Thursday’s apartment fire is not the first outcry over China’s harsh COVID measures.Ĭhinese residents have protested the denial of emergency medical services, snap lockdowns, an insufficient supply of food for those in isolation, and the fatal crash of a bus transporting close contacts of COVID patients to a quarantine center. Both human rights organizations and foreign governments like the U.S.‘s have accused China of suppressing the territory’s Uyghur population and its cultural practices, and engaging in a mass internment campaign that includes forced labor. Xinjiang is a political flashpoint in China. On Monday, China’s foreign ministry accused “some forces with ulterior motives” of linking the Ürümqi fire with COVID restrictions. Protests to commemorate those who died in Th ursday’s fire escalated into broader protests against China’s COVID-zero policy in cities like Shanghai and Beijing and the country’s stagnant political system. News of the fire sparked rare public protests in Ürümqi on Friday, and soon anti-COVID-zero frustration spread across the country. One official even argued that those who perished should be blamed, saying that they did not try hard enough to escape the fire. Social media users also criticized Xinjiang officials, who denied that COVID controls played a part in the emergency response. ![]() In early October, officials barred Xinjiang residents from leaving the region, canceling flight and train services out of the territory.Ĭhinese social media users claimed that COVID measures hampered firefighters who responded to the fire, pointing to videos of fire trucks forced to navigate tight streets and hazmat-clad workers hastily taking down barricades. ![]() That decision triggered weeks of lockdown, as officials repeatedly extended the deadline for when the city could eventually emerge from quarantine. Urumqi, the region’s capital, announced lockdown measures on Aug. Residents in Xinjiang have lived under some form of lockdown for almost four months. ![]() Still, Xinjiang’s lockdown indicates just how long some people in China-especially outside central hubs like Beijing and Shanghai-have had to live with COVID-zero measures and how COVID controls are breeding a sense of solidarity throughout the nation of 1.4 billion even though specific measures vary place to place. state of Alaska, has received far less attention than the two-month lockdown earlier this year in Shanghai, the country’s leading financial center. The lockdown in Xinjiang, a vast region in China’s northwest only slightly smaller than the U.S. Yet officials abruptly said that confinement would come to an end “in stages” after a deadly apartment fire in the provincial capital of Ürümqi sparked protests in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, in the broadest expression of public frustration over the government’s COVID-zero stance since the pandemic began. Residents in Xinjiang have been living under lockdown for over three months.
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