China Covid-19 protests: Portadown campaigner slams Chinese lockdowns as 'ruthless and extreme'

For the past three years, the patience of one billion people in China has been stretched with every lockdown and round of mass Covid testing.

Now thousands of people are taking to the streets in cities across the country, protesting against being confined to their homes and demanding the resignation of President Xi Jinping.

The protests mark the most widespread display of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades.

Protests spread to at least eight major cities after at least 10 people died on Thursday in a fire in an apartment building in Urumqi in the north-western region of Xinjiang. There was angry speculation on social media about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls.

Portadown woman Martina Ferguson, whose mother Ursula Derry died in January 2021 from Covid, spent much of the pandemic campaigning for better access for relatives to care homes in NI.

Speaking in a personal capacity, she told the News Letter she was shocked by China's continued approach to Covid lockdowns.

"I discovered what was happening in China recently and I find their lockdown ruthless, extreme and totally uncalled for,” she said. “Especially given the reviews that have been well publicised during the pandemic around the detrimental effects of lockdown and quarantine on people’s mental health, wellbeing and the wider impact on society."

China’s strategy aims to isolate every infected person, but some people have been confined to their homes for up to four months.