Growing anger at Corona politics after deadly house fire in Xinjiang

A deadly fire in a residential complex in the Chinese city of Urumqi has sparked violent protests against the ongoing corona curfew. Users of online services at home and abroad accused the authorities of having hindered the rescue of residents with their lockdown orders. Online videos showed, among other things, a nightly rally in front of the city administration, where hundreds of demonstrators called for an end to the lockdowns. The protests seem to be having an effect on the city administration.

According to the state news agency Xinhua, ten people died and nine others were injured in the fire on Thursday evening in the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region. According to initial investigations, the trigger was a socket fire in the bedroom of one of the apartments in the complex. According to the fire brigade, it was difficult to get to the burning building because parked private vehicles blocked the narrow access road.

According to the online reports, these were often electric cars that were without electricity due to the long curfews. In a rare reaction, Urumqi Mayor Maimaitiming Kade apologized for the blaze at Friday night’s fire department press conference. However, authorities have denied allegations online that the building’s doors were sealed with wire to prevent residents from leaving.

China is the last major economy to have a very strict zero-Covid policy. Even small corona outbreaks can lead to lockdowns, even entire cities and business closures, which puts a massive strain on the economy and people’s everyday lives. Across the country, people’s frustration with the tough measures is increasing. In the city of Zhengzhou, there were days of sometimes violent protests in the country’s largest iPhone factory.

Even after the fire in Urumqi, many people on the Internet – and apparently also on the streets – vented their growing anger at the long lockdowns. 

“I’m the one falling off the roof, trapped in an overturned quarantine bus, breaking out of isolation at the Foxconn factory,” wrote one user, referring to some recent incidents linked to the strict corona restrictions will. However, many comments appeared to have been deleted by Internet censors on Saturday.

The AFP news agency was able to verify online videos of the night-time protests outside Urumqi’s municipal offices and in a neighborhood in the east of the city, in which dozens of people faced several lines of security forces and other city personnel in corona protective suits. However, the timing of the protests could not be clearly clarified.

Some districts of the regional capital, which has four million inhabitants, were sealed off for weeks. After the protests, however, the authorities surprisingly announced on Saturday that the city had “virtually reduced the number of new cases of infection to zero” and was therefore starting to “gradually and orderly” restore normal life to residents in low-risk residential areas make possible.