Oath Keepers: Two members of far-right militia guilty of seditious conspiracy - BBC

Reuters

The leader of a far-right militia has been found guilty of plotting to stop US President Joe Biden from taking office after the 2020 election.

A jury found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes guilty of the rare charge of seditious conspiracy following a two-month trial.

He plotted an armed rebellion to stop the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Mr Biden, prosecutors said.

Four more were on trial with him related to the 2021 Capitol riots.

Three of the group - Jessica Watkins, Kelly Meggs and Kenneth Harrelson - went inside the building during the attack.

Meggs was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Tuesday. Both Rhodes and Meggs now face a maximum 20 year sentence on the charges.

Three of the group members - Harrelson, Watkins and Caldwell - were found not guilty of seditious conspiracy.

All five of the group members were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding.

Rhodes, who prosecutors say acted as a "battlefield general" during the riots, was also found guilty of tampering with documents or proceedings. He was acquitted of two other conspiracy counts.

Supporters of then-President Trump, a Republican, stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 in a bid to thwart certification of Joe Biden's White House election victory.

So far around 900 people in nearly all 50 states have been arrested for taking part in the riot.

The verdict comes after three full days of jury deliberation. The panel in Washington DC met once before taking a weekend break for the Thanksgiving holiday, before meeting for two more days this week.

• Who are the Oath Keepers and why are they on trial?

This was the first conviction of seditious conspiracy since 1995, when 10 Islamist militants were convicted for trying to plant bombs at New York City landmarks.

The Civil War-era charge was first enacted to stop residents of southern states from fighting against the US government.

In order to be convicted of seditious conspiracy, prosecutors must prove that two or more people conspired to "overthrow, put down or to destroy by force" the US government, or that they planned to use force to oppose US authority.

Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and a former US Department of Justice lawyer, said the conviction of Rhodes is significant because it shows that a seditious conspiracy charge is "a viable and legal path for punishing the most serious anti-democratic conduct" in the country.

He added the mixed verdict proves that juries are able to apply the conviction responsibly.

The verdict is also a confidence boost for the justice department, Mr Rozenshtein said, in their quest to prosecute more people in relation to the Capitol riots.

Officials argued that Rhodes stashed dozens of weapons in a hotel room in Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington DC, and planned to bring them into the city in the event of mass civil disorder.

During the trial, defence lawyers said that the fact the weapons were never used - or even brought into the city - bolstered their argument that the Oath Keepers were on a purely defensive mission, intending to protect protesters and keep the peace inside and outside the Capitol.

Among the defendants, two are from Florida, one is from Ohio and one is from Virginia. Rhodes, the accused ringleader, is from Texas.

Another famous storming of the US Capitol led to successful seditious conspiracy convictions.

In 1954, four nationalists from the US island territory of Puerto Rico fired shots onto the floor of the House of Representatives, wounding several lawmakers.

The attackers, as well as more than a dozen other members of the group, were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

The Oath Keepers were founded by Rhodes, a former US Army paratrooper and Yale-educated lawyer, and has sought to attract to current and former members of the US military and law enforcement.

Over the past decade, members have shown up at a number of protests and armed standoffs across the country.

More Oath Keepers members, along with members of another far-right group, the Proud Boys, will go on trial on seditious conspiracy charges later this year.

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2022-11-29 23:07:17Z
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Ukraine war: Nato pledges to provide more weapons and fix power grid - BBC

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

By Jaroslav Lukiv

BBC News

Nato has pledged to give more weapons to Ukraine and help fix critical energy infrastructure badly damaged by massive Russian missile and drone strikes.

At a summit in Bucharest, the secretary general of the military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, accused Moscow of "trying to use winter as a weapon of war".

The Russian strikes have left millions of Ukrainians without electricity and running water in freezing temperatures.

Ukraine has for months been asking Nato for more advanced air defence systems.

Under the Geneva conventions, attacks on civilians, or the infrastructure vital to their survival, could be interpreted as a war crime.

Earlier this week, Ukraine's prosecutor-general told the BBC that the Russian attacks amounted to genocide.

At a gathering in Berlin, justice ministers of the G7 group of wealthy nations said they would co-ordinate investigations into alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.

"Judicial examination of the atrocities committed in Ukraine will take years, perhaps even decades. But we will be well prepared - and we will persist for as long as it takes," said German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann.

Russian President Vladimir Putin - who ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February - and other senior Kremlin officials deny the allegations that Russian troops are committing war crimes.

In a separate development on Tuesday, Ukraine's First Lady Olena Zelenska told lawmakers in the UK Parliament in London that Ukrainians were going through a terror similar to that experienced by the UK in World War Two, when Nazi Germany bombed cities in the blitz.

"Victory is not the only thing we need, we need justice," Mrs Zelenska said, adding she "came to you for justice, because it will lead to the end of this war".

Speaking at the start of the two-day gathering of Nato foreign ministers in the Romanian capital, Mr Stoltenberg said: "Russia is actually failing on the battlefield. In response to that they are now attacking civilian targets, cities because they're not able to win territory."

His words were echoed by UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who said that Russia was aiming to "freeze the Ukrainians into submission".

EPA

Later on Tuesday, Nato issued a statement that said Russia's persistent attacks on Ukrainian civilian and energy grids were "depriving millions of basic human services".

Nato members would assist Ukraine in repairing its energy infrastructure and protecting people from missile attacks, the statement added.

And appearing at a joint news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Mr Stoltenberg said: "We will stand by Ukraine as long as it takes, we will not back down.

"We realise that it is extremely important that President Putin is not able to win in Ukraine. That will be a tragedy for Ukraine, but it will also make the world more dangerous and much more vulnerable."

Meanwhile, Mr Kuleba said that last time he met senior Nato officials his three words were "weapons, weapons, weapons".

"Today I have three other words, which are faster, faster and faster. We appreciate what has been done, but the war still goes on. Decisions on weapons and production lines have to be made faster," Mr Kuleba added.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Rainsalu later told BBC World Service's Newshour programme that Nato needed to give missiles to Ukraine that can hit inside Russian territory.

"The most logical way to help them is to give them the capabilities to effectively get into these places from where the missiles are launched.

"All options should be on the table... there should be no red lines or caveats… we should not make any limitations," Mr Rainsalu said.

The US-led Nato alliance has repeatedly ruled out supplying longer-range missiles and other such weaponry to Ukraine, amid concerns that this could lead to a major escalation with a nuclear-armed Russia.

In Ukraine, energy workers across the country are continuing their daunting task of repairing power and water supplies to millions of people, amid warnings that Russia maybe preparing a new wave of missile attacks.

The country's power operator Ukrenergo said on Tuesday that 30% of the country's electricity needs were still currently not being met, and power rationing would continue.

Winter is setting in in Ukraine, with snow and sub-zero temperatures in many regions.

There are fears that people across the country could die of hypothermia.

More on the Ukraine power attacks

• Why millions of Ukrainians have no power as winter nears
• The race to rebuild infrastructure in Kherson
• Has Putin's invasion of Ukraine failed?

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2022-11-29 20:56:30Z
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Janusz Walus stabbed in South African prison - BBC

AFP

By Farouk Chothia & Nomsa Maseko

BBC News

The far-right gunman who killed South Africa's anti-apartheid hero Chris Hani has been stabbed in prison, officials say.

The stabbing of Janusz Walus comes days before he was due to be released on parole after nearly 30 years in jail.

He was allegedly stabbed by another prisoner and is in a stable condition.

Walus, 69, shot Mr Hani in 1993 in a failed attempt to derail South Africa's transition from white-minority rule to democratic rule.

The killing still evokes deep emotions in South Africa. Mr Hani was regarded as the most popular politician after anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.

South Africa's government and Mr Hani's widow Limpho vigorously opposed Walus's attempts to gain his freedom.

But in a ruling on 21 November, South Africa's highest court ordered his release within 10 days, saying the justice minister's refusal to grant him parole was "irrational".

• BBC Africa Live: Updates from around the continent
• Anger after South African hero's monument trashed

In a brief statement, the prison department said it could confirm the "unfortunate stabbing incident" involving Walus.

Healthcare officials were providing him with the "necessary care", it added.

The BBC understands his attacker tried to stab him in the heart.

The attack came after a monument in honour of Mr Hani was vandalised on Saturday at the cemetery where he is buried.

The governing African National Congress (ANC) and its allies described the incident as a "provocative attack", and "tantamount to a continuation of Chris Hani's assassination in the grave".

The vandalism should be seen in the context of the court's ruling, which had "pleased unrepentant apartheid perpetrators", the ANC said, in a statement issued jointly with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

Walus killed Mr Hani as he picked up the newspapers outside his home in April 1993 by shooting him at point-blank range.

Walus was arrested and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life after South Africa abolished the death penalty.

The 50-year-old anti-apartheid fighter was the leader of the SACP and a senior member of the ANC's military wing.

Walus is a Polish immigrant whose South African citizenship was revoked in 2017.

Some South Africans have called for his deportation to prevent civil unrest.

However, the government has ruled it out, saying he would serve his parole in South Africa.

White-minority rule in South Africa ended in 1994, with Mr Mandela becoming the country's first black president.

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2022-11-29 17:33:01Z
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China Covid: Chinese protesters say police seeking them out - BBC

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By Yvette Tan & Emily McGarvey

BBC News, Singapore and London

People in China who attended weekend protests against Covid restrictions say they have been contacted by police, as authorities begin clamping down.

Several people in Beijing said police had called demanding information about their whereabouts.

It is unclear how police might have discovered their identities.

On Tuesday officials renewed a promise to speed up efforts to vaccinate older people. Vaccination rates among elderly people are relatively low.

China has recorded record numbers of new cases in recent days.

Over the weekend, thousands in China took to the streets demanding an end to Covid lockdowns - with some even making rare calls for President Xi Jinping to stand down.

But on Monday, planned protests in Beijing did not happen after officers surrounded the assembly point. In Shanghai, large barriers were erected along the main protest route and police made several arrests.

The demonstrations began after a fire in a high-rise block in Urumqi, western China, killed 10 people on Thursday. Many Chinese believe Covid restrictions contributed to the deaths, although the authorities deny this.

Asked whether the protests would prompt a change to zero-Covid rules, an official said China would continue to "fine tune and modify" its measures.

"We are going to maintain and control the negative impact to people's livelihoods and lives," said Mi Feng, a National Health Commission spokesman, at a press conference.

• How China's Covid protests are being silenced
• China sticks with zero-Covid: Why?
• Blank paper becomes the symbol of China's protests

On Tuesday morning, police could be seen in both Beijing and Shanghai patrolling areas where some groups on the Telegram messaging app had suggested people should gather again.

A small protest in the southern city of Hangzhou on Monday night was also quickly stopped with people swiftly arrested, according to social media footage verified by the BBC.

Reports also say that police were stopping people and searching their phones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) set up, as well as apps such as Telegram and Twitter which are blocked in China.

One woman told news agency AFP that she and five of her friends who attended a protest in Beijing had received phone calls from police.

In one case, a police officer visited her friend's home after they failed to answer their phone and asked whether they had visited the protest site, stressing that it was an "illegal assembly".

Another told Reuters that they were asked to show up at a police station to deliver a written record of their activities on Sunday night.

"We are all desperately deleting our chat history," one Beijing protester told Reuters. "Police came to check the ID of one of my friends and then took her away. A few hours later they released her."

Police have also detained journalists covering the protests in recent days. News agency Reuters said one of its journalists was briefly detained on Sunday before being released.

BBC journalist Ed Lawrence was also held for several hours while covering a protest in Shanghai on the same night. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his detention was "shocking and unacceptable", adding that Britain would raise concerns with China about its response to the protests.

Getty Images

But overseas Chinese have continued protesting, in at least a dozen cities across the world.

Many also gathered outside Chinese embassies in major cities around the world like London, Paris and Tokyo, and universities in the US and Europe.

One expert suggested that local protests were not likely to die down any time soon, saying they were likely to "ebb and flow" because people were "not being called out to the streets in a controlled fashion... they move between social media and the street".

But Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, added that it was also important to note that Chinese police had "tremendous capacity... [and] the ability of China to control these protests going forward... is quite high".

Censorship has gone into overdrive on Chinese social media platforms since the weekend's protests, to stop people seeing and discussing them.

Tens of millions of posts have been filtered from search results, while media are muting their coverage of Covid in favour of upbeat stories about the World Cup and China's space achievements.

It's a vastly different scene on Western social media platforms, which some Chinese people have taken to to share information including advice for protesters to avoid arrest.

One account on Instagram - a platform which is blocked in China and accessible only through a VPN - published a "safety guide for friends in Shanghai and across the country" and included tips like wearing dark coloured clothing for anonymity and bringing along goggles and water in the event that tear gas is fired.

Adhering to a zero-Covid policy

Chinese officials have implied that complaints over China's tough Covid curbs were a result of "arbitrary measures" rolled out at a local level, rather than as a result of national guidelines.

"[There is an] over practice of containment measures [in some localities]... that is not aligned to national policies," said Cheng You Quan of the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration at Tuesday's press conference.

"Local governments should show more responsibility and follow national guidelines, [instead of following practices like] arbitrarily stopping schools and industry. We should name and shame as well as pursue criminal responsibility if necessary. Lockdowns should be quick and the removal of lockdowns should be equally quick."

China remains the only major economy with a strict zero-Covid policy, with local authorities clamping down on even small outbreaks with mass testing, quarantines and snap lockdowns.

While China developed its own Covid vaccines, they are not as good as the mRNA technology - such as the Pfizer and Moderna shots - used elsewhere.

Two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine gives 90% protection against severe disease or death versus 70% with China's Sinovac.

The vaccines have also not been given to enough people. Far too few of the elderly - who are most likely to die from Covid - have been immunised.

There is also very little "natural immunity" from people surviving infections as a consequence of stopping the virus in its tracks.

It means new variants spread far more quickly than the virus that emerged three years ago and there is a constant risk of it being imported from countries that are letting the virus spread.

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2022-11-29 11:31:35Z
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Xi Jinping faces stiffest challenge to rule as Covid outrage sparks mass protests - Financial Times

Xi Jinping faces one of his greatest challenges as president of China after tens of thousands of people took to the streets over Beijing’s strict coronavirus controls and suppression of freedom of speech.

At least 10 cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan and Chengdu, were shaken by rare political protests over the weekend, triggering clashes with police and security officers that led to a spate of detentions, including of two foreign journalists.

The sudden outbreak of civil disobedience was sparked by outrage after a deadly apartment fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, was partly blamed on coronavirus restrictions. While most of the protests appeared to have been stamped out by Monday, they followed months of frustration, especially among China’s young people, with relentless lockdowns, quarantines, mass testing and electronic surveillance under Xi’s zero-Covid policies.

Markets in China soured in early trading on Monday, with the Hang Seng China Enterprises index in Hong Kong falling 4.5 per cent and the renminbi losing ground against the US dollar.

In Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the first coronavirus cases emerged, online videos showed thousands of people marching down a popular shopping street, in what appeared to have been the weekend’s biggest single protest.

One person involved told the Financial Times the crowd numbered tens of thousands and “liberated” locked-down neighbourhoods by removing fencing around residential compounds. Demonstrations also broke out in other locations across the city.

The government has urged universities to send students home as soon as possible to quell further dissent on campuses, according to a provincial education official.

In Beijing, the capital, hundreds of students staged peaceful demonstrations on Sunday at the prestigious Tsinghua and Peking universities. Students in Beijing, as well as protesters in other cities, held blank pieces of paper, a rejection of worsening censorship under Xi’s administration.

In the capital, protesters also gathered at a central canal on Sunday, chanting: “We don’t want PCR tests, we want freedom.” By Monday morning, a dozen police vehicles were stationed at entrances to the canal.

A bus full of police officers idled nearby and groups of others paced up and down paths that run along the water.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, said on Monday US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the protests and is monitoring the situation closely. He said the Biden administration doesn’t support widespread lockdowns in the US at this stage of the pandemic.

“There are people in China that have concerns about that. And they’re protesting that and we believe they should be able to do that peacefully,” Kirby said.

As the vigils over the Urumqi deaths transformed into protests against Xi’s policies, analysts said their scale and stark political demands had not been seen in China for decades. They warned that protesters faced brutal reprisals if dissent flared again.

Xi is the nation’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong after recently securing an unprecedented third term as leader of the Chinese Communist party. A hallmark of his leadership has been expansion of the state’s draconian surveillance security apparatus and swift crackdowns on dissent.

“You’d expect them to have a heavy-handed repressive approach, but that risks creating martyrs, fuelling another wave and giving a rallying cry to the protesters that have already come out,” said John Delury, a China expert at Yonsei University in Seoul.

“They are smart enough to be aware of the dangers, but they can’t just let it happen either.”

Yuen Yuen Ang, from the University of Michigan, said that while China had always experienced sporadic protests, Beijing feared a “nationwide” movement.

“The protests . . . were not about narrow, local issues. Instead, people were protesting against zero-Covid — a national policy and Xi’s personal agenda, one he had declared that China must ‘stick to without wavering’ only recently in October,” she said.

“This constitutes a challenge to central authority at the highest level.”

At the site of a vigil that began on Saturday evening at a crossroads in Shanghai, police had by Monday morning lined the streets with blue barricades. There was a handful of people taking photos and a long queue of police cars, but no other signs of the large gathering that had escalated on Wulumuqi Road on Sunday.

The incident, which provided some of the most dramatic scenes of civil disobedience in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, continued late into Sunday evening. One person at the site said police eventually started to arrest people “group by group”.

The blue boards were placed to block off the main road from the pavement, where hundreds of people had congregated and occasionally broken out into shouts or jostles with police.

In Shanghai, a BBC reporter was among those detained. In a statement, the British broadcaster said journalist Ed Lawrence was “beaten and kicked” by the police and held for several hours before being released. A Reuters reporter was also briefly detained in Shanghai.

Confusion has spread over the zero-Covid policy. On Monday, Beijing postponed annual civil servant exams, scheduled to be taken by a decade-high 2.5mn people this weekend, citing Covid-19 controls. But in other parts of the country there were signs local officials had eased some restrictions in response to rising public discontent.

The protests spread to Hong Kong on Monday night. Dozens of mostly mainland students and workers and some local residents gathered in the city centre and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, defying a 2020 security law that effectively bans political demonstrations.

“We need to contribute in ways that we can from outside mainland China . . . We hope this can be beneficial to our nation’s democratic spirit,” said one 24-year-old mainlander who declined to give her name because of safety concerns.

Additional reporting by Gloria Li, Nian Liu, Qianer Liu, Wang Xueqiao, Cheng Leng, Arjun Neil Alim, Maiqi Ding, Primrose Riordan, Chan Ho-him, Hudson Lockett and Felicia Schwartz

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2022-11-28 21:28:22Z
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Protests against harsh lockdown rules intensify in China as UK journalist 'beaten and kicked by police' covering unrest - Sky News

Protests against stringent COVID restrictions have intensified across China - as a British journalist was seen being beaten and kicked by police.

Demonstrators and police clashed in Shanghai on Sunday night, despite being forcibly removed by police using pepper spray only a few hours earlier.

It marked the third night of chaos which has spread to some of the country's biggest cities, including Wuhan, the first epicentre of the coronavirus almost three years ago.

Analysis: Why this is a major challenge to ruling Communist Party

On Sunday night, the BBC said one of its journalists, Ed Lawrence, was working as an "accredited journalist" when he was "beaten and kicked by police" while covering the protests.

Footage on social media showed him being dragged to the ground in cuffs, while in another video, he was seen saying: "Call the consulate now."

According to officials, Mr Lawrence was arrested "for his own good" in case he caught coronavirus from the crowd, but the BBC said it was "extremely concerned" about his treatment and added: "We do not consider this a credible explanation."

A Sky News team in Shanghai had witnessed police moving quickly and decisively, pushing protesters to try to disperse them but the crowd did not leave.

They also saw several people on the streets of Shanghai being arrested by police on Monday morning.

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2:06

Sky News witnesses Shanghai protest

Meanwhile, protest against President Xi Jinping's zero-COVID lockdown policy has spread outside the Far East, with between 100 and 300 people gathering outside the Chinese Embassy in London.

A woman from a group called China Deviants told Sky News they had decided to voice their anger against President Xi's regime because "people in China are being oppressed".

She added: "We have been oppressed for years, for decades, and we want to change that. We need to stand up against this authoritarian regime."

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

She said, like many of her fellow countrymen and women in China, their anger had boiled over after a fire in the city of Urumqi on Thursday which killed at least 10 people.

The city has been under harsh lockdowns for more than three months to combat the spread of the coronavirus under China's "zero-COVID" policy.

Read more:
The 'green code' app: How China's Zero COVID policy is turning cities, parks, restaurants and shops into digitised fortresses

Videos on social media had showed an arc of water from a distant fire truck falling short of the fire, sparking waves of angry comments online. Some said fire engines had been blocked by pandemic control barriers or by cars stranded after their owners were put in quarantine, but this has not been verified.

Read more:
Who are the Uyghur people and why do they face oppression by China?

The woman, who covered her face for fear of punishment, said: "It sparked rage. We stand up to raise voices for those people. We stand for justice.

"We want to speak, and we want people to hear it."

China Deviants is a non-profit group and is calling for others to join them to "reject dictatorship".

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2:31

Sky's Dominic Waghorn assesses the protests that have swept through several Chinese cities

A statement from the group said: "We are committed to awakening the Chinese people against the dictator, letting the Chinese people and the international community realise that: a non-elected government cannot represent the voice of the Chinese people.

"We need democracy and freedom, and we reject dictatorship."

As protesters returned to Shanghai, Amnesty International described their move as one of "remarkable bravery".

Read more:
Beijing 'effectively under lockdown'
Lockdown frustration grows in China's epicentre

China is adhering to its tough zero-COVID policy even while much of the world tries to coexist with the coronavirus.

The country recorded a fifth straight daily record of 40,347 new COVID-19 infections on Sunday.

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2022-11-28 04:30:00Z
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Chinese Communist Party faces threat not seen since protests that led to Tiananmen Square massacre - Sky News

These protests are momentous. Wherever they lead, they are already hugely significant.

China has witnessed bigger protests in Hong Kong, but nothing on the mainland has come close to this since 1989.

Unrest is actually commonplace in China but demonstrations are usually small, localised and easily quashed.

What will worry China's leadership about these protests is their size, their spread across the country, and their persistence.

The authoritarian Chinese Communist Party has not seen a threat like this since the pro-democracy movements of the late 1980s that culminated in the brutal Tiananmen Square massacre.

The spark this time was an apartment fire in the western city of Urumqi that took at least 10 lives.

But these protests have been coming for months.

Seething anger and resentment at the government's zero-COVID policies has been building. There is something more fundamental going on, though.

According to popular wisdom, ever since that infamous massacre at Tiananmen, the Chinese Communist Party and the people have had a deal.

We will make you more prosperous and keep society stable, and you will let us get on with running the country.

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Stability and prosperity mean everything to the Chinese because, as they have learned since childhood, theirs has been a history of chaos, poverty and upheaval. The people have trusted their government to make sure that stays in the past.

During lockdown, however, the people have begun to doubt their government and its competence to rule.

Under the zero-COVID policy, people have been locked in their communities for months and they fear the state's heavy handedness is killing people - in this case burned alive, locked in an apartment block in Urumqi.

And making matters worse, under lockdown, the economy has not continued on its ever upward trajectory.

Image: People confront a line of police officers in Shanghai

The Chinese know the rest of the world is moving on from COVID while they are not. The sight on their televisions of World Cup crowds in their thousands without masks is proof of that. That compact between state and people is no longer delivering like it used to and it means we are in uncharted waters.

And more unrest is almost certainly on its way.

President Xi Jinping has staked a huge amount on China's zero-COVID policy.

Instead of saving lives by importing more effective vaccines from the outside world - but losing face - his government has tried to eliminate the virus wherever it appears with draconian social controls.

But it has not worked and China is battling outbreaks in a multiplying number of cities. If people continue to protest and defy the lockdowns, the virus will spread.

China is not prepared medically, though.

As Professor Kerry Brown, of King's College London, puts it: "They have to quite quickly put in place emergency measures for the health service to take a kind of spike in numbers that might need to be hospitalised."

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Rare street protests in China as police charge in

Tracking, tracing and locking down may work with a quiescent population, but for an angry citizenry losing trust in the authorities, it does not.

"If you continue with the policies that have been in place at the moment, you're going to get more and more of these protests and they could morph into something far more threatening," Prof Brown added.

What the Chinese government fears most is a nationally organised opposition, knowing it has spelled the doom of dynasties in the past.

When a harmless spiritual movement called Falun Gong went countrywide in the 90s and its followers surrounded Zhongnanhai, the government compound in Beijing, in a peaceful protest, the leadership was terrified and used the most draconian repression to stamp it out.

It has invested billions in an emerging Orwellian surveillance state to anticipate dissent and unrest and prevent it from spreading.

It now faces nationwide unrest erupting spontaneously. It will no doubt use all the resources of its totalitarian state to try to repress it, but faces its biggest challenge in more than three decades as it tries to do so.

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2022-11-27 20:04:06Z
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