Protests against China’s restrictive COVID-19 policies have spread to more cities as anger mounts over a deadly fire in the western Xinjiang region that has been connected to the country’s strict lockdown policies.
Hundreds of students from Beijing’s Tsinghua University rallied at their campus on Sunday, the AFP news agency reported, chanting “freedom will prevail” and calling for an end to lockdowns.
The rally follows demonstrations overnight in Shanghai, China’s most populous city and financial hub, as well as at a university in the eastern city of Nanjing.
A student at Tsinghua said that Sunday’s gathering began at 11:30am (03:30 GMT), when “students started holding up signs at the entrance of the canteen, then more and more people joined”.
The student added: “Now there are 200 to 300 people… We sang the national anthem and the Internationale, and chanted ‘freedom will prevail’”.
There was no immediate comment from the Chinese government.
