Since being detained by Chinese officials on Sunday, the guy who was the first to demand that Xi Jinping resign during the demonstrations against the country's zero-covid policy has not been seen.
In the three days since police barged into the cocktail bar where he works, shackled him, and threw him into the back of a vehicle, neighbors say there has been no sign of the 27 year old, who has been given the alias Wang.
Protestor That Went Viral Went Missing
Outside of Shanghai, Wang's neighbors, a family of fruit vendors, said that they were aware of what Wang had yelled. When asked if he agreed with Wang, the son behind the counter shook his head and replied, "I don't know." His father smiled kindly but remained silent, providing another evidence that it is safer to avoid discussing politics in China.
Since 1989's Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations, the anti-lockdown demonstrations during the past week have represented the biggest wave of civil disobedience the nation has ever seen.
On Tuesday night and into Wednesday, fighting broke out in Guangzhou, a city in southern China. Videos that AFP verified showed dozens of hazmat-clad cops charging toward protests in a Roman phalanx formation while hiding behind clear riot shields.
Police were assaulted by protesters who yelled and tossed things. Later, video was captured of about a dozen people having their hands shackled using wire ties and being hauled away. The protests, which it characterized as being carried out by hostile elements, were to be cracked down on, said China's top security authority this week.
However, on Wednesday, the COVID-19 lockdown was suddenly lifted by the authorities in more than half of Guangzhou's districts, excluding Haizu, the scene of the riots, according to The Telegraph via MSN. As more protests against President Xi Jinping's zero-Covid policy have taken place, China's censors have recently struggled to remove photographs of blank white paper used by demonstrators from the internet.
Largest anti-government demonstrations have taken place in the nation since the Tiananmen Square massacre, with demonstrators in at least seven cities holding aloft blank pieces of paper to denote censorship. In an unprecedented show of discontent, protesters have come to the streets of Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Nanjing to express their opposition to President Xi, his repressive crackdowns under the CCP, and his increasingly authoritarian rule.
Since security personnel were sent to the streets of the nation's biggest cities last night, online debates and news coverage of the demonstrations have now been outlawed.
As protests against punitive Covid restrictions continue, communist officials are feverishly trying to prevent photos of big, unmasked crowds reaching the local public. Even a restricted feed of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar was transmitted to Chinese football enthusiasts.
The China Central Television (CCTV) broadcasting corporation has been intercepting tournament video and altering crowd pictures by applying a 30-second delay, according to a comparison of Cup footage, Daily Mail reported.
Chinese Police Officers Search of Protestors
According to protesters, the relatives of detained protesters, and attorneys, police have tracked down an unknown number of demonstrators since the demonstrations began in response to a deadly apartment building fire last Thursday in the city of Urumqi and advised them not to attend any additional such gatherings.
One security specialist with a focus on China believes that authorities may be using information from mobile towers to locate those who were near the protests. As shown in a rule passed in 2013, all phone numbers in China must be registered using actual names. Users' mobile devices ping the 4G or 5G towers as they access the data, and the data collected is retained and sorted by time and date.
Nearby residents who witnessed the protests claimed they too received calls from the police. Another Beijing resident, age 26, was present at the event on Sunday; she said she largely just observed.
She was asked to report to the station for questioning by police the following day. She claimed that questions concerning her participation in the demonstration and her opinions of the government's covid policy were raised.
The officer who was questioning her stated that although the government wanted to enhance the city, elderly people's life needed to be safeguarded. Two more people who live in Shanghai said that this week, the police questioned their friends and family members. In one instance, a woman who refused to allow police to inspect her phone was made to accompany them to a station.
As a coronavirus precaution, students will be sent home early for the semester break at a number of universities in Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong, where some of the earlier instances occurred, as per The Washington Post via MSN.
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