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World

Protests against China’s covid lockdowns erupt after Xinjiang fire

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Protests erupted in cities and on campuses across China this weekend as frustrated and outraged citizens took to the streets in a stunning wave of demonstrations against the government’s “zero covid” policy and the leaders enforcing it.

Residents in Shanghai, China’s most populous city, came together Saturday night and early Sunday, calling for the end of pandemic lockdowns and chanting “We want freedom!” and “Unlock Xinjiang, unlock all of China!” according to witnesses at the event. In even more extraordinary scenes of public anger aimed at the government’s top leader, a group of protesters there chanted, “Xi Jinping, step down!” and “Communist Party, step down!”

“There were people everywhere,” said Chen, a 29-year-old Shanghai resident who arrived at the vigil around 2 a.m. Sunday. “At first people were yelling to lift the lockdown in Xinjiang, and then it became ‘Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party step down!’” he said, giving only his surname because of security concerns.

The immediate trigger for the demonstrations, which were also seen at universities in Beijing, Xi’an and Nanjing on Saturday, was a deadly fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in China’s far northwest on Thursday. Ten people, including three children, died after emergency fire services could not get close enough to an apartment building engulfed in flames. Residents blamed lockdown-related measures for hampering rescue efforts.

Officials on Friday denied that covid restrictions were a factor and said some residents’ “ability to rescue themselves was too weak,” fueling more ridicule and anger that swept across Chinese social media platforms. Residents in Urumqi, one of the most tightly controlled cities in China as a result of a broader security crackdown, turned out to protest Friday. Many waved China’s national flag and called for lockdowns to be fully lifted.

That unrest spread. On Saturday, Shanghai residents gathered for a candlelight vigil on Wulumuqi Middle Road, named after Urumqi, that turned into the demonstration. Photos sent to The Washington Post by a photographer at the scene showed protesters holding up blank sheets of paper — symbolic opposition to the country’s pervasive censorship — and placing flowers and candles for victims as the police looked on.

One person held up pieces of paper with the number ‘10’ written in Uyghur and Chinese in reference to the 10 victims in Urumqi. The crowd began passing the blank pages around.

“Everyone was holding it,” said Meng, the photographer, who gave only his surname because of safety concerns. “No one said anything, but we all knew what it meant. Delete all you want. You can’t censor what is unsaid.”

Such demonstrations are extremely rare in China, where authorities move quickly to stamp out all forms of dissent. Authorities are especially wary of protests at universities, the site of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 that spread across the country and ended in a bloody crackdown and massacre around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

With record covid cases, China scrambles to plug an immunity gap

At Communication University of China in Nanjing, posters mocking “zero covid” were taken down on Saturday, prompting one student to stand for hours holding a blank piece of paper in protest. Hundreds of students joined in solidarity.

Some placed flowers on the ground to honor the fire victims and chanted “rest in peace.” Others sang the Chinese national anthem as well as the left-wing anthem “The Internationale.” They shouted, “Long live the people!”

“I used to feel lonely, but yesterday everyone stood together,” said a 21-year-old photography student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. “I feel that we are all brave, brave enough to pursue the rights we are owed, brave enough to criticize these mistakes, brave enough to express our position.”

“The students are like a spring, pressed down every day. Yesterday, that spring bounced back up,” he said.

Videos posted on social media on Sunday show a crowd of students at Tsinghua University in Beijing holding up blank pieces of paper and chanting, “Democracy, rule of law, freedom of expression!” Through a loudspeaker, a young woman shouted, “If because we are afraid of being arrested, we don’t speak, I believe our people will be disappointed in us. As a Tsinghua student, I will regret this my whole life.”

Crowds also gathered at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, holding up their phones as part of a vigil for those who died in Urumqi, according to social media posts. Other posts show blurred-out protest slogans on campuses in four cities and two provinces.

Across the country, and not just at universities, citizens appear to be reaching a breaking point. In the name of “zero covid,” they have lived through almost three years of unrelenting controls that have left many sealed in their homes, sent to quarantine centers or barred from traveling. Residents must submit to repeated coronavirus tests and surveillance of their movement and health status.

The Urumqi fire followed a bus crash in September that killed 27 people as they were being taken to a quarantine center. In April, a sudden lockdown in Shanghai left residents without enough food and prompted online and offline protests. Deaths related to the restrictions, including a 3-year-old who died after his parents were unable to take him to a hospital, have further added to public anger.

Health authorities say this strategy of cutting off covid transmission as soon as possible and quarantining all positive cases is the only way to prevent a surge in severe cases and deaths, which would overwhelm the health-care system. As a result of its low infection rate, China’s population of 1.4 billion has a low level of natural immunity. Those who have been immunized have received domestically made vaccines that have proved less effective against the more infectious omicron variant.

As China eases coronavirus restrictions, confusion and angst follow

The Xinjiang fire also comes after weeks of especially heightened frustration over the pandemic policies, which were loosened and then tightened again in some places amid a new surge in cases. On Sunday, China reported 39,791 new infections, its fourth consecutive day of a record number of cases.

An article in the state-run People’s Daily on Sunday called for “unswerving commitment” to the current covid policies. At a briefing Sunday, Urumqi officials said public transport would partially resume Monday as part of efforts to gradually lift lockdown measures.

In Shanghai, police eventually swarmed the location of the vigil and closed off access to the road. They clashed with protesters, pushing them into cars before dispersing the crowd around 5 a.m. At one point, the crowd tried to stop police from dragging away a man reciting a poem in honor of the victims.

Videos posted Sunday show crowds in the area shouting, “Let them go!” an apparent reference to those arrested. Chen said he saw a dozen people get arrested.

“I’m not the kind of person that is a leader,” he said, “but if there’s a chance to speak out or do something to help, I want to.”

Pei-Lin Wu and Vic Chiang in Taipei and Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.



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World

Protests in Shanghai and Beijing as anger over China’s COVID curbs mounts

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  • Wave of civil disobedience unprecedented under Xi Jinping
  • Protesters hold vigils in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities
  • Anger over Urumqi factory fire and COVID curbs

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Crowds of demonstrators in Shanghai shouted and held up blank sheets of papers early on Sunday evening, as protests flared in China against heavy COVID-19 curbs following a deadly fire in the country’s far west sparked widespread anger.

The wave of civil disobedience, which has included protests in cities including Beijing and Urumqi, where the fire occurred, is unprecedented in mainland China since Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.

In Shanghai, China’s most populous city, residents had gathered on Saturday night at Wulumuqi Road – which is named after Urumqi – for a candlelight vigil that turned into a protest in the early hours of Sunday.

As a large group of police looked on, the crowd held up blank sheets of paper as a protest symbol against censorship. Later on, they shouted, “lift lockdown for Urumqi, lift lockdown for Xinjiang, lift lockdown for all of China!”, according to a video circulated on social media.

Later, a large group chanted “Down with the Chinese Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping”, according to witnesses and videos, in a rare public protest against the country’s leadership.

Reuters could not independently verify the footage.

Later on Sunday, police kept a heavy presence on Wulumuqi Road and cordoned off surrounding streets, making an arrest that triggered protests from onlookers, according to unverified videos seen by Reuters.

By evening, hundreds of people had gathered again near one of the cordons, some holding blank sheets of paper.

“I am here because of the fire accident in Urumqi. I am here for freedom. Winter is coming. We need our freedom,” one protestor told Reuters.

At Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, dozens of people held a peaceful protest against COVID restrictions during which they sang the national anthem, according to images and videos posted on social media.

In one video, which Reuters was unable to verify, a Tsinghua university student called on a cheering crowd to speak out. “If we don’t dare to speak out because we are scared of being smeared, our people will be disappointed in us. As a Tsinghua university student, I will regret it for all my life.”

One student who saw the Tsinghua protest described to Reuters feeling taken aback by the protest at one China’s most elite universities, and Xi’s alma mater.

“People there were very passionate, the sight of it was impressive,” the student said, declining to be named given the sensitivity of the matter.

Thursday’s fire that killed 10 people in a high-rise building in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, saw crowds there take to the street on Friday evening, chanting “End the lockdown!” and pumping their fists in the air, according to unverified videos on social media.

Many internet users believe that residents were not able to escape in time because the building was partially locked down, which city officials denied. In Urumqi, a city of 4 million, some people have been locked down for as long as 100 days.

ZERO-COVID

[1/8] Students take part in a protest against COVID-19 curbs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China seen in this still image taken from a video released November 27, 2022 and obtained by REUTERS.

China has stuck with Xi’s signature zero-COVID policy even as much of the world has lifted most restrictions. While low by global standards, China’s cases have hit record highs for days, with nearly 40,000 new infections on Saturday.

China defends the policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting economic toll.

China’s economy suffered a broad slowdown in October as factory output grew more slowly than expected and retail sales fell for the first time in five months, underscoring faltering demand at home and abroad.

Adding to a raft of weak data in recent days, China reported on Sunday that industrial firms saw overall profits fall further in the January-October period, with 22 of China’s 41 major industrial sectors showing a decline.

The world’s second-largest economy is also facing other headwinds including a global recession risks and a property downturn.

Widespread public protest is extremely rare in China, where room for dissent has been all but eliminated under Xi, forcing citizens mostly to vent on social media, where they play cat-and-mouse with censors.

Frustration is boiling just over a month after Xi secured a third term at the helm of China’s Communist Party.

“This will put serious pressure on the party to respond. There is a good chance that one response will be repression, and they will arrest and prosecute some protesters,” said Dan Mattingly, assistant professor of political science at Yale University.

Still, he said, the unrest is far from that seen in 1989, when protests culminated in the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square. He added that as long as Xi had China’s elite and the military on his side, he would not face any meaningful risk to his hold on power.

This weekend, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui called for the region to step up security maintenance and curb the “illegal violent rejection of COVID-prevention measures”.

Xinjiang officials have also said public transport services will gradually resume from Monday in Urumqi.

‘WE DON’T WANT HEALTH CODES’

Other cities that have seen public dissent include Lanzhou in the northwest where residents on Saturday upturned COVID staff tents and smashed testing booths, posts on social media showed. Protesters said they were put under lockdown even though no one had tested positive.

Candlelight vigils for the Urumqi victims took place at universities in cities such as Nanjing and Beijing.

Shanghai’s 25 million people were put under lockdown for two months earlier this year, provoking anger and protests.

Chinese authorities have since then sought to be more targeted in their COVID curbs, an effort that has been challenged by the surge in infections as the country faces its first winter with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard, Yew Lun Tian, Eduardo Baptista and Liz Lee in Beijing and by Brenda Goh, Josh Horwitz, David Stanway, Casey Hall and Engen Tham in Shanghai and the Shanghai Newsroom; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by William Mallard, Kim Coghill, Edwina Gibbs and Raissa Kasolowsky

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Protests erupt across China in unprecedented challenge to Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy

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Beijing
CNN
 — 

Protests are erupting across China, including at universities and in Shanghai where hundreds chanted “Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!” in an unprecedented show of defiance against the country’s stringent and increasingly costly zero-Covid policy.

A deadly fire at an apartment block in the country’s far western region of Xinjiang that killed 10 people and injured nine on Thursday appears to have fueled the anger, as video emerged that seemed to suggest lockdown measures delayed firefighters from reaching the victims.

Protests broke out in cities and at universities across China on Saturday and early Sunday morning, according to social media videos and witness accounts.

Videos widely circulated on Chinese social media show hundreds of people in downtown Shanghai on Saturday lighting candles to mourn the dead from the Xinjiang fire.

The crowd later held up blank sheets of white paper – in what is traditionally a symbolic protest against censorship – and chanted, “Need human rights, need freedom.”

In multiple videos seen by CNN, people could be heard shouting demands for China’s leader Xi Jinping and the Communist Party to “step down.” The crowd also chanted “Don’t want Covid test, want freedom!” and “Don’t want dictatorship, want democracy!”

Some videos show people singing China’s national anthem and The Internationale, a standard of the socialist movement, while holding banners protesting Beijing’s exceptionally stringent pandemic measures.

Protests have also broken out in the capital city Beijing. One student at the prestigious Peking University told CNN that when he arrived at the protest scene at around 1 a.m. Sunday local time, there were around 100 students, and security guards were using jackets to cover a protest slogan painted on the wall.

“Say no to lockdown, yes to freedom. No to Covid test, yes to food,” read the message written in red paint, echoing the slogan of a protest that took place on a Beijing overpass in October, just days before a key Communist Party meeting at which Xi secured a third term in power.

“Open your eyes and look at the world, dynamic zero-Covid is a lie,” the protest slogan at Peking University read.

The student said security guards later covered the slogan with black paint.

Students later gathered to sing the The Internationale before being dispersed by teachers and security guards.

In the eastern province of Jiangsu, dozens of students from Communication University of China, Nanjing gathered to mourn those who died in the Xinjiang fire. Videos show the students holding up sheets of white paper and mobile phone flashlights.

In one video, a university official could be heard warning the students: “You will pay for what you did today.”

“You too, and so will the country,” a student shouted in reply.

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World

More anti-COVID protests in China triggered by deadly fire

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Protests against China’s restrictive COVID-19 measures appeared to roil in a number of cities Saturday night, in displays of public defiance fanned by anger over a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region.

Many protests could not be immediately confirmed, but in Shanghai, police used pepper spray to stop around 300 protesters who had gathered at Middle Urumqi Road at midnight, bringing flowers, candles and signs reading “Urumqi, November 24, those who died rest in peace” to memorialize the 10 deaths caused by a fire in an apartment building in Xinjiang’s capital city Urumqi.

A protester who gave only his family name, Zhao, said one of his friends was beaten by police and two friends were pepper sprayed. He said police stomped his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes in the process, and left the protest barefoot.

Zhao says protesters yelled slogans including “Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party, step down,” “Unlock Xinjiang, unlock China,” “do not want PCR (tests), want freedom” and “press freedom.”

Around 100 police stood line by line, preventing some protesters from gathering or leaving, and buses carrying more police arrived later, Zhao said.

Another protester, who gave only his family name of Xu, said there was a larger crowd of thousands of demonstrators, but that police stood in the road and let protesters pass on the sidewalk.

Posts about the protest were deleted immediately on China’s social media, as China’s Communist Party commonly does to suppress criticism.

Earlier Saturday, authorities in the Xinjiang region opened up some neighborhoods in Urumqi after residents held extraordinary late-night demonstrations against the city’s draconian “zero-COVID” lockdown that had lasted more than three months. Many alleged that obstacles caused by anti-virus measures made the fire worse. It took emergency workers three hours to extinguish the blaze, but officials denied the allegations, saying there were no barricades in the building and that residents were permitted to leave.

During Xinjiang’s lockdown, some residents elsewhere in the city have had their doors chained physically shut, including one who spoke to The Associated Press who declined to be named for fear of retribution. Many in Urumqi believe such brute-force tactics may have prevented residents from escaping in Thursday’s fire and that the official death toll was an undercount.

Anger boiled over after Urumqi city officials held a press conference about the fire in which they appeared to shift responsibility for the deaths onto the apartment tower’s residents.

“Some residents’ ability to rescue themselves was too weak,” said Li Wensheng, head of Urumqi’s fire department.

Police clamped down on dissenting voices, announcing the arrest of a 24-year-old woman for spreading “untrue information” about the death toll online.

Late Friday, people in Urumqi marched largely peacefully in big puffy winter jackets in the cold winter night.

Videos of protests featured people holding the Chinese flag and shouting “Open up, open up.” They spread rapidly on Chinese social media despite heavy censorship. In some scenes, people shouted and pushed against rows of men in the white whole-body hazmat suits that local government workers and pandemic-prevention volunteers wear, according to the videos.

By Saturday, most had been deleted by censors. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the videos, but two Urumqi residents who declined to be named out of fear of retribution said large-scale protests occurred Friday night. One of them said he had friends who participated.

The AP pinpointed the locations of two of the videos of the protests in different parts of Urumqi. In one video, police in face masks and hospital gowns faced off against shouting protesters. In another, one protester is speaking to a crowd about their demands. It is unclear how widespread the protests were.

The demonstrations, as well as public anger online, are the latest signs of building frustration with China’s intense approach to controlling COVID-19. It’s the only major country in the world that still is fighting the pandemic through mass testing and lockdowns.

Given China’s vast security apparatus, protests are risky anywhere in the country, but they are extraordinary in Xinjiang, which for years has been the target of a brutal security crackdown. A huge number of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities have been swept into a vast network of camps and prisons, instilling fear that grips the region to this day.

Most of the protesters visible in the videos were Han Chinese. A Uyghur woman living in Urumqi said it was because Uyghurs were too scared to take to the streets despite their rage.

“Han Chinese people know they will not be punished if they speak against the lockdown,” she said, declining to be named for fear of retaliation against her family. “Uyghurs are different. If we dare say such things, we will be taken to prison or to the camps.”

In one video, which the AP could not independently verify, Urumqi’s top official, Yang Fasen, told angry protesters he would open up low-risk areas of the city the following morning.

That promise was realized the next day, as Urumqi authorities announced that residents of low risk areas would be allowed to move freely within their neighborhoods. Still, many other neighborhoods remain under lockdown.

Officials also triumphantly declared Saturday that they had basically achieved “societal zero-COVID,” meaning that there was no more community spread and that new infections were being detected only in people already under health monitoring, such as those in a centralized quarantine facility.

Social media users greeted the news with disbelief and sarcasm. “Only China can achieve this speed,” wrote one user on Weibo.

On Chinese social media, where trending topics are manipulated by censors, the “zero-COVID” announcement was the No. 1 trending hashtag on both Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, and Douyin, the Chinese edition of TikTok. The apartment fire and protests became a lightning rod for public anger, as millions shared posts questioning China’s pandemic controls or mocking the country’s stiff propaganda and harsh censorship controls.

The explosion of criticism marks a sharp turn in public opinion. Early on in the pandemic, China’s approach to controlling COVID-19 was hailed by its own citizens as minimizing deaths at a time when other countries were suffering devastating waves of infections. China’s leader Xi Jinping had held up the approach as an example of the superiority of the Chinese system in comparison to the West and especially the U.S., which had politicized the use of face masks and had difficulties enacting widespread lockdowns.

But support for “zero-COVID” has cratered in recent months, as tragedies sparked public anger. Last week, the Zhengzhou city government in the central province of Henan apologized for the death of a 4-month old baby. She died after a delay in receiving medical attention while suffering vomiting and diarrhea in quarantine at a hotel in Zhengzhou.

The government has doubled down its policy even as it loosens some measures, such as shortening quarantine times. The central government has repeatedly said it will stick to “zero COVID.”

Many in Xinjiang have been locked down since August. Most have not been allowed to leave their homes, and some have reported dire conditions, including spotty food deliveries that have caused residents to go hungry. On Friday, the city reported 220 new cases, the vast majority of which were asymptomatic.

The Uyghur woman in Urumqi said she had been trapped in her apartment since Aug. 8, and was not even allowed to open her window. On Friday, residents in her neighborhood defied the order, opening their windows and shouting in protest. She joined in.

“No more lockdowns! No more lockdowns!” they screamed.

___

Kang reported from Beijing.

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World

Huge COVID protests erupt in China’s Xinjiang after deadly fire

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Nov 26 (Reuters) – Rare protests broke out in China’s far western Xinjiang region, with crowds shouting at hazmat-suited guards after a deadly fire triggered anger over their prolonged COVID-19 lockdown as nationwide infections set another record.

Crowds chanted “End the lockdown!”, pumping their fists in the air as they walked down a street, according to videos circulated on Chinese social media on Friday night. Reuters verified the footage was published from the Xinjiang capital Urumqi.

Videos showed people in a plaza singing China’s national anthem with its lyric, “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves!” while others shouted that they wanted to be released from lockdowns.

China has put the vast Xinjiang region under some of the country’s longest lockdowns, with many of Urumqi’s 4 million residents barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days. The city reported about 100 new cases each of the past two days.

Xinjiang is home to 10 million Uyghurs. Rights groups and Western governments have long accused Beijing of abuses against the mainly Muslim ethnic minority, including forced labour in internment camps. China strongly rejects such claims.

The Urumqi protests followed a fire in a high-rise building there that killed 10 on Thursday night.

Authorities have said the building’s residents had been able to go downstairs, but videos of emergency crews’ efforts, shared on Chinese social media, led many internet users to surmise that residents could not escape in time because the building was partially locked down.

Urumqi officials abruptly held a news conference in the early hours of Saturday, denying that COVID measures had hampered escape and rescue but saying they would investigate further. One said residents could have escaped faster if they had better understood fire safety.

[1/3] Protests against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak measures in Urumqi city, Xinjiang Uygur, China in this screen grab obtained from a video released November 25, 2022.Video obtained by Reuters/via REUTERS

‘BLAME THE VICTIM’

Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said such a “blame-the-victim” attitude would make people angrier. “Public trust will just sink lower,” he told Reuters.

Users on China’s Weibo platform described the incident as a tragedy that sprang out of China’s insistence on sticking to its zero-COVID policy and something that could happen to anyone. Some lamented its similarities to the deadly September crash of a COVID quarantine bus.

“Is there not something we can reflect on to make some changes,” said an essay that went viral on WeChat on Friday, questioning the official narrative on the Urumqi apartment fire.

China defends President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting toll on the world’s second-biggest economy.

While the country recently tweaked its measures, shortening quarantines and taking other targeted steps, this coupled with rising cases has caused widespread confusion and uncertainty in big cities, including Beijing, where many residents are locked down at home.

China recorded 34,909 daily local cases, low by global standards but the third record in a row, with infections spreading numerous cities, prompting widespread lockdowns and other curbs on movement and business.

Shanghai, China’s most populous city and financial hub, tightened testing requirements on Saturday for entering cultural venues such as museums and libraries, requiring people to present a negative COVID test taken within 48 hours, down from 72 hours earlier.

Beijing’s Chaoyang Park, popular with runners and picnickers, shut again after having briefly reopened.

Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Editing by William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Amazon warehouse workers stage Black Friday strikes and protests around world | Amazon

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Amazon warehouse workers in the UK and 40 other countries are to strike and stage protests timed to coincide with the Black Friday sales, one of the company’s biggest shopping days of the year.

Employees in dozens of countries, from Japan and Australia to India, the US and across Europe, are demanding better wages and conditions in a campaign called “Make Amazon Pay”.

In the UK, hundreds of members of the GMB union are staging strikes or protests at a number of Amazon warehouses, including a protest outside its fulfilment centre in Coventry.

“We are here today to tell Amazon [that] if you want to keep your empire going, talk to GMB to improve the pay and conditions of workers,” said Amanda Gearing, a senior organiser at the GMB. “Amazon workers are overworked, underpaid and they have had enough.”

Profits at Amazon Services UK, the group’s warehouse and logistics operation, which is thought to employ more than half of the company’s UK workforce of close to 75,000 people, have soared by 60% to £204m, with revenues growing by just over a quarter to more than £6bn last year.

Workers are demanding a wage rise from £10.50 to £15 an hour as the cost of living crisis hits household budgets.

However, participating in the action in the UK could mean that protesters miss out on the second part of a £500 bonus Amazon agreed for tens of thousands of frontline workers.

Last month, Amazon UK said that the award of the second part of the payment was dependent on staff taking no “unauthorised absence” between 22 November and Christmas Eve.

The GMB argued that linking the payment to staff attendance could be viewed as an illegal strike-busting move.

In Dublin, Extinction Rebellion has organised a protest outside Amazon’s offices from 1pm.

A spokesperson for Amazon said: “These groups represent a variety of interests, and while we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing on these important matters, you’ll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously.”

“We are inventing and investing significantly in all these areas, playing a significant role in addressing climate change with the climate pledge commitment to be net zero carbon by 2040, continuing to offer competitive wages and great benefits, and inventing new ways to keep our employees safe and healthy in our operations network, to name just a few.”

More than 50 security guards and CCTV operators demonstrating outside Harrods over a ‘pay cut’ . Photograph: Mark Thomas/i-Images

In London, security guards and CCTV operators at Harrods are also going on strike on Black Friday, including staging a protest outside the luxury Knightsbridge store, the first of 12 days of action through the festive period.

More than 50 staff members are taking part in the protests, which are to be staged across every weekend in December and include Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, over a 7% pay offer they view as a “cut” with inflation running at more than 11%.

Last month, Harrods, which is owned by the Qatar Investment Authority, reported an annual profit of £51m, more than doubled the pay of its managing director to £2.3m and revealed it had collected almost £6m in government support under the Covid furlough scheme.

“Harrods and its owners can absolutely afford to pay these workers a rise that reflects soaring living costs,” said Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union.

Meanwhile, the industry body UKHospitality said a series of planned rail strikes in the run-up to Christmas would cost UK restaurants, pubs, clubs and bars £1.5bn, and called on the government to bring all partners to the table to try to reach a solution.

Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said the strikes would go ahead, after a first meeting with transport secretary Mark Harper to try to resolve the dispute on Thursday.

Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of UKHospitality, said the disruption and financial cost of the strikes will cause another lost Christmas on the scale of the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid last year.

“This disruption will devastate hospitality businesses during its busiest period of the year and will once again force the public to cancel and rearrange plans,” she said. “The impact of rail strikes already this year has been devastating and wide-reaching but this will pale in comparison to what we will see as a result of the upcoming strikes in December.”

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World

Iranian fans savour victory but wrangle over protests

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AL RAYYAN, Qatar, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Iran’s national soccer team sang during the playing of their national anthem at their second World Cup match against Wales on Friday having refrained from doing so in their opening game earlier this week in apparent support for protesters back home.

Loud jeers were heard from Iranian supporters as the anthem played, with the team singing quietly before going on to win 2-0, prompting euphoric celebrations outside the stadium where government supporters tried to drown out chants by its opponents after the game.

Ahead of the match, several fans said security had prevented them or friends from taking symbols of support for the protesters into the stadium. One said he was detained. Another said security forces made him take off a T-shirt declaring “Women, Life, Freedom” – a slogan of the protests.

In the stadium, a woman held aloft a soccer jersey with “Mahsa Amini – 22” printed on the back and blood red tears painted beneath her eyes – commemorating the woman whose death in police custody ignited the protests more than two months ago.

Iranian authorities have responded with deadly force to suppress the protests calling for the downfall of the Islamic Republic, one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

After the match, jubilant Iranians danced and cheered as they streamed out of the ground.

A few wore T-shirts commemorating Amini, who was arrested for allegedly flouting Iran’s strict dress codes, or held banners declaring “Women, Life, Freedom”.

Fans waving the official Iranian flag tried to drown them out with their own chants.

One of them stepped in front of a group of women with WOMEN LIFE FREEDOM on their shirts and began chanting over them. He was wearing a T-shirt printed with a picture of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Qassem Soleimani, a powerful Iranian general who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020.

The win sets up a decisive match against the United States on Tuesday.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, part of a hardline establishment that has condemned the protests as riots fomented by Iran’s enemies, praised the team for “bringing the sweetness of victory to the people of our country”.

In contrast to Monday, when Iranian state television cut away from the broadcast while the anthem was playing, Iranian state media reported the players had sung on Friday, and showed footage of pro-government fans in the stadium.

State TV showed people celebrating on streets of several cities across Iran.

Ahead of the World Cup, protesters had taken heart from apparent shows of support from a number of Iran’s national teams which refrained from singing the national anthem.

On Monday, ahead of their opening game against England, the players had been solemn and silent as the anthem was played.

Iranian fans were in good spirits as the game approached, with big cheers around the stadium as their players emerged from the tunnel for warm-ups, emitting a roar as star striker Sardar Azmoun, who has spoken in support of the protest movement, was announced in the starting lineup.

Team Melli, as the soccer team is known, have traditionally been a huge source of national pride in Iran, but they have found themselves caught up in politics in the World Cup run-up, with anticipation over whether they would use soccer’s showpiece event as a platform to get behind the protesters.

‘BEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE’

Ahead of the match, a man wearing a jersey declaring “Women, Life, Freedom” was escorted into the stadium by security officers, a Reuters witness said.

Reuters could not immediately confirm why the man was being accompanied by three security officers in blue.

A spokesperson for the organising supreme committee referred Reuters to FIFA and Qatar’s list of prohibited items, but without saying which prohibited item he was carrying.

The rules ban items with “political, offensive, or discriminatory messages”.

The media liaison at the stadium for world governing body FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while the stadium media manager was not aware of the incidents but would respond later.

Payam Saljoughian, 36, a U.S.-based lawyer, said security forces had made him and his father take off “Women, Life, Freedom” shirts but his two siblings and mother were not told to remove theirs. “It was the best moment of my life – despite everything,” he told Reuters.

Iranian-American fan Shayan Khosravani, 30, told Reuters he had been detained by stadium security 10 minutes before kick-off.

He said he had been detained after he was told to put pro-protest materials away, which he did. But he was wearing a “free Iran” shirt.

Additional reporting by Dubai newsroom; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Toby Chopra, Gareth Jones, William Maclean

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Foxconn protests: iPhone factory offers to pay its workers to quit and leave Zhengzhou campus

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Hong Kong
CNN Business
 — 

Foxconn has offered to pay newly recruited workers 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to quit and leave the world’s largest iPhone assembly factory, in an attempt to quell protests that saw hundreds clash with security forces at the compound in central China.

The Apple supplier made the offer Wednesday following dramatic scenes of violent protests on its campus in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, in a text message sent from its human resources department to workers.

In the message, seen by CNN, the company urged workers to “please return to your dormitories” on the campus. It also promised to pay them 8.000 yuan if they agreed to quit Foxconn, and another 2,000 yuan after they board buses to leave the sprawling site altogether.

The protest erupted on Tuesday night over the terms of the new hires’ payment packages and Covid-related concerns about their living conditions. Scenes turned increasingly violent on Wednesday as workers clashed with a large number of security forces, including SWAT team officers.

Videos circulating on social media showed groups of law enforcement officers clad in hazmat suits kicking and hitting protesters with batons and metal rods. Some workers were seen tearing down fences, throwing bottles and barriers at officers and smashing and overturning police vehicles.

The protest largely tailed off around 10 p.m. on Wednesday as workers returned to their dormitories, having received Foxconn’s payment offer and fearing a harsher crackdown by authorities, a witness told CNN.

The Zhengzhou plant was hit by a Covid outbreak in October, which forced it to lock down and led to a mass exodus of workers fleeing the outbreak. Foxconn later launched a massive recruitment drive, in which more than 100,000 people signed up to fill the advertised positions, Chinese state media reported.

According to a document setting out the salary package of new hires seen by CNN, the workers were promised a 3,000 yuan bonus after 30 days on the job, with another 3,000 yuan to be paid after a total of 60 days.

However, according to a worker, after arriving at the plant, the new recruits were told by Foxconn that they would only receive the first bonus on March 15, and the second installment in May – meaning they must work through the Lunar New Year holiday, which starts in January 2023, to get the first of the bonus payments.

“The new recruits had to work more days to get the bonus they were promised, so they felt cheated,” the worker told CNN.

In a statement Thursday, Foxconn said it fully understood the new recruits’ concerns about “possible changes in the subsidy policy,” which it blamed on “a technical error (that) occurred during the onboarding process.”

“We apologize for an input error in the computer system and guarantee that the actual pay is the same as agreed,” it said.

Foxconn was communicating with employees and assuring them that salaries and bonuses would be paid “in accordance with company policies,” it said.

Apple, for which Foxconn manufactures a range of products, told CNN Business that its employees were on the ground at the Zhengzhou facility.

“We are reviewing the situation and working closely with Foxconn to ensure their employees’ concerns are addressed,” it said in a statement.

On Thursday morning, some workers who had agreed to leave had received the first part of the payment, a worker said in a livestream, which showed workers lining up outdoors to take Covid tests while they waited for departing buses. Later in the day, livestreams showed long lines of workers boarding buses.

But for some, the trouble is far from over. After being driven to the Zhengzhou train station, many couldn’t get a ticket home, another worker said in a livestream on Thursday afternoon. Like him, thousands of workers were stuck at the station, he said, as he turned his camera to show the large crowds.

Zhengzhou is set to impose a five-day lockdown in its urban districts, which include the train station, starting from midnight Friday, authorities had announced earlier.

The protest started outside the workers’ dormitories on the sprawling Foxconn campus on Tuesday night, with hundreds marching and chanting slogans including “Down with Foxconn,” according to social media videos and a witness account. Videos showed workers clashing with security guards and fighting back tear gas fired by police.

The stand-off lasted into Wednesday morning. The situation quickly escalated when a large number of security forces, most covered in white hazmat suits and some holding shields and batons, were deployed to the scene. Videos showed columns of police vehicles, some marked with “SWAT,” arriving on the campus, normally home to some 200,000 workers.

More workers joined the protest after seeing livestreams on video platforms Kuaishou and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, the worker told CNN. Many livestreams were cut or censored. Online searches for “Foxconn” in Chinese have been restricted.

Some protesters marched to the main gate of the production facility compound, which is located in a separate area from the workers’ dorms, in an attempt to block assembly work, the worker said.

Other protesters took the further step of breaking into the production compound. They smashed Covid testing booths, glass doors and advertising boards at restaurants in the production area, according to the worker.

Having worked at the Zhengzhou plant for six years, he said he was now deeply disappointed by Foxconn and planned to quit. With a baseline monthly salary of 2,300 yuan, he has been earning between 4,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan per month, including overtime pay, working 10 hours a day and seven days a week during the pandemic.

“Foxconn is a Taiwanese company,” he said. “Not only did it not spread Taiwan’s values of democracy and freedom to the mainland, it was assimilated by the Chinese Communist Party and became so cruel and inhumane. I feel very sad about it.”

Although he was not one of the new recruits, he protested with them in support, adding: “If today I remain silent about the suffering of others, who will speak out for me tomorrow?”

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World

Why Saudi Arabia Is So Quiet About Iran’s Protests

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Expressions of support for Iranian protesters have been pouring in from around the world—from leaders such as President Joe Biden, the former first lady Michelle Obama, French President Emmanuel Macron, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern—as the protests, well into their second month, remain defiant and have even gained in intensity. But aside from some media coverage, those nations closest to Iran, its Gulf neighbors, have remained conspicuously silent. Most striking of all is the lack of any official response from Saudi Arabia—which one would expect to be cheering along the popular revolt against a regime that Riyadh considers its archenemy.

The Saudi silence stems from lessons the kingdom absorbed during the events that turned the Persian monarchy into an Islamic Republic: Wait until the outcome is clear, and then wait some more. The protests that brought down the shah in 1979 unfolded over more than a year. Although today’s protests have become the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since that time, no rapid conclusion seems likely; hence the Saudi policy of watchful waiting. Back then, the Saudis also misjudged the outcome after their ally the shah was deposed, because they believed that they could work with his successor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—only to find he was an adversary. Whatever the outcome this time, Saudi Arabia seems certain to reserve judgment while buttressing its own position.

Kim Ghattas: A whole generation revolts against the Iranian regime

The House of Saud may consider that position already better secured by the recent reforms introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In important respects, the kingdom has leapt into the 21st century: Women can drive, the hijab is no longer enforced, and the religious police have largely disappeared. Saudi Gen Zers of both sexes can mix in public, dance at raves, go to movie theaters, and cheer at football stadiums. The contrast with Iran is sharp. There, the Gen Zers are rising up against a repressive, ideologically driven regime that continues to enforce an outdated Islamic lifestyle, depriving them of fun and pleasure while failing to provide them with jobs and opportunities.

So if the Saudis are studiedly saying little, that silence may be underpinned by a quiet satisfaction. Right now, their record of managing such social pressures looks a lot better.

The events of today represent a stunning reversal of the situation in the 1960s, when the shah reportedly sent King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud a series of letters urging him to modernize and “make the schools mixed women and men. Let women wear miniskirts. Have discos. Be modern. Otherwise I cannot guarantee you will stay in your throne.” The king wrote back telling the shah he was wrong: “You are not the shah of France. You are not in the Élysée. You are in Iran. Your population is 90 percent Muslim.”

Shadi Hamid: The reason Iran turned out to be so repressive

Such a candid and cordial exchange between the rulers of the two countries is hard to credit now, but before 1979, Saudi Arabia and Iran were regional partners—twin pillars in America’s Cold War efforts in the Middle East to contain the Soviet Union. The two monarchies—one Sunni, the other Shiite—were even allies in an intelligence partnership known as the Safari Club, which ran clandestine operations and fomented coups around Africa to roll back Soviet influence.

Given this relationship, the Saudis initially viewed the protests that engulfed Iran after 1977 as an internal affair, and refrained from comment. But as the movement to depose the shah grew, both Riyadh and Washington worried that a pro-Soviet regime dominated by leftists and nationalists would take over.

In early 1979, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud openly expressed support for the shah as Iran’s legitimate ruler. But by mid-January, the shah was gone, and within two weeks, Khomeini flew back triumphantly to Tehran. The secular revolutionaries thought they could exploit the ayatollah’s religious support and control him. They were wrong. Khomeini effectively hijacked the revolution and turned Iran into an Islamic Republic.

Saudi Arabia moved quickly to accept the outcome, relieved to see a man who spoke the language of religion rise to the top instead of leftist revolutionaries. Saudi Arabia congratulated Iran’s new prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, and lauded the Iranian revolution for its solidarity with “the Arab struggle against the Zionist enemy.” In April, Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the kingdom’s future ruler, spoke of his relief that the new Iran was “making Islam, not heavy armament, the organizer of cooperation” between their two countries.

Before long, though, the Saudis were facing an insurrection from their own zealots. In November 1979, religious extremists laid siege to the Holy Mosque in Mecca for two weeks. The deeply conservative kingdom had just begun relaxing some of its strictures with the recent introduction of television and cinemas. Those controversial advances now came to an abrupt end. Fearing that it might meet the same fate as the shah, the House of Saud staked its future on Sunni puritanism, further empowering the clerical establishment and pouring money into the religious police.

And little did the Saudis know what Khomeini had in store. Soon, the ayatollah was exporting the Islamic revolution around the region, wielding religion as a weapon and challenging the House of Saud’s position as leader of the Muslim world. If the Saudis had read Khomeini’s early writings, they would have had some inkling of his disdain for them. To counter Iran’s efforts to extend its influence, the Saudis promoted the kingdom’s brand of ultraorthodox Sunni Islam from Egypt to Pakistan.

As the Iranian revolution transformed the region, the shock of suddenly facing an implacable enemy instilled in the Saudis a visceral fear of popular uprisings—either within their own kingdom or in any neighboring country. This dread was still uppermost in their mind in 2011, when they watched millions of protesters throng the streets to bring down another American-backed leader, this time in the Arab world—Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak—during the Arab uprisings.

Today, Saudi Arabia and its neighbors would welcome a change of leadership in Iran, but uncertainty about the outcome governs Saudi caution. The protests are unlikely to lead to the wholesale overthrow of the ayatollahs in the short to medium term. So will the regime attempt to defuse internal pressures by giving in to some of the demands, reining in the religious police, focusing more on Iran’s domestic politics and economy and less on regional hegemony? Or will the current leadership come down hard on the protesters, causing the regime to step up internal repression and support for proxy militias in the region?

From the April 2022 issue: Absolute power

Given the pressure at home, the Islamic Republic may well unleash some of its allies to launch diversionary attacks against regional adversaries. Already, in September, Iran attacked Kurdish areas in northern Iraq with ballistic missiles. In October, Saudi Arabia shared intelligence with the U.S. that warned of an imminent attack on the kingdom—Riyadh is concerned that its currently fraught relationship with the U.S. could make it more vulnerable to an attack. (The October report contained no specific details, but the U.S. did raise the level of alert of its forces in the region.)

The official Saudi silence about the protests belies a somewhat more active posture: The royal court is thought to be funding Iran International, a London-based Persian TV channel, set up in 2017 as an opposition station and now beaming images of the protests back into Iran. Although satellite dishes are illegal, an estimated 70 percent of Iranian households own one, and Iran International has become a vital source of information inside the country and for the diaspora.

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly called on Saudi Arabia to shut down the station. “This is our last warning, because you are interfering in our internal affairs through these media,” the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, said last month. “You are involved in this matter and know that you are vulnerable.” The warning was repeated by the supreme leader’s military adviser, Major General Yahya Safavi, and Iranian authorities arrested a woman accused of links to the station.

The channel also reports on news from the region and from inside Saudi Arabia, where life for young Saudis has been so transformed in recent years. In early March 2020, the kingdom organized a “Persian Night” of music in the celebrated desert venue of Al Ula, inviting such major Iranian figures as the singer Andy to perform even as they’re banned from performing in their own country. Broadcast on Iran International television, the event was emblematic of the House of Saud’s aptitude at reading the times and social trends—in contrast to the limitations of Iran’s rulers, both the shah and the ayatollahs. The Saudis like to draw such comparisons to show how Iran is lagging behind.

But inside the kingdom, the new social and cultural reforms, and the rapid pace of their implementation, are not to everyone’s taste in the conservative monarchy—which is why the new freedoms also have strict limits. Under bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has become more authoritarian. Aside from the high-profile killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the kingdom has cracked down on anyone remotely critical of the changes. These include such minimal-seeming threats as a young Saudi mother of two studying in Leeds who was jailed while visiting home for retweeting Saudi dissidents and spreading “false” information, and a U.S.-Saudi dual national who was sentenced to 16 years in prison after sending out critical tweets.

Looking at events in Iran, the Saudi crown prince may be congratulating himself for defusing the social discontent that had been building inside the kingdom for years. But he will likely continue to do so quietly—notwithstanding Iran International’s coverage—because the ultimate lesson from 1979 is that geopolitical fallout from the coming changes within Iran will wash over the region. And any interregnum will be messy.



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World

Iranian regime targets Kurdish city in crackdown on protests

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Iran has deployed troops to a Kurdish-majority city in an attempt to regain control of the town that was taken over by protesters in recent days.

“The regime is actively terrorizing innocent Iranians in the Kurdish city of Mahabad and has also turned off their power and internet,” Lisa Daftari, the editor in chief of the Foreign Desk, told Fox News Digital. 

Daftari’s comments come after ceremonies were held Sunday for two protesters who were recently killed in the small Kurdish-majority city of Mahabad, according to a report from Iran International Sunday. Those ceremonies soon turned to fierce protesting and the protesters gaining control of the city.

IRAN PROTESTS RAGE ON STREETS AS OFFICIALS RENEW THREATS

Iranian police arrive to disperse a protest to mark 40 days since the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
(AP)

Gunfire could be heard in videos taken throughout the city as the protests intensified, with the Iranian regime eventually responding by cutting power and internet access in parts of Mahabad. 

Videos published on social media showed the streets of Mahabad packed with military vehicles, with authorities reportedly imposing martial law in the city. In one incident, people gathered for what was said to be a speech from the governor, but Iranian forces opened fire on the crowd, resulting in a still unknown number of casualties.

“Saturday evening, November 19, the Iranian regime appears to have imposed martial laws in the Kurdish city of Mahabad. Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has reportedly entered Mahabad with heavy military weapons and equipment… The lives of many people are in danger,” The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan said in a statement on the situation Saturday.

Iranians protest a 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini’s death after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran in September.
(AP Photo/Middle East Images, File)

IRAN PROTESTS TRIGGER SOLIDARITY RALLIES IN US, EUROPE

The party called on human rights organizations to not remain silent over “the massacre of the Kurdish people,” arguing silence from the international community will only embolden the Iranian regime.

Iranian authorities have struggled to get a grip on protests that originated after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amin at the hands of police in September.

With those protests still raging, Daftari said the country’s Kurdish minority serves as a natural target for the regime’s violent pushback.

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Iranians protests the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police in September.
(AP/Middle East Images, File)

“It’s no coincidence that the regime is particularly fixated on killing Kurds both inside and outside its borders,” Daftari said. “During the ongoing revolution, which has now endured over two months, the regime has used every opportunity to violently crack down on peaceful protesters while the world sits idly by. The Iranian people are calling on mainstream media outlets to cover their movement and for Western leaders to support them in their endeavor.”

Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee



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