[ad_1]
TAIPEI, April 20 (AP) — Beijing officials have released four women on bail who were arrested for participating in rare nationwide protests in late November over China’s tough anti-coronavirus policies, an activist said.
One of the women, Cao Zhixin, a former book editor, recorded a video before being detained saying, “If you’re watching this, it means I’m being taken away by the police.”
She and her friends Li Yuanjing, Zhai Dengrui, and Li Siqi were detained in Beijing in December and charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vague charge often used against political dissidents, according to Human Rights Watch.
All four were released on bail on Thursday, according to a Chinese activist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation.
Cao and a group of friends took part in a protest as part of nationwide demonstrations against China’s tough “zero COVID” policy, a rare display of direct defiance of the central government, after 10 people were killed in a fire Killed in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Many have questioned whether coronavirus restrictions are hampering relief efforts.
The protests are the most direct challenge to the ruling Communist Party in decades.
In Shanghai, young people called President Xi Jinping to step down.
In the early years of the pandemic, China largely contained the coronavirus by ordering people to confine themselves to their homes, sometimes in strict lockdowns that lasted for months.
The strategy succeeded in keeping the death rate low until the vaccine was widely available. But policies have tightened further as the virus has become more contagious and harder to contain.
Protests in Beijing have attracted people who want to honor the victims of the Urumqi fire.
Some attendees held up blank papers representing restrictions on free speech.
Cao said in her video that police began detaining people on December 18.
“Four of our friends had been taken away when this video was taken,” she said. The police detained Li Yuanjing, Zhai Dengrui and Li Siqi. A fourth friend, Yang Liu, was also allegedly taken but was released in January. Human Rights Watch.
“We care about this society, and when our compatriots die, we want to express our reasonable feelings. We have full sympathy for those who lost their lives,” Cao said in the video.
Across the country, protests died down amid a heavy police presence.
The government dropped its “zero COVID” policy and police began detaining an unknown number of people who had attended protests in several cities. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
share now
[ad_2]
Source link