The image is rather rare in China.

Hundreds of people took to the streets on Sunday in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and other cities across China to protest over-the-top lockdowns, a rare show of hostility towards President Xi Jinping's regime and its policy of " zero Covid” draconian practiced for almost three years.

Unexpected, massive and endless confinements to the discovery of the slightest case, systematic quarantine of contact cases in camps and negative PCR tests required almost daily to have access to public space are increasingly exasperating the Chinese population.


“Xi Jinping resigns!

»

Discontent fueled by several high-profile cases in which the emergency services would have been slowed down in their interventions by health restrictions, with fatal consequences.

A fire that killed ten people Thursday in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province (northwest), exacerbated these recriminations.

The authors of many messages circulating on social networks claimed that the measures taken against the Covid had aggravated this drama, cars parked for weeks due to confinement in the narrow alley leading to the burning building having hampered the help arrives.

On Sunday evening, police trying to move people away from the scene of a previous demonstration clashed with groups of protesters in central Shanghai, a megalopolis whose 25 million inhabitants experienced at the beginning of the year for two months in exhausting isolation, noted an AFP journalist.

A crowd had gathered on Wulumuqi Street (Urumqi in Mandarin) earlier in the day and a video widely circulated on social media and geotagged by AFP showed protesters chanting "Xi Jinping, resign!"

CCP (Chinese Communist Party, editor's note), withdraw!

".

A blank paper symbolizing censorship

The police dispersed the protesters in the morning, but in the afternoon hundreds of people had gathered in the same area, an eyewitness told AFP.

Protesters who sported blank pieces of paper symbolizing censorship and white flowers stood silently at several intersections, he said, on condition of anonymity.

Videos posted on social media in the area that appeared to have been taken in the late afternoon showed the crowd chanting slogans.

In footage taken from several different angles, a man could be seen with a bouquet of yellow flowers in his hand dragged to a police car, while onlookers shouted.

In the evening, dozens of police in yellow vests formed a thick line, cordoning off the streets where the demonstrations had taken place.

“Come on Chinese people!

»

Their colleagues asked people to leave the place, but some still crowded together and AFP witnessed the arrest of several people.

Other police arrived later.

Live on Instagram, footage showed law enforcement officers closing in on a group from both sides of the street and forcing them back to the sidewalks.

“The atmosphere was very tense, but there was also excitement and energy (…).

The demonstrators directed their anger at the police and the (Communist) party, repeating the refrain 'Retreat!'

of the last few days”.

On Sunday evening, between 300 and 400 people gathered for several hours on the banks of a river in Beijing, some shouting, “We are all people from Xinjiang!

Come on Chinese people!

“, reported AFP journalists present on the spot.

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