Jasmine Revolution: call for street protests on 6 March
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Police have put on show of force yesterday in Beijing, Shanghai and other big cities, after activists used the internet to call on people to take to the streets to protest against the government and its policies. Foreign journalists were also roughed up and detained. A new appeal has been made calling on people to demonstrate on Sunday 6 March.
Government internet censorship failed yesterday to stop calls made for demonstrations in China’s big cities, along the lines of the ‘Jasmine Revolution’ that is shaking up North Africa.
Police was out in force in the country’s main cities and broke up gatherings, sometimes with violence. Blowing whistles and using loud hailers to urge people to move on, police tried to stop a crowd forming in one of Shanghai's main squares.
In Beijing, more than more than 300 officers kept people from approaching a fenced off protest spot. Street cleaning trucks drove repeatedly up and down the street, spraying water to keep crowds away.
The authorities also used force against foreign journalists, to prevent them from taping, taking pictures and interviewing passers-by. At least ten of them, from the BBC, the Voice of America and Germany’s ARD e ZDF, were detained by police and later released. Bloomberg News said on Monday that one of its journalists was assaulted by men in “plainclothes”.
In reality, hardly any protest has taken place. Some are in fact asking whether the goal of the online calls was to force police to waste its time in stopping phantom demonstrations to show how much the authorities are scared of possible protests like the ones that are shaking up the Arab world and North Africa. The authorities had already sent out police last week to patrol empty streets and squares in 13 big Chinese cities after an online appeal urged people to demonstrate.
Aware that unrest in Arab countries began over high food prices, unemployment and corruption, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao went on an online chat for two hours last Saturday, promising to address public concerns like inflation, social inequalities, economic slowdown and corrupt public officials.
In the meantime, and this despite the ‘Great Firewall of China’, organisers of another online anti-government campaign went online again this Monday. Using social media like Facebook, Twitter and others, they called for fresh ‘Jasmine’ rallies in China’s cities on 6 March.
“We issue our strongest condemnation of the Chinese government; the government arrests innocent people and obstructs global information flow,” the call said. “We believe these deeds cannot stop the development of the Chinese Jasmine Revolution.”
This comes close to the upcoming Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, which is scheduled for next Thursday in Beijing, as well as the National People's Congress, which opens on Saturday.
“The past 10 years have seen the gradual emergence of this new state capitalism, which monopolises almost all of China's major resources,” said well-known journalist Cheng Yizhong. “The rapid-development mode it adopted has resulted in a superficial prosperity and has deepened disparities in society, as the majority of the people feel left out of the reform policy." For Chen, social inequalities cause tensions. Ultimately, “Without an independent judiciary and freedom of speech, I can't see how the government can be credible in the eyes of the people.”
.png)
