The streets of cities across China were filled with protestors, over the weekend in defiance of a brutal crackdown from the Communist regime, seeking to demand an end to coronavirus lockdowns and calling for the resignation of Dictator Xi Jinping. Censors for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were unable to suppress the onslaught of smartphone videos flooding social media, depicting the incredible acts of defiance against Xi’s tyranny.
Even in the tightly-controlled capital city of Beijing, massive crowds packed the streets. Demonstrators marched in tightly compressed groups, with their cell phones held aloft like weapons, signaling that the regime could not hope to suppress the tidal wave of information flowing to the outside world.
Armed with the latest popular protest accessory - a blank sheet of paper, symbolic of mute defiance, that grew popular during the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests of 2019, after the Beijing-controlled government systematically made every protest slogan illegal. Calling attention to how China’s government silences its people, protestors held up a blank paper or placard. Authorities cannot fight back against a blank page, because it contains no words or images that would justify arrest, even under China’s totalitarian speech codes. It simply demonstrates oppression. According to Reuters, one protestor described it this way-
“The white paper represents everything we want to say but cannot say,”
-Unknown Protester
After an apartment building fire reportedly killed, at least 10 people, in Urumqi, protests grew quickly to a massive numbers. Urumqi is the locked-down capital of occupied East Turkistan. China is currently committing genocide there against the indigenous Uyghur Muslims of the region.
On Thursday night, the fire mentioned by Reuters’ interviewee, broke out in East Turkistan’s capital of Urumqi. This city has been locked down under China’s outlandish “zero COVID” policy for over 100 days, raising suspicions that Chinese authorities are going especially hard on the city because they despise the Uyghurs. Large numbers of Uyghurs have been forced by China, into brutal concentration camps for political indoctrination and they are used as slave labor.
The apartment fire in Urumqi was especially tragic, as a huge crowd of onlookers filmed people trapped inside the building screaming for help, to no avail. They were trapped because the exits were sealed under coronavirus lockdown protocols. Reportedly, a voice could be heard crying from inside the building -“Open the door! Open the door! Someone, save us!” Social media showed the exterior doors were physically sealed, with wire and wooden bars, further roadways had been blocked.
The apartment building fire, was noted by the Urumqi residents, to have raged for over three hours, even though the fire station is less than a kilometer away. Residents accused the fire chief of lying, when he claimed first responders were on the scene within five minutes.
Although some local officials told international media the death toll could be much higher, possibly 40 or more, at least ten fatalities were confirmed, with at least three children among the dead. Obviously, communist officials tried to keep a lid on the details, but could not be stopped by Urumqi residents from sharing of the horror with the outside world.
One protestor claimed-
“I came here to pay respects to the victims of the fire. I really hope we can see an end to all of these COVID measures. We want to live a normal life again. We want to have dignity,”
-Unknown Protester
Putting up with squads of hazmat-suited police, pepper spray, being physically beaten, and shouted at by authorities seeking to quell the protest, open business districts and so on, protesters continued to persist. Even in the city of Guangzhou, protestors lined the streets with tents, because they assumed the CCP would use its dystopian “health code software” to lock them out of their homes as punishment. Apparently, the Chinese people have had enough of this oppression and are doing their best to let the world know.
There has been no official comment from Xi Jinping and the CCP regime, regarding the protests or the mass calls for Xi Jinping’s resignation. On Monday, there was, however, an announcement regarding some minor adjustments to its draconian zero-COVID policies, such as promising that quarantined apartment buildings would no longer be surrounded by barricades, like those which prevented fire trucks from reaching the burning Urumqi building.
On Monday, Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management told Barron’s -
“Sentiment has turned sour as unrest across China grows. Risk of the situation escalating from here and short-term volatility remains high,”
- Stephen Innes, SPI Asset Management
The oppression that is on display in China, should shock every American and give each of us, pause, to consider the horrific failure of communism, which pushes for absolute physical and mental compliance - to the point of death of the individual. As we American’s consider those here at home, on the left who seek to change America, to resemble a more socialist form of China’s regime – it must be ask – Where does freedom exist?
In China, freedom is lost to the CCP.
How much freedom do Americans want to part with at the hand of the Democratic left? Freedom comes at a high price, so does its’ loss. America needs to be on its’ guard, lest we lose this nations’ freedoms, by traveling a leftist-progressive, path to what the left believes is a socialist nirvana. Freedom is not free, and it’s cost needs safeguarded. Beware, however, standing up for America’s constitutional freedoms, given to us by our founding fathers, is already costing many Americans.
“When we stand up for what we believe in—for what’s right—there is always a chance that we risk the very things we fight for: our safety, our lives, our freedom. But if we stand down, the risk is definite.”
-Kelseyleigh Reber