TAIPEI: Authorities in China’s western Xinjiang region opened up some neighbourhoods in the capital of Urumqi on Saturday after residents held extraordinary late-night demonstrations against the city’s draconian “zero-Covid” lockdown that had lasted more than three months.
The displays of public defiance were fanned by anger over a fire in an apartment compound that had killed 10, according to the official death toll, as emergency workers took three hours to extinguish the blaze—a delay many attributed to obstacles caused by anti-virus measures.
The demonstrations, as well as public anger online, are the latest signs of building frustration with China’s intense approach to controlling Covid. During Xinjiang’s lockdown, some residents elsewhere in the city have had their doors chained physically shut.
Many in Urumqi believe such brute-force tactics may have prevented residents from escaping in Friday’s fire and that the official death toll was an undercount.