In China, protests against the government’s strict COVID regulations have grown more intense, and some citizens have taken to publicly criticizing the Communist Party leaders.
In Shanghai, where thousands of protesters have gathered, the BBC has seen people being loaded into police cars.
Additionally, there have been student protests at Beijing and Nanjing universities.
The most recent unrest comes after a demonstration in Urumqi, a remote city in the northwest, where lockdown procedures were cited as a cause after a tower block fire killed 10 people.
In China, protests against the government’s strict COVID regulations have grown more intense, and some citizens have taken to publicly criticizing the Communist Party leaders.
In Shanghai, where thousands of protesters have gathered, the BBC has seen people being loaded into police cars.
Additionally, students have protested at universities in Beijing and Nanjing.
The latest unrest follows a protest in the remote north-west city of Urumqi, where lockdown rules were blamed after 10 people died in a tower block fire.
Chinese authorities deny that Covid restrictions were to blame for the deaths, but late on Friday, Urumqi officials did issue an unusual apology and promised to “restore order” by gradually removing restrictions.
“Xi Jinping, resign,”
People were heard openly shouting slogans like “Xi Jinping, step down” and “Communist party, step down” during the demonstration on Saturday night in Shanghai, China’s largest city and a major international financial centre.
While others lit candles and placed flowers for the victims in Urumqi, others held blank white banners.
Such demands are uncommon in China, where criticizing the president or the government directly can result in severe repercussions.
Analysts, however, claim that the government appears to have vastly underestimated the growing opposition to the zero-Covid strategy, a strategy that is inextricably linked to Xi Jinping, who recently vowed there would be no swerving from it.
One demonstrator in Shanghai told the BBC that seeing people on the streets left him feeling “shocked and a bit excited,” adding that it was the first time he had ever witnessed such widespread opposition in China.
He claimed that lockdowns had prevented him from visiting his ill mother, who was receiving cancer treatment, and had left him feeling “sad, angry, and hopeless.”
When police officers were asked how they felt about the protests, the response was “the same as you,” a female protester told the BBC. But they “wear their uniforms so they’re doing their job,” she added.
Another protester told the Associated Press news agency that two others had been assaulted by police at the scene, and one of his friends had been beaten by police there, among other accounts of violence.
As protesters gathered for a second day, the BBC observed police officers, private security guards, and plain-clothes police officers confronting them in the streets.
Demonstrators who led anti-government chants were removed, and in some cases, they were punched or shoved up against a police car.
Additionally, images and videos from Saturday’s student protests in Beijing and Nanjing universities have surfaced online.
One student told the AFP news agency that hundreds of people participated in one such protest at Tsinghua University in the nation’s capital.
The group was captured on camera chanting songs in favour of freedom and democracy while holding up blank sheets of paper, an act that has come to represent defiance against Chinese censorship.
Finding videos of the protests is challenging independently verify, but many of them show an unusually explicit and outspoken criticism of the government and its leader.
