It has been two months since thousands took to the streets in several Chinese cities against Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy.

During the protests, the police were remarkably reluctant to make arrests.

But weeks later, numerous participants were quietly and secretly arrested.

Nobody knows how many there are.

The security apparatus does not provide any information about this.

The families of those affected remain silent.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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A few days ago, a video was shared on several social networks.

In it, a young woman, who introduces herself as Zhixin, says that four of her friends have been picked up by the police one after the other since December 18.

The officials had shown arrest warrants on which the field for the reason for arrest was blank.

"By the time you see this video, like my friends, I will have been abducted by the police," Zhixin, a publisher's employee, told the camera.

She hired people to publish the recording if she disappeared.

The American radio station NPR, citing friends of the young woman, reported that she was taken into custody on Christmas Eve at her parents' house in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province.

According to the broadcaster CNN, she has since been charged.

She is accused of "starting arguments and provoking trouble" - a vague criminal offense that is often used against critics of the regime in China.

"Where is the evidence?"

A total of eight people from the same circle of friends are in the hands of the police, reports the broadcaster CNN.

This includes one person who tried to contact the families of those affected to organize their defense in court.

Four of them are named in the video.

It is young women, cultural and media workers who share an interest in feminist issues.

Like hundreds of others, according to Zhixin, they came to the Liangma River in Beijing on the evening of November 27 to hold a vigil to commemorate the victims of a high-rise fire in Urumqi.

The fire had fueled anger over the zero-Covid policy because the fire brigade's rescue work was probably hampered by corona measures.

In the days that followed, the women were summoned to a police station and questioned.

So did many.

Apparently, the police had identified them as participants by locating their cell phones.

Zhixin says she thought that was the end of it.

She describes herself as socially committed, but not as a dissident.

Referring to the victims of the Urumqi skyscraper fire, she says, “when our fellow citizens die, we have a right to express our legitimate feelings.

It is unclear why it was they of all people who were singled out by the police from the crowd of demonstrators in order to bring them to justice.

Zhixin himself raises this question.

“We want to know why it is we who should be convicted.

Where is the evidence?” She expresses the suspicion that the police are primarily concerned with fulfilling a directive from above.

She refers to Xi Jinping's statements to EU Council President Charles Michel.

According to information from Brussels, he is said to have described the demonstrators in conversation with Michel at the beginning of December as "frustrated young people".

"So why this revenge?" asks Zhixin.

Why so many women?

After the video was released, supporters began collecting information about other disappearances and sharing it online.

According to the Chinese human rights blog Weiquanwang, at least nine people are still in the hands of the police.

At least 12 others have been released on bail.

In China, this usually means that those affected continue to be monitored and cannot move freely.

They may have been released because after 37 days the time in which they can be held by the police without formal arrest expires.

The last known arrests took place on January 15th.

According to information from the media organization Reporters Without Borders, two journalists are among those released: a staff member of the party newspaper "Beijing News" and a freelance journalist who used to work for the business magazine "Caixin".

Her former college, the University of Chicago, had previously called for her release.

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch assumes that the actual number of those arrested is higher.

“Certainly there are many that we don't know about.

The reason we know about these individuals is because they are linked to activists," said Yaqiu Wang, who researches China issues at the organization.

She doesn't think it's a coincidence that those arrested include many young women who have campaigned for women's rights in the past.

China's civil society has been increasingly put on the defensive by repression in recent years.

Women's rights activists are among the most active parts of civil society.

According to reports, protesters were also arrested in Urumchi.

The first and perhaps largest demonstration against the zero-Covid policy took place there immediately after the high-rise fire.

What happened after the arrests is unclear.

At the time, the party commission responsible for the security apparatus threatened to "take decisive action against illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order."