Cameras outside residence ‘reasonable’

Local authorities in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province, firmly dismissed a CNN report that cited online pictures of surveillance cameras inside residences to claim “human rights violations” amid the COVID-19 epidemic, saying the story was a false accusation.

In an interview with the Global Times on Tuesday, Yang Jun, a Gaochun district official in Nanjing, denied the existence of any such arrangement as cameras installed in people’s homes, while clarifying that such photos on Sina Weibo, cited by CNN, were irrelevant and misused by a member of staff.

Early in February, a post on the official Weibo account of the Chunxi community of Gaochun district showed that several cameras were installed inside apartments, with some facing the front door and some inside the room.

“There was so much information going around during the epidemic. The person who was responsible for posting on Weibo used the wrong pictures. The person did not check those pictures properly after those pictures were handed over directly by local communities,” Yang told the Global Times on Tuesday, noting that the person involved in the case will be disciplined for the mistake.

The official in Nanjing said they had installed some cameras only outside the front doors of people who came back from epidemic high-risk regions and only in a handful of local communities.

The cameras were removed right away after home quarantined residents finished their quarantines, he stressed.

Such an arrangement is reasonable and effective for stopping the possible spread of the coronavirus, Zhi Zhenfeng, a legal expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

It didn’t violate anyone’s personal privacy but ensured public safety, Zhi said.