Overseas Chinese students at Stanford University in California hold a candlelight vigil on Nov. 30 on campus to protest in support of demonstrations held in China against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) draconian “zero-COVID” policy, and to mourn the victims killed in a recent fire in Urumqi city in China’s Xinjiang region.
Over the weekend, people took to the streets in major cities including Shanghai and Beijing, and gathered at university campuses across China to criticize the CCP’s zero-COVID policy, confronting police and even calling for CCP leader Xi Jinping to step down. The widespread demonstrations are unprecedented since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of the student-led pro-democracy movement.
Protests erupted after a fire last Thursday killed at least 10 people in an apartment building in the city of Urumqi in the northwest, where some residents have been locked in their homes for four months. That prompted an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters or people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other pandemic restrictions.
