Massive protests have swept across China as thousands took to the streets in opposition to the country's restrictive Covid lockdowns.
The country continues to pursue a zero Covid policy which has regularly seen it lock down millions of people at a moments notice over the past few years.
However, as China’s Covid rates skyrocket past record levels and the rest of the world lives openly and freely with the virus, the public have grown sick of Xi Jinping’s crackdowns.
Protests were fanned by fury over a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region that saw ten people reportedly die, including a child, and students have emerged at the heart of the anti-lockdown protests as well.
The fire became a lightning rod for public anger and Covid protesters because the anti-virus measures, like barriers to keep people in, hindered any emergency response and meant the blaze burned fiercely for three hours.
The last few days have been rocked by protests demanding an end to the Covid crackdown and justice for those who died in the fire. But more and more anti-protests seem to be popping up every hour and today protests broke out at a reported 50 universities.
At Tsinghua University thousands of students took to the streets to publicly protest against the government and it's Covid approach. Videos show the brave students chanting against the lockdown.
Students have seemingly been at the heart of a number of these protests, denying the will of the autocratic Chinese Communist Party.
In Shanghai police pepper sprayed and disrupted a protest involving around 300 people who gathered at the Middle Urumqi Road at midnight.
But this morning protestors returned to the same road, defiant and undeterred as hundreds of police officers descended onto public spaces in Shanghai as well.
Even in face of the heavy police presence they were heard chanting 'let them go' in apparent reference to the protestors previously arrested.
The scale of these protests are nearly unprecedented under Xi's China which has seen vicious crackdowns on protest and dissent.
A video appearing to be from North Beijing appears to show protestors tearing down some of the metal fences set up to keep them in lockdown.
Even in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated from, thousands of people took to the street chanting 'open up the city', joining the growing roar of voices from ordinary Chinese people.
In last night's protests, people brought flowers and candles and one sign read ‘Urumqi, November 24, those who died rest in peace’ to memorialise those who died in the recent fire.
Officials deny the allegations and claim residents could leave as they liked.
One of the protesters, who only gave his family name as Zhao, said his friends were violently beaten by police and two were pepper sprayed.
Officers stomped on his feet as he tried to stop them taking his friend away. He lost his shoes and left the protests barefoot.
Whilst many were there at the protest to memorialise the lost, countless signs protested the Covid lockdown with slogans including: ‘Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party, step down’, ‘Unlock Xinjiang, unlock China’. ‘do not want PCR (tests), want freedom’ and ‘press freedom’.
Around 100 officers lined up in opposition to the protest, with some stopping protestors from gathering or leaving.
There was a second protest of thousands of demonstrators as well, calling on an end to the Covid policies.
Any posts about the protest were deleted immediately on China’s social media - a common practice for the Chinese government who suppress criticism and free speech harshly.
Earlier in the day yesterday, authorities in the Xinjiang region opened up some neighbourhoods in Urumqi after more late-night demonstrations against the draconian zero-Covid lockdown that has lasted over three months.
Xinjiang’s lockdown was so fierce that some residences claimed they had their doors physically chained shut.
Many in Urumqi believe such brute-force tactics prevented some residents from escaping Thursday’s fire - and that the death toll was an undercount.
Anger eventually boiled over after city officials held a press conference where they appeared to attempt to shift responsibility for the deaths onto the tower’s residents.
"Some residents' ability to rescue themselves was too weak," said Li Wensheng, head of Urumqi's fire department.
Police clamped down on dissenting voices, announcing the arrest of a 24-year-old woman for spreading "untrue information" about the death toll online.
Friday night also saw more protests, images of which still managed to spread on social media despite their heavy censorship.
The videos also showed people shouting and shoving men in white hazmat suits that local government workers and pandemic-prevention volunteers wear.
By Saturday the nation’s censorship machine had caught up and removed most of the videos.
Whilst it is unclear just how widespread the protests are, thousands are undoubtedly involved as they grow increasingly sick of the autocratic rule in the country.
China remains the only major country in the world that is still desperately trying to fight the pandemic through mass testing and lockdowns.
One of the reasons that makes the protests so extraordinary is down to China’s vast security apparatus that is particularly intense in the Xinjiang region - where many have been in lockdown since August.
That is because the area is where, for years, the government have been targeting Uyghur Muslims in efforts many have compared to genocide, rounding them up into huge work camps and prisons and even sterilising women.
Most of the protestors visible in the videos were Han Chinese.
A Uyghur woman living in Urumqi said it was because Uyghurs were too scared to take to the streets despite their rage.
"Han Chinese people know they will not be punished if they speak against the lockdown," she said, declining to be named for fear of retaliation against her family. "Uyghurs are different. If we dare say such things, we will be taken to prison or to the camps."
Support for zero-Covid has cratered in recent months, as tragedies sparked public anger. Just last week, the Zhengzhou city government in the central province of Henan apologised for the death of a four-month old baby.
She died after a delay in receiving medical attention while suffering vomiting and diarrhoea in quarantine at a hotel in Zhengzhou.
Officials triumphantly declared on Saturday that they had achieved ‘societal zero-Covid’ sparking disbelief and sarcasm online at the speed with which it was claimed to have been done.
The Uyghur woman in Urumqi said she had been trapped in her apartment since Aug. 8, and was not even allowed to open her window. On Friday, residents in her neighbourhood defied the order, opening their windows and shouting in protest. She joined in.
"No more lockdowns! No more lockdowns!" they screamed.
