Police have been out in force in China to quell anti-Covid protests and at least one person was arrested, according to social media videos, in a display of civil disobedience unprecedented since President Xi Jinping took office. power a decade ago.
It was also reported that some protesters have been questioned by phone by authorities after attending the rare street rallies in cities across the country.
The arrest was made on Monday afternoon in the city of Hangzhou. Videos on social media, which could not be independently verified, showed hundreds of police occupying a large public square on Monday night, preventing people from gathering.
A video showed police, surrounded by a small crowd of people holding smartphones, making an arrest as others tried to remove the arrested person. Hangzhou police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Shanghai and Beijing, police could be seen on Tuesday morning still patrolling areas of the cities where some groups on the social media app Telegram had suggested people should gather again. His presence on Monday evening and throughout the night ensured that no further rallies took place.
There were reports of police asking people for their phones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) and the Telegram app, which has been used by protesters over the weekend. VPNs are illegal for most people in China, while the Telegram app is blocked on China’s internet.
People were also sharing instructions on Telegram about how to protect phone data from random police checks, including apps or settings to quickly erase data. “What to do if the police steal or take your phone – this little guide can prevent unpleasant situations down the road,” read one message.
In Shanghai, near a site of weekend protests, bar staff told the AFP news agency they had been ordered to close at 10pm local time for “disease control”. Small groups of officers were stationed outside each subway exit.
Throughout the day, AFP reporters saw officers detain four people, then release one.
“The atmosphere tonight is nervous. There are so many police around,” said a man in his 30s as evening fell.
In Beijing, hundreds of young people, mostly young men, braved freezing temperatures to gather near a riverbank in the capital on Sunday evening as a vigil for the victims of a deadly apartment fire in northwest China’s Xinjiang region, it turned into calls for an end to zero Covid.
One protester told AFP that on Monday evening she and five of her friends who attended the protest had received phone calls from Beijing police asking for information about their movements.
In one case, a police officer visited her friend’s house after they refused to answer her phone.
“He said my name and asked me if I went to the Liangma River last night… he asked me very specifically how many people there were, what time I went there, how I heard about it,” he said. told AFP, asking to remain anonymous. .
“The police stressed that last night’s protest was an unlawful assembly, and if we had demands, we could file them through the usual channels.”
Police officers stand guard on Sunday during a protest against zero-Covid policies in Beijing. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
She said the police officer was mostly “one-sided” during the brief call and urged her not to attend future events.
“I had previously prepared for this, but of course I was still agitated,” she said, adding that she would “do my best to continue” attending similar protests in the future and “prepare better” next time. “I never thought that this kind of civil society activity could ever happen in China,” he said.
It is not clear how police discovered the identities of some protesters and the vast majority of participants in Sunday’s rally did not have their identity documents checked by police, an AFP reporter saw.
Asked about the widespread anger over China’s zero-Covid policy, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters: “What you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened.
“We believe that with the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the cooperation and support of the Chinese people, our fight against Covid-19 will be successful.”
Inside China, the government and state media have remained silent on the protests, but their awareness is evident. Tuesday’s newspapers ran several articles on zero-Covid, including an editorial in Xinhua that acknowledged the pandemic “has had some impact on production and social life.”
“In the face of the complex changes of the pandemic, all localities and departments must be more patient and ease people’s emotions,” he said.
On Monday, smaller demonstrations spread outside mainland China. Dozens of protesters gathered in Hong Kong’s central business district, the scene of sometimes violent anti-government demonstrations in 2019. Dissidents and expatriate students organized vigils and small-scale protests in cities around the world including London, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney.
US President Joe Biden is closely monitoring unrest in China by protesters, the White House said on Monday. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby did not describe Biden’s reaction to the protesters’ demands, but said the president supported their rights.
“It should allow people the right to assemble and protest peacefully against policies or laws or dictates that they disagree with,” Kirby said.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned that China posed a “systemic challenge” to UK values and interests as his government condemned the beating of the BBC journalist.
Sunak said the so-called “golden age” of UK-China relations heralded by former prime minister David Cameron was “over, along with the naïve notion that trade would automatically lead to social reform and politics”.
Since Friday, a wave of protests has spread across several cities in China, sparked by the death of 10 people in a building fire in Urumqi in Xinjiang. Much of the region had been blockaded for more than three months and people blamed the blockade for the deaths.
The protests have shown growing frustration and skepticism about the ruling communist party’s commitment to zero-Covid. Xi’s government has pursued a policy of lockdowns, repeated testing of millions of people and lengthy quarantines for overseas arrivals to try to limit the spread.
A series of incidents related to the implementation of the policy, including a bus crash that killed 27 people who were quarantined, and numerous suicides and other deaths related to lockdowns and restrictions, have tested the tolerance of people.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report