After a deadly fire in China: Violent protests against corona policy are having an effect
Created: 11/26/2022, 4:56 p.m
By: Jan-Frederik Wendt
People in China are showing their displeasure with the current corona curfews.
The violent protests seem to be having an effect.
Urumqi - A deadly fire in a residential complex in the Chinese city of Urumqi has sparked violent protests against the ongoing corona curfew.
Users of online services at home and abroad accused the authorities of having obstructed the rescue of residents with their lockdown orders.
Online videos showed, among other things, a nightly rally in front of the city administration, where hundreds of demonstrators called for an end to the lockdowns.
The protests seem to be having an effect on the city administration.
According to the state news agency Xinhua
, ten people died and nine others were injured in
the fire on Thursday evening (November 24) in the capital of northwest China's Xinjiang region .
According to initial investigations, the trigger was a socket fire in the bedroom of one of the apartments in the complex.
According to the fire brigade, it was difficult to get to the burning building because parked private vehicles blocked the narrow access road.
China has a zero-Covid policy
According to the online reports, these were often electric cars that were without electricity due to the long curfews.
In a rare reaction, Urumqi Mayor Maimaitiming Kade apologized for the fire at the fire department's press conference on Friday night (November 25).
However, authorities have denied allegations online that the building's doors were sealed with wire to prevent residents from leaving.
China is the last major economy to have a very strict zero-Covid policy.
Even small corona outbreaks can lead to lockdowns, even entire cities and business closures, which puts a massive strain on the economy and people's everyday lives.
Across the country, people's frustration with the tough measures is increasing. In the city of Zhengzhou, there were days of sometimes violent protests in the country's largest iPhone factory.
A record wave of new corona infections is leading to ever greater restrictions on the population in China.
© dpa
Even after the fire in Urumqi, many people on the Internet - and apparently also on the streets - vented their growing anger at the long lockdowns.
Protests against Corona policy: Comments apparently deleted
"I'm the one falling off the roof, trapped in an overturned quarantine bus, breaking out of isolation at the Foxconn factory," wrote one user, referring to some recent incidents linked to the strict coronavirus restrictions will.
However, many comments appeared to have been deleted by internet censors on Saturday (November 26).
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The AFP
news agency
was able to verify online videos of the night-time protests outside Urumqi's municipal offices and in a neighborhood in the east of the city, in which dozens of people faced several lines of security forces and other city personnel in corona protective suits.
However, the timing of the protests could not be clearly clarified.
Some districts of the regional capital, which has four million inhabitants, were sealed off for weeks.
After the protests, however, the authorities surprisingly announced on Saturday that the city had "virtually reduced the number of new cases of infection to zero" and was therefore beginning to "gradually and orderly" return normal life to residents in low-risk residential areas enable.
(Jan Wendt with
dpa
)