Some women were demanded to have a “relationship” in exchange for a pass… What was happening in “Xinjiang Uyghur” under the Zero Corona Policy?

On December 8, 2010, the zero-corona policy that has been enforced in China for almost three years was greatly relaxed. For a time, the number of infected people soared and the medical system was said to be on the verge of collapse, but the city has come back to life and citizens are beginning to return to their daily routines.

The people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are the most pleased with this policy shift, as they have been under “too strict” restrictions for about four months since last August. The approximately 25 million people living in the autonomous region have finally been freed from “life in confinement” by the relaxation of the zero-corona policy.

They have to live in squares even though they have houses. ……

In order to prevent the spread of infection, China has implemented lockdowns in areas with rapidly increasing numbers of infected people on multiple occasions. But the one implemented in Xinjiang was exceptional.

Xinjiang is a very special region of China. The region continues to be politically unstable, with separatist movements by the ethnic Uighur minority. Until now, regulations that are unthinkable in other regions have been implemented in the name of ‘anti-terrorism,’ such as requiring the registration of real names when selling kitchen knives and restricting the issuance of passports to Uyghurs. These have been further escalated by the Zero Corona Policy.

This is how Wang Zhi’an, 54, a Chinese journalist who has been doing investigative reporting on Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, describes the situation. After leaving CCTV, he worked as a freelance journalist exposing the dark side of business and society, but in June 2007, his SNS account was suddenly closed. In China, it is said that the authorities were alarmed by Wang’s undisciplined reporting stance.

Having lost his place of activity, Mr. Wang moved across the sea to Tokyo to continue reporting. Although YouTube cannot be accessed directly from China, Wang’s channel enjoys tremendous support both inside and outside of China, with more than 600,000 subscribers.

Wang has been covering and making videos of the hidden lockdowns that have taken place in Xinjiang.

Wang Zhiyan says, “There was a severe lockdown in Xinjiang, and after the transportation network was cut off on October 4, it became almost impossible to get out of the autonomous region. When the train suspension was announced, 86 people were waiting to board at the station. They were all people who lived outside Xinjiang, including those who were traveling or visiting relatives.

The sudden announcement of the train suspension suddenly made these people “homeless. In Xinjiang, where PCR tests are conducted several times a day and people infected with the new coronavirus are strictly controlled, it is not enough to just get a hotel room. We can’t just accept them out of the blue. The government has ordered these “homeless” to live in a square near the train station,” said Wang.

It is hard to believe that they would just let people with homes live in the square, but it didn’t end there.

With winter approaching and the temperature dropping, the government thought it couldn’t keep people living in the square forever, and came up with this idea: “People who can cook and do construction work can live in the square. The government came up with this idea: ‘We can offer part-time jobs to those who can cook and do civil engineering work on a priority basis,’ they announced. As expected, there was a firestorm on the Internet, saying, ‘It’s impossible to make innocent people work in addition to not sending them home,’ and ‘It’s like putting them in jail and forcing them to pay rent.

An international journalist familiar with China’s Internet situation spoke about the case of the homeless refugees who returned home.

The fact that an event in Xinjiang has come under fire on the Internet is unusual in itself,” said Wang. This is because all tragic events caused by the Zero Corona policy are not allowed to be transmitted or discussed on social networking sites. This case came to light because the source of the information was the government in the first place. The Chinese government mistakenly thought that “offering jobs” would be viewed favorably by the public, and thought, “We’re offering jobs to people who are having trouble making ends meet because they don’t have jobs. They must have thought, ‘We’re going to provide jobs to people who don’t have jobs and are in need, and they should be happy about it. The idea that they would be willing to restrict people’s physical freedom in order to achieve zero corona is extremely frightening.