China's Anti-COVID Policies in Tibet Trigger Resentment, Online Outcry
Now we have tested positive, and you want to take away our child. If we need to move again, we want [to] move together as a family,” he said. “If you separate us from our child, I am willing to die right here.”
The man then says to listeners, “Please come collect my body after I die.”
In Lhasa, the restrictions have been especially difficult for the many people who come from rural areas for low-paying service jobs in the city. One young woman took to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to appeal to the government to let migrant workers return to their villages. She posted she is running out of hard-earned money and food. If allowed to return home to her village, she said she would not have to pay rent and she would at least have enough to eat.
Other posts describe how authorities are conducting mandatory COVID-19 tests on people once a day under lockdown. In certain areas, people are required to undergo testing twice a day.
Results Via Phone
Test results are delivered via cellphone, leaving people anxiously checking their cellphones throughout the day. A “red” color notification indicates a positive result, which means the recipient is likely to end up in one of the quarantine camps — with his or her entire family.
People who have tested positive report online that since receiving results their only human contact has come from authorities in white hazmat suits conducting further tests.
Last weekend, some social media posts on some platforms were deleted, and an official warning was issued that accounts sharing these posts would be shut down.
A young Tibetan woman then went online to Douyin to tell her followers that she had been receiving threatening calls from the police. “If I disappear, you know what has happened to me,” she said.
On Saturday, a Lhasa municipal spokesperson apologized online for conditions at the camps, saying authorities had been unable to meet people’s needs due to the size of the camps.
This is the first time a state official has apologized to people since China seized Tibet more than six decades ago. Even though the overwhelming majority of those in quarantine camps are Tibetan, and most of the complaints being made on social media are in the Tibetan language, the municipal official apologized in Chinese.
On Sunday, Lhasa public security announced that three people had been arrested for posting untruthful information related to the pandemic. The announcement said the “internet is not a lawless land.”
Tsering Kyi is a reporter for VOA News. This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).
