Category: East Asia

China’s zero-COVID policy has been marked by rolling, grueling urban lockdowns, constant demands for mass testing in affected areas and round-the-clock tracking of residents’ movements and test status via the Health Code smart-phone app. On Friday, the Chinese government released a package of 20 new policy measures aimed at “optimizing” the country’s pandemic response, including slightly relaxed quarantine requirements for new arrivals, but is unlikely to result in China opening up measurably in the next few months. Officials are now ordered to drop attempts to identify secondary contacts, while many people will be ordered to quarantine at home rather than in a camp if they return to their homes from a “high-risk” area. There will now only be high or low-risk areas, with medium-risk no longer a recognized category, the new regulations said. Close contacts of confirmed cases will still be required to stay in quarantine facilities for five days, rather than seven, followed by three days’ monitoring at home. The move marks a relaxation of the zero-COVID policy, espoused by Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping as the only way forward when it comes to containing the virus, has also led to a number of secondary disasters, prompting growing public dissatisfaction with the policy and widespread censorship of dissenting voices. But commentators told Radio Free Asia that zero-COVID is far from being just a stringent set of public health measures. It’s a political project close to Xi’s heart, and includes many layers of control over people’s movements and access to vital goods and services. “The pandemic measures were originally a professional matter involving public health management and medical measures to prevent the spread of disease,” veteran rights activist Yang Jianli said. “In today’s China, disease control and prevention is no longer professional: it’s political, and has given rise to [a series of] man-made disasters.” Reiterating commitment Xi recently reiterated his commitment to the zero-COVID policy, saying in his speech to the party congress last month that the government must “unswervingly stick to the zero-COVID policy.” The all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee reiterated this commitment on Nov. 10, a day before the quarantine requirements were relaxed. A worker in a protective suit guides people to scan health QR code at a COVID-19 test booth in Beijing, China, Nov. 11, 2022. Credit: Reuters The announcements came after months of reports of collateral victims of the policy, which first started to emerge during the April 2022 lockdown in Shanghai, when pandemic enforcers wearing full-body PPE were shown dragging children away from their parents, to send them to segregated quarantine camps outside of town. In one report from Reuters at the time, a 2 ½-year-old child was taken away from his parents at the Jinshan district public health clinic after testing positive for COVID-19. A viral video of the children’s segregated quarantine facility at the Jinshan Public Health Clinical Center showed dozens of children lying in iron cots, many of them disheveled and crying, amid a general lack of care and treatment. The hospital said the video was filmed at a time when the children’s ward was being moved to “improve the hospital environment” and free up more space for infants and young patients who tested positive. Eventually, public anger over the forced separation of children from parents grew, prompting the French Consulate in Shanghai to issue a letter to the city government on behalf of 24 EU member states, calling for a total ban on the separation of parents and children “under any circumstances.” Psychological toll Wang Yaqiu, China researcher at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the incident was one example of many harms caused by the zero-COVID policy. “We don’t know how serious the psychological trauma has been for people,” Wang said. “Even if you don’t die due to lack of treatment, you can still be in a state of extreme anxiety, which has long-term psychological effects [on a person].” “It won’t be visible now,” he said, “but it will become so later.” Neighbors stand at the entrance of a compound in lockdown in the Changning District in Shanghai, Oct. 8, 2022. Credit: AFP In August 2022, the internet once more reacted angrily to a video showing a quarantine bus used to haul people off to isolation camps equipped with just a plastic bucket for passengers’ toilet needs. “Are we livestock? Is this what you are treating us like — pigs?” shouts a passenger angrily on a video from that time, as two pandemic enforcers refuse to allow them to get off the bus and order the driver to close the bus doors. A couple of weeks later, residents of apartment blocks in the southwestern city of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, found they were locked into their buildings despite running outside for their safety during a 6.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Luding county on Sept. 5, with the tremors strongly felt in Chengdu. Residential compounds were locked, some fire escapes were blocked, while pandemic enforcers refused to open the doors to let people leave. Meanwhile, reports emerged in the eastern province of Jiangxi that a 12-year-old girl was raped in her own home after being left alone when both parents were sent to separate isolation camps. Police later confirmed they had arrested a man surnamed Liu who it later emerged was the village party secretary and a member of the Guixi Municipal People’s Congress. Worsened social problems Wang said the zero-COVID policy has tended to make existing social problems worse. “There are a lot of social problems in normal times to begin with,” she said. “One is that China lacks an independent judiciary, so your rights can be violated, and if you try to take the government to court, you will definitely lose.” “Secondly, there is no press freedom, so you can’t go to the media to tell them about some injustice that happened to you, and there is no internet freedom any more,” she said. “[Under zero-COVID], these social injustices and rights violations get exacerbated.” By October,…

Chinese authorities in Tibet have sentenced two monks from the Kirti monastery in Sichuan province to prison for sending prayer offerings to the Dalai Lama and the abbot of their monastery, both living in exile in India, Radio Free Asia has learned. The two monks, Rachung Gendun and Sonam Gyatso, had both sent the donations to Tibet’s foremost spiritual leader and Kirti Rinpoche, sources said.  In both cases, details surrounding their trials and sentencing are not known in detail, but Chinese authorities consider it illegal for Tibetans to contact exiles. They are particularly sensitive about contacts made with the Dalai Lama, who fled to India 70 years ago and has been living there ever since. Sources said Rachung Gendun was sentenced to three years in prison, and Sonam Gyatso to two years. They are both currently detained at Menyang prison (in Chinese Mianyang) near the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province. Rachung Gendun had been strongly opposed to the Chinese government’s “patriotic education” campaign, a Tibetan source inside Tibet said.  Beijing has run the high-profile campaign among Tibetans since unrest spread across Tibetan regions from Lhasa in March 2008, requiring local people to denounce the Dalai Lama, whom the government rejects as a “splittist.” Rachung Gendun voiced his opposition to the program, and was interrogated and detained for a few months. Chinese authorities also raided his quarters and confiscated photos of the Dalai Lama and several other times. A Tibetan living in exile said Rachung Gendun had been arrested on April 1, 2021, from his quarters at the monastery, and his family did not know where he was until three months later. “Later, after his arrest was known, his family members hoped for his release, but for the past year or so his family have not been able to see him even once,” the exile source said. Sonam Gyatso in an undated photo. Credit: citizen journalist Sonam Gyatso A few days later, authorities arrested Sonam Gyatso, on April 3, 2021, in Chengdu while he was vacationing there, a source inside Tibet told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “Since then, he has been under constant interrogation from the police at a detention center near Barkham [Maerkang] and they didn’t reach a verdict for more than a year,” the source said.  “We have learned that he is sentenced to two years in prison but we don’t know about his current health condition or any other related information,” said the source. Sonam Gyatso became a monk at a very young age and studied Buddhism at the Kirti Monastery, obtaining the Geshe degree, a higher academic degree in Buddhist philosophy, according to the source.  Afterwards, he worked in the monastic department and became a mentor at the monastery. While working there, he encountered many problems with the local Chinese authorities, the source said. “Geshe Sonam’s older sister, Tsering Lhamo, was also detained by the Chinese authorities a year ago for an unknown reason. She worked at a bank in Ngaba [Aba] county,” a Tibetan living in exile told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. No further information on Tsering Lhamo’s current status is known, the source said. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists around the world, and is a global representative advocating for the protection of Tibetan culture, language and history. He fled Tibet into exile in India in the midst of a failed 1959 Tibetan national uprising against China, which sent troops into the formerly independent Himalayan country in 1950. Displays by Tibetans of the Dalai Lama’s photo, public celebrations of his birthday, and the sharing of his teachings on mobile phones or other social media are often harshly punished. Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on Tibet and on Tibetan-populated regions of western China, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity, and subjecting Tibetans to imprisonment, torture and extrajudicial killings. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Eugene Whong.