Protests in China are spreading

Large crowds gathered on Sunday in the capital, Beijing, and in Shanghai, where police clashed with protesters in a number of locations.

On Monday, the French news agency AFP reported that the police arrested two people and took them away from a place in Shanghai, where protesters gathered at the weekend.

On Monday, the Chinese police did not respond to the number of people arrested during the demonstrations, despite repeated requests from Agence France-Presse.

There have also been reports About demonstrations from universities across the country and information gathering hundreds of people in the multi-million city of Wuhan.

Young women reportedly carried blank white sheets of paper – a symbol of censorship. Protesters are also said to have shouted “No rapid tests, we need food” and “No to lockdown, yes to freedom”.

Protests against harsh anti-virus rules have been seen in more and more places in China. At the same time, criticism was also raised against the Communist Party and the demonstrators called for leader Xi Jinping to resign.

Posts appear on Monday morning Agence France-Presse reported, on social media, that the demonstrations had been purged and censored by the authorities.

Search terms “Liangma River” and “Urumqi Road”, the sites of protests in Beijing and Shanghai, show no trace of the protests on China’s Weibo platform.

Videos of college students singing and demonstrations in other cities also disappeared from the popular Wechat app, replaced by a message that the posts had been flagged as “sensitive content”.

In Shanghai he was arrested A BBC journalist is arrested by the Chinese police while covering a street demonstration. He was kicked and punched upon arrest and held for several hours before being released, according to the BBC.

The BBC is deeply concerned about the treatment of journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering protests in Shanghai, says a spokesperson for the British public service company.

The flashpoint of the protests this week was the apartment fire in the city of Urumqi in Xinjiang that killed ten people on Thursday. Many claim that the restrictions exacerbated the consequences of the apartment fire. But officials denied the allegations and said there were no obstacles for residents to escape from the building.

Read more: Protests against China’s restrictions on the spread of coronavirus are spreading