China Protests: Police Starts Crackdown on Demonstrators; Residents Say Authorities Seeking Phones for Suspicious Content

Chinese authorities had started investigations on people who attended the weekend demonstrations in Beijing over rigid COVID-19 restrictions, even as police were still laboriously present on the streets.

Two individuals who participated in the China protests informed Reuters that Beijing police officials called and requested them to go to a police station on Tuesday with written testimonies of their Sunday night actions. One student also said their university had requested a written statement from them if they had been present during a demonstration.

An anonymous witness said they hurriedly erased their chat history as the cops inquired about how they learned about the demonstration and their motivation for coming.

It was unclear how many protesters the authorities planned to interrogate or how they selected whom to ask about their involvement in the demonstrations.

There was no reaction from Beijing's Public Security Bureau after repeated attempts. The Chinese foreign ministry's official spokesperson stressed that the rule of law limits individual liberties.

Protests erupted over the weekend in towns thousands of miles apart, stoking frustration with strict COVID-19 prevention regulations that have been building for the past three years as the epidemic continues to spread.

Earlier this week, per DW, protests in Zhengzhou, China, home to the world's largest iPhone manufacturing facility, became violent. Videos posted online showed police officers beating employees.

Many employees were confined to their beds for weeks after the institution was locked down last month under the zero COVID policy.

A tragic fire last week in the capital city of the Xinjiang region killed 10 people, sparking very rare demonstrations in the communist-ruled country.

Angry Citizens Blast Xi Jinping's Zero COVID Policy

Many people became enraged after the fire because they believed that zero COVID regulations were to blame for the slow pace of rescue operations. Large portions of the city have been locked down for almost a hundred days.

The number of COVID-19 cases in mainland China has reached record daily highs, leading to fresh lockdowns in vast areas of multiple cities and the worst wave of China protests since President Xi Jinping assumed office a decade ago.

The police were making an effort to keep their crackdown under wraps, to downplay the scope of the demonstrations, and discourage further participation.

Chinese social media posts and videos documenting demonstrations were removed by the country's massive online censorship apparatus, which the ruling party controls.

Several Protesters and Journalists Detained

Reporters saw police take protesters away, and social media said that others were in jail or missing, but no official statements were made about the arrests.

Some of the protesters who were detained were given a stern warning not to return to the demonstration.

Two acquaintances who spoke on condition of anonymity said that one individual who lived near the protest location in Shanghai was seized on Sunday and kept until Tuesday morning, according to a report from AP News.

One lady told the AFP news agency that she and five friends who had attended the China protests in Beijing had all received phone calls from authorities after the event. A police officer went to her friend's house after they didn't answer the phone to see if they'd been to the demonstration and, emphasizing that it was an "illegal assembly," ask whether they'd been there.

In addition, journalists covering the demonstrations have been arrested by police in recent days. According to Reuters, one of its reporters was arrested on Sunday for a short time before being released.

BBC reported that its journalist and cameraman Ed Lawrence was detained for several hours the same night he was reporting a rally in Shanghai. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemned his imprisonment and called it unacceptable, adding that Britain will express concerns with Chinese authorities about their approach to the recent China protests.

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China, Xi Jinping