NYT WORLD: After Deadly Blaze, Surge of Defiance Against China’s Covid Policies
By Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang, Chang Che and Amy Chang Chien
Section: World
Source: New York Times
Published Date: November 27, 2022 at 02:00AM
Qemernisa Abdurahman had already survived a government crackdown that split up her family and endured more than 100 days in lockdown, when the apartment she shared with her four youngest children in the city of Urumqi caught fire last Friday.
The blaze took more than three hours to extinguish, according to authorities — largely because the building's entrances had been blocked off and many of the doors locked, according to neighbors and witnesses. In the end, Abdurahman, 48, and her four children were among the 10 people killed in the fire.
"She dedicated her entire life to her children and their education," said Abdulhafiz Maimaitimin, her nephew, from his home in Switzerland.
"If we die, let's die together"
Anger over their deaths, combined with mounting frustration over the ongoing burden of China's COVID-19 controls, boiled over this past weekend, coalescing in mass protests across dozens of China's biggest cities in an extraordinary show of dissent against the country's ruling Communist Party.
"If we die, let's die together," protesters can be heard shouting in several social media videos taken Saturday from the main town square in Urumqi, the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, the night of the fire. Other demonstrators chanted "liberate the city" from lockdowns.
By Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang, Chang Che and Amy Chang Chien
Section: World
Source: New York Times
Published Date: November 27, 2022 at 02:00AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/world/asia/china-covid-protest.html
A deadly fire in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang region, has unleashed the most defiant eruption of public anger against the ruling Communist Party in years. In Shanghai, some residents even called for the party's leader, Xi Jinping, to step down.The blaze took more than three hours to extinguish, according to authorities — largely because the building's entrances had been blocked off and many of the doors locked, according to neighbors and witnesses. In the end, Abdurahman, 48, and her four children were among the 10 people killed in the fire.
"She dedicated her entire life to her children and their education," said Abdulhafiz Maimaitimin, her nephew, from his home in Switzerland.
"If we die, let's die together"
Anger over their deaths, combined with mounting frustration over the ongoing burden of China's COVID-19 controls, boiled over this past weekend, coalescing in mass protests across dozens of China's biggest cities in an extraordinary show of dissent against the country's ruling Communist Party.
"If we die, let's die together," protesters can be heard shouting in several social media videos taken Saturday from the main town square in Urumqi, the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, the night of the fire. Other demonstrators chanted "liberate the city" from lockdowns.
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