Students sent home as China moves to curb rare protests
Tsinghua University and other schools in Beijing and Guangdong say they are protecting students from COVID-19 by sending them home; UK summons China’s envoy ater arrest of BBC journalist
Chinese universities sent students home and police fanned out in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent more protests on Tuesday ater crowds angered by severe anti-virus restrictions called for leader Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of public dissent in decades.
Authorities have eased some controls ater demonstrations in at least eight mainland cities and Hong Kong — but showed no sign of backing off their larger “ZERO-COVID” strategy that has confined millions of people to their homes for months at a time. Security forces have detained an unknown number of people and stepped up surveillance.
With police out in force, there was no word of protests on Tuesday in Beijing, Shanghai or other major mainland cities that saw crowds rally over the weekend. Those widespread demonstrations were unprecedented since the army crushed the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement centred on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
A far smaller group did gather at a university in Hong Kong on Tuesday to protest virus restrictions.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s Tsinghua University, where students rallied over the weekend, and other schools in the capital and the southern province of Guangdong said they were protecting students from COVID-19 by sending them home.
But dispersing them to far-flung hometowns also reduces the likelihood of more demonstrations. Chinese leaders are especially wary of universities, which have been hotbeds of activism including the Tiananmen protests.
On Sunday, Tsinghua students were told they could go home early for the semester and that the school would arrange buses to take them to the train station or airport.
Nine student dorms at Tsinghua were closed on Monday ater some students positive for COVID-19, according to one who noted the closure would make it hard for crowds to gather. The student gave only his surname, Chen, for fear of retribution from authorities.
Beijing Forestry University also said it would arrange for students to return home. It said its faculty and students all tested negative for the virus.
Universities said classes and final exams would be conducted online.
Authorities hope to “defuse the situation” by clearing out campuses, said Dali Yang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Chicago.
Depending on how tough a position the government takes, protests could continue on a “rotational” basis, with new groups taking turns, he said. But many people are nervous ater police detained some protesters and warned them against demonstrating again.
In Shanghai, police stopped pedestrians and checked their phones on Monday night, according to a witness, possibly looking for apps such as Twiter that are banned in China or images of protests. The witness, who insisted on anonymity for fear of arrest, said he was on his way to a protest but found no crowd there when he arrived.
Images from a weekend protest showed police shoving the people into their cars. Some people were also swept up in police raids ater demonstrations ended.
One such person, who lived near the site of a protest in Shanghai, was detained on Sunday and held until Tuesday morning, according to two friends who also insisted on anonymity for fear of retribution from authorities.
One friend said the person was questioned about the protest but wasn’t hit or physically abused.
On Tuesday, about a dozen people gathered at the University of Hong Kong, chanting against virus restrictions and holding up sheets of paper with critical slogans.
Britain on Tuesday summoned the Chinese ambassador in London for a rebuke ater the arrest and alleged assault of a BBC journalist covering COVID-19 protests.
Zheng Zeguang was called in to the foreign office ater the incident involving Ed Lawrence in Shanghai, which Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had called “deeply disturbing.”
“It is incredibly important that we protect media freedom,” Cleverly told reporters at a Nato meeting in Romania, confirming Zheng had been summoned.