A Chinese man strikes at a banner saying “Chinese Communist Party Step Down!” in New York City. He is challenged briefly, then disappears in the crowd at a Columbia University protest against China’s “Zero COVID” policy.
Another man pummels a female student after she shouts that Chinese authorities must be held accountable for the deaths of 10 people in a fire in an apartment complex under lockdown in Urumqi, sparking a rare wave of demonstrations in China. In Berkeley, California, a suspected Communist Party supporter sets ablaze a memorial placed by protesters mourning the dead in Urumqi.
In Flushing, Queens, home to a flourishing Chinese community, a lawyer who fled corruption in China holds a sign on a street calling for the end of the party. But the party is watching, his family in China are promptly harassed by the police, and he begs friends who posted the image on American social media to remove it.
As the totalitarian state tries to suppress the biggest protests to roil China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement, Beijing’s long arm is also trying to choke shows of sympathy in America and silence voices in the U.S. opposing the Communist Party and its leader, Xi Jinping, democracy activists and protesters say.
Read more at Newsweek.com
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