. By yesterday this figure had increased to 40,000.
‘The Urumqi fire upset everyone in the country,’ said Sean Li, a resident of the Beijing community that managed to thwart lockdown plans this weekend after appealing to local authorities.
‘That tragedy could have happened to any one of us.’
These protests may flare up or fizzle out – but Xi’s record indicates he is unlikely to tolerate dissent, especially after five weeks of putting himself on a pedestal next to Mao, the founder of the Communist state .
Days before the party congress at which Xi accepted his latest term in power, a lone protester broke through security cordon in Beijing to drape a banner on a bridge calling for an end to the communist dictatorship.
We need food, not PCR test. We want freedom, not lockdown. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not cultural revolution. We don’t need leaders but votes. We want to be citizens, not slaves,’ read one banner, while another demanded Xi’s removal.
The daring activist electrified the internet but was swiftly taken into custody. Now he is joined of late by some of his fellow citizens, sharing his desire for at least some freedom from the lockdown, after the tragic death in the fire sparked burning outrage across China.
