Student Covid protests erupt in China after fire

Action at universities across country follows week of unrest against draconian lockdown restrictions

UNPRECEDENTED protests against Covid restrictions broke out at universities across China yesterday, as students commemorated the deaths of 10 people in Xinjiang believed to have been linked to a draconian lockdown in the region.

The scenes of unrest came a day after hundreds took to the streets of Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi to demonstrate after the escape and rescue of residents from an apartment fire in the city was rumoured to have been hampered by anti-Covid measures.

Urumqi officials denied this at a press conference yesterday but said they would investigate further. They said videos purporting to show some of the building’s doors glued shut as part of Covid prevention measures were fake.

But with the population’s tolerance to

Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy wearing thin, news of the fire and the resulting street protest – something barely seen since the pandemic began in 2020 – quickly spread on social media and inspired young people to follow suit.

Students at the Communication University of China in Nanjing, about 220 miles from Urumqi, yesterday marched on their campus to commemorate those killed in the blaze, according to footage and pictures on social media. Those posts were quickly censored.

The students held flashlights and carried signs with messages such as “I’ll be a free bird in my next life, so I’m not afraid of the flames” and “May the Chinese youth get over the apathy” – a quote from Chinese author Lu Xun.

In one video, a Nanjing university official can be seen addressing students through a megaphone: “One day you will pay for everything you have done today.”

“You also have to pay for what you have done,” a student shouts back.

There were also unconfirmed reports of similar events at two universities in Sichuan, one in Beijing, one in Shanghai, one in Jinan and one in Tianjin.

Videos also circulated on social media appearing to show small-scale civil disobedience against lockdowns in residential compounds in Beijing and other cities. They could not immediately be verified.

Such displays are extremely rare in China, where authorities move quickly to squash open forms of dissent.

The student activity follows a week of unrest, including violent riots, in cities across the country against Covid restrictions. On Friday, crowds in Urumqi clashed with SWAT-uniformed guards as residents vented their anger over both the fire deaths and the dire living conditions in the western region.

It has been the site of one of China’s toughest and longest Covid lockdowns, with many of Urumqi’s four million residents having been prevented from leaving

They carried signs with messages such as ‘I’ll be a free bird in my next life, so I’m not afraid of the flames’

their homes for as long as 100 days. The apartment block where the fire was had previously been under lockdown, though it was not clear if that was still the case when the fire broke out.

Videos circulating on social media, and verified by Reuters and other news agencies, showed crowds pumping their fists in the air as they walked down a street chanting: “Lift the lockdown”.

Other footage showed people in a plaza singing China’s national anthem, likely as a form of protection against being accused of being against the government. One of the lyrics is “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves”.

The Urumqi protests were stamped out within a few hours amid a heavy police presence, Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur linguist living in exile, told The Sunday Telegraph. “If that had happened in any other city in China, it would have taken them longer,” he said.

“But in Urumqi, because of the July 5 protests, they were ready,” he added, referring to violence in 2009 that killed nearly 200 mainly Han Chinese and sparked a major crackdown by Beijing.

Earlier this week there were violent riots at a Foxconn factory in central China, which produces most of the world’s iPhones. Workers enraged over Covid curbs and job conditions clashed with hazmat-clad police, smashing Covid booths and overturning cars.