Dazed and terrified, Huang Yicheng narrowly managed to escape being detained by police in Shanghai while attending historic protests calling for an end to China’s COVID-19 curbs that spread across numerous cities in November last year.
The protests, unprecedented in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) decade in power, were suppressed by police within days, but helped hasten the end of three years of restrictions.
Four months later, 26-year-old Huang fled to Germany and decided to speak out in support of fellow demonstrators, some of whom remain in detention.
Photo: AP
He is one of the first to publicly reveal his identity, after the vast majority of protesters fell silent under threat of official retribution.
“The moment I was detained was the most terrifying minute of my life. But after having experienced that, I now feel like I won’t be afraid again,” Huang told Reuters from the northern port city of Hamburg, where he is studying for a postgraduate degree.
“I feel like I need to speak up for Cao Zhixin (曹芷馨) and the other detained protesters... I want to urge more global forces to pay attention to them and Chinese people’s efforts to struggle for their own freedom,” he said.
Immediately following the protests, in which hundreds took to the streets in several cities across the country, police interrogated and detained dozens of participants, according to rights groups, lawyers and friends of those individuals.
Many were only held for 24 hours or less, or were released after a few weeks in detention.
Reuters could not independently verify the total number of protesters who were detained by police or have been charged and remain in custody.
However, Human Rights Watch has said Cao, a 26-year-old book editor, is one of four protesters who remain in detention in Beijing, having been formally charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” which carries a sentence of up to five years.
Reuters could not reach Cao or her legal representatives, but one of her friends, who declined to be identified, confirmed she remains in detention.
China’s Public Security Bureau did not respond to a faxed request for comment. The public security bureaus of Beijing and Shanghai could not be reached for comment.
China has not commented officially on the protests, whether they triggered the end of Beijing’s “zero COVID-19” policy or subsequent detentions.
However, Xi reportedly told visiting European officials in December last year that “frustrated students” were behind the protests.
Huang said he still remembers clearly the evening of Nov. 27, when he saw “around 400 to 500” protesters near downtown Shanghai’s Wulumuqi Road, named after the city of Urumqi where a deadly apartment blaze two days earlier triggered nationwide protest vigils against COVID-19 lockdowns.
The protests were initially peaceful, he said, as demonstrators chanted slogans and held up blank sheets of paper as a symbol of their discontent.
However, after nightfall, police started violently arresting protesters en masse, he said.
“A group of police officers rushed forward and pinned me to the ground, punching and kicking me. Then they grabbed me upside down and dragged me along the ground while upside down. My chin was bleeding profusely. I lost my glasses and shoes,” he said.
He was then sat near the front of a police bus full of other detained protesters. There, he witnessed police slapping and beating several female protesters and managed to sneak out unnoticed amid the chaos. On the street, Huang bumped into an acquaintance who led him to a safe place away from the protest site, from where he caught a taxi home.
His name had not been taken down by the police, he said.
After the protests ended, Huang kept a low profile and “lived in extreme fear” of arrest while waiting for his student visa to travel to Germany. He finally left China late last month, without having been contacted by the police.
“The protesters who are still detained are young intellectuals and creatives: editors, journalists, Shakespeare lovers,” Huang said, adding that they were neither seasoned activists or dissidents, but idealistic youngsters who acted spontaneously out of a sense of justice.
“Over the past 10 years, the space for us to exist — and the space for civil society in China — has continued to shrink,” he said.
Huang said he believes that the demonstrations directly triggered the end of the “zero COVID-19” policy, but their lasting impact on China comes at a price.
“Even though ‘zero COVID’ is over, these people who sacrificed their freedom for us are still in prison,” he said.
“As long as one protester is still detained, the world cannot stop paying attention to the white paper movement,” he added.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to