Xinjiang fire stirs anger anew in China
BEIJING: A deadly fire in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region has prompted an outpouring of anger at the East Asian country’s zeroCovid policy, as Beijing fights growing public fatigue over its hardline approach to containing the coronavirusN
At least 10 people were killed and nine injured when the blaze ripped through a high-rise residential building in the Tianshan district of the regional capital Urumqi at 7:49 p.m. on Thursday. The fire was put out at about 10:35 p.m., according to city fire and rescue chief Li Wensheng.
Online posts circulating on both Chinese and overseas social media platforms since Friday have claimed that lengthy Covid-19 lockdowns in the city hampered rescue attempts.
Some videos appeared to show crowds of people taking to the streets of Urumqi to protest the measures.
The action comes against a backdrop of mounting public frustration over the government’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid and follows sporadic protests in other cities.
China is the last major economy wedded to a zero-Covid strategy, with authorities wielding snap lockdowns, lengthy quarantines and mass testing to snuff out new outbreaks as they emerge.
Footage partially verified by Agence France-Presse (AFP) shows hundreds of people massing outside the Urumqi city government offices during the night, chanting: “Lift lockdowns!”
In another clip, dozens of people are seen marching through a neighborhood in the city’s east, shouting the same slogan before facing off with a line of hazmatclad officials and angrily rebuking security personnel.
AFP journalists were able to verify the videos by geolocating local landmarks, but were unable to specify when exactly the protests occurred.
A wave of anger simmered on the Weibo social media platform on Friday amid claims that parked electric vehicles left without power during lengthy lockdowns blocked fire engines from entering a narrow road to the burning building.
“I’m also the one throwing myself off the roof, trapped in an overturned (quarantine) bus, breaking out of isolation at the Foxconn factory,” read one comment referencing several recent incidents blamed on zero-Covid strictures.
Chinese authorities censor online content deemed politically sensitive and appeared to have scrubbed many posts and hashtags relating to the fire by Saturday morning.
Urumqi police said in a Friday post on Weibo that they had detained a woman surnamed Su for “spreading online rumors” relating to the number of casualties from the blaze.
Sorry to the city
An initial investigation showed the blaze to have been caused by a board of electric sockets in the family bedroom of one of the apartments, according to state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV).
Rescue attempts were complicated by “a lack of parking spaces and a large number of private vehicles parked on both sides” of a narrow road to the building, Li told reporters on Friday night, CCTV said.
At a news conference on Friday night, Urumqi Mayor Maimaitiming Kade said a joint investigation team had been set up to further probe the cause of the blaze. Those found negligent of their duties before and during the fire would be held accountable, he added.
He also offered condolences to the families of those who died and apologized to his constituents for the blaze.
But officials also pushed back against some of the online allegations, denying that residents’ doors had been clamped shut with iron wiring.
Covid controls have confined some communities in Urumqi, a city of 4 million people, to their homes for weeks on end.
But in the wake of the protests, officials said on Saturday the city “had basically reduced social transmissions to zero” and would “restore the normal order of life for residents in low-risk areas in a staged and orderly manner.”
Pandemic fatigue has been growing in China, with violent protests erupting at a vast, Covidhit iPhone factory in the city of Zhengzhou in central Hebei province in recent days due to a dispute over pay and labor conditions.
China recorded 34,909 new domestic infections on Saturday, the vast majority of which were asymptomatic, according to the National Health Commission.