‘Covid Zero’ in China: New violence erupts between protesters and police in Canton

Tensions remain in China in the face of a radical “zero Covid” policy. According to witnesses and eyewitnesses, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, clashes broke out between demonstrators and police in Canton in the south of the country. social media videoafter several days of uprisings in the country against health restrictions.

The footage shows policemen dressed in white overalls and equipped with transparent shields marching in close ranks down a street in the Haizhu district as glass objects are scattered around them. In video geolocated by AFP, screams are heard as barricades are knocked to the ground.

People are also seen throwing objects at the police, and then, according to another passage, the police arrest a dozen people with their hands tied. A Guangzhou resident who gave only his last name, Chen, said he saw about 100 policemen gather in Houjiao village in Haizhu District and arrest at least three men on Tuesday evening.

In this regard, European Council President Charles Michel is expected to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday, where he will meet with President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Li Keqiang and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (PNP) Wu Bangguo. on Thursday.

The Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China, which oversees the implementation of laws, said on Tuesday that it is necessary to “resolutely suppress, in accordance with the law, criminal acts aimed at disturbing public order and protecting social stability.”

Haizhu District in Guangzhou, home to more than 1.8 million people, is the epicenter of a new outbreak of Covid-19 cases and has been in lockdown since the end of October. Long lines of cars were visible as residents rushed to leave the neighboring Tianhe area, according to videos posted on Weibo, a sort of Chinese Twitter, on Tuesday evening.

Zhang Yi, a spokeswoman for the Canton Health Commission, said on Tuesday that “the epidemic in Tianhe District is rapidly progressing, and the risk of transmission among the population continues to rise.”

A student who was ordered to leave the university dormitory testified on Weibo, “I get an urgent notice at 1 am, I’m shaking and crying in the hallway at 2 am, I see my classmates running away with suitcases at 3 am.” Watch. At 4 o’clock I sit alone on a suitcase, waiting in tears for my parents to come.”

“Now it looks like hell”

“At 5 am, I finally get in my car and run away from this place that devours people. I used to say that this land is hospitable, now it looks like hell,” he added, speaking under the pseudonym Ludao Lizi.

An important Chinese security system responded quickly to put an end to historic demonstrations that took place this weekend in several cities across the country. Anger has flared up after nearly three years of Covid restrictions, which in China include repeated confinement and near-daily PCR tests on the population.

The trigger for this mobilization, unprecedented in its scale since the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989, was a fire in a residential building in Urumqi in the north-west of the country, which killed 10 people. Netizens have blamed the city’s sanitary restrictions for preventing aid from quickly arriving, but authorities have dismissed the argument.