During Xinjiang’s lockdown — that has lasted more than three months — some residents have had their doors chained physically shut, and many in Urumqi believe such brute-force tactics may have prevented residents from escaping in Thursday’s fire.
Many protests could not be immediately confirmed, but in Shanghai, police used pepper spray to stop around 300 protesters who had gathered at Middle Urumqi Road at midnight, bringing flowers, candles and signs reading “Urumqi, November 24, those who died rest in peace” to memorialize the 10 deaths caused by a fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang’s capital city Urumqi.We deliver the local news you need in these turbulent times on weekdays at 3 p.m.
Posts about the protest were deleted immediately on China’s social media, as China’s Communist Party commonly does to suppress criticism. “Some residents’ ability to rescue themselves was too weak,” said Li Wensheng, head of Urumqi’s fire department. By Saturday, most had been deleted by censors. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the videos, but two Urumqi residents who declined to be named out of fear of retribution said large-scale protests occurred Friday night. One of them said he had friends who participated.Article content
Most of the protesters visible in the videos were Han Chinese. A Uyghur woman living in Urumqi said it was because Uyghurs were too scared to take to the streets despite their rage. Officials also triumphantly declared Saturday that they had basically achieved “societal zero-COVID,” meaning that there was no more community spread and that new infections were being detected only in people already under health monitoring, such as those in a centralized quarantine facility.
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