Coronavirus: the Chinese Communist Party threatens harsh punishments for new clashes between police and protesters

Anti-government protests do not subside in China. Workers and residents who have rebelled against draconian lockdowns over a new Covid outbreak have clashed with police in violent incidents in at least two southern regions of the country as the ruling Communist Party vowed to severely punish “acts of infiltration and sabotage ” in the disturbance of the order .

“We must crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces in accordance with the law, crack down on against illegal and criminal acts that disturb the social order and effectively maintain overall social stability,” the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the CP said in a statement, the first released since protests began to spread across the country last Thursday.

The pronouncement of the PC took place after the carabinieri intervened last Tuesday night repressed with sticks to groups of protesters who rejected forced confinements to fight the coronavirus in the southern China city of Guangzhou, according to videos released yesterday.

Meanwhile, in the Haizhu District of the strategic city of Guangzhou, hundreds of people from Houjiao District They also clashed with the police.. Some residents threw glass bottles at the agents, knocked down the barriers intended to enclose businesses and buildings in the area and destroyed health checkpoints. Another group overturned a small van.

Repression

A video, which was verified with local residents by the newspaper The New York Times, showed hundreds of police officers yelling and hitting their riot shields with their clubs and subduing the residents. Several men, apparently handcuffed, were taken away by officers, other footage showed.

Guangzhou, scene of these clashes, It is a clothing manufacturing centerwhere tens of thousands of migrant workers from rural China make a living in the small factories, shops and restaurants that line its streets.

“Most workers feel it the blockade lasted too long; It has been more than a month,” said a neighborhood resident who joined the night protest. He asked to be identified only by his last name, Zhang, citing fear of retribution for describing the confrontation.

Despite pledges from Beijing that restrictions would be enforced more selectively, Zhang said, local officials, under intense pressure to keep infection rates low, have gone so far as to lock down the area and give food unsuitable for cooped-up residents. “Some people don’t even have such things as regular noodles”She said.

There and across much of China, Covid-related restrictions on work and travel have added to a broader economic slowdown and pushed many small businesses into closure or bankruptcy, leaving migrant workers struggling to make ends meet.

the frustration

“People have nowhere to vent their frustration”said a local resident surnamed Hu, who owns a construction company whose work has been suspended. He witnessed hundreds of riot police arrive near his home Tuesday night. “The police weren’t protecting people. They were scaring people,” he said.

The statement threatening the Chinese CP released Tuesday night comes amid a massive show of force by the security services to deter a repeat of the protests that erupted over the weekend in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major cities.

Hundreds of pickup trucks, vans and armored vehicles with flashing lights were parked yesterday on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and other centers as police and paramilitary forces carried out random identity checks and searched residents’ cell phones for photos, apps banned or other possible evidence that they had participated in the protests.

The number of arrests is not known. in the marches

The protests have escalated after 10 people died in a fire in Urumqi (western part of the country) on Thursday, on the assumption that tight virus checks blocked firefighters or victims trying to escape. Beijing has since relaxed some controls, but has maintained that it will respect the global “Covid zero” strategy.

Source: AFP, AP and The New York Times

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