Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that The man who was the first to start shouting “Xi Jinping must resign” during the protest at Urumqi Road in Shanghai has been arrested at his workplace.
Barely a month after granting himself new powers as China’s potential leader for life, Xi Jinping is facing a wave of public anger of the kind not seen for decades, sparked by his “zero COVID” strategy that will soon enter its fourth year.
Demonstrators poured into the streets over the weekend in cities including Shanghai and Beijing, criticizing the policy, confronting police — and even calling for Xi to step down. Students at some universities also protested.
Widespread demonstrations are unprecedented since the army crushed the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Most protesters focused their anger on restrictions that can confine families to their homes for months and have been criticized as neither scientific nor effective. Some complained the system is failing to respond to their needs.
The cries for the resignation of Xi and the end of the Communist Party that has ruled China for 73 years could be deemed sedition, which is punishable by prison.
The possibility of more protests is unclear. Government censors scrubbed the internet of videos and messages supporting them. And analysts say unless divisions emerge, the Communist Party should be able to contain the dissent.
China’s stringent measures were originally accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating waves of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
Demonstrations from the night before resurfaced in the capital of Beijing and the financial hub of Shanghai in addition to other major cities, and the protests at times turned violent as police sought to break them up, The Associated Press reported.
The protests materialized after an apartment building fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi, located in China’s Xinjiang region.
The fire killed 10 people and injured nine others, and resentment has swelled as some suggest the lockdown measures in place in the city delayed firefighters’ response and efforts to save the victims.
The man who was the first to start shouting “Xi Jinping must resign” during the protest at Urumqi Road in Shanghai has been arrested at his workplace.
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