Protesters threw what appeared to be cake at the Volkswagen chair, Hans Dieter Pötsch, at a shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday. Pötsch can be seen ducking to avoiding being hit. About 10 activists also interrupted the speech by Volkswagen’s chief executive, Oliver Blume, protesting against the carmaker’s plant in China’s north-western Xinjiang region by waving banners that read: ‘End Uyghur Forced Labour at VW’ The Guardian
Tag: Protest
Boris Johnson became suspicious of Sue Gray during Partygate inquiry, says ex-adviser – UK politics live
From 2h ago Boris Johnson became ‘suspicious’ of Sue Gray as she carried out her inquiry, says Guto Harri Good morning. With the coronation over, politics is back in spades after three days where it has been effectively marginalised. There is plenty around. But let’s start with the latest instalment of the Boris Johnson Tory psychodrama. Guto Harri, Johnson’s communications director when Johnson was PM, is launching a new podcast about his time in No 10 and, in an article for the Daily Mail, he claimed that Johnson and King…
Explainer: China’s covert overseas ‘police stations’
The FBI this week arrested two men accused of running a covert overseas police operation in New York on behalf of Chinese authorities. The charges followed a raid on a Fujianese community centre in Chinatown in October 2022. Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, both US citizens, are accused of using the premises to run an “unofficial police station”. Police in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada have opened investigations into similar allegations in their countries. On Wednesday, Chris Philp, a UK home office minister, said the outposts were “of…
Hong Kong court jails Tiananmen anniversary vigil organisers
A Hong Kong court has jailed three former members of a group that organised annual vigils to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in China. Chow Hang-tung, 38, a prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and former vice-chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, was among those convicted by a magistrate’s court. The two others were Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong. The three were jailed on Saturday for four-and-a-half months for not complying with a national security police request for information. Speaking before sentencing,…
Detained activist fears for missing zero-Covid protesters in China
The detained human rights activist Ding Jiaxi has expressed concern for the young protesters who have disappeared since participating in the “blank paper” protests against zero-Covid that stunned China last year. At least 16 of them are still in police detention, according to names gathered by activists, while Ding himself has been detained for more than three years. On Friday he met his lawyer, Peng Jian, via video link. It was the first time the two had met since Ding was awarded the US state department’s global human rights defender…
Thin blue square: video shows apparent Chinese police drill against protester
How many police officers does it take to neutralise a single unarmed protester? According to a video purported to be from China, it takes at least 10 highly disciplined members of law enforcement, as well as some bespoke blue banners. In footage that emerged on Thursday, black-clad officers are shown practising a drill to surround a single person holding up a white piece of paper – an item that became the symbol of the anti-lockdown protests that rocked several major Chinese cities at the end of last year, and the…
Wuhan welfare protests escalate as hundreds voice anger over health insurance cuts
Crowds of hundreds of older people took to the streets in the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Dalian on Wednesday in escalating protests against changes to the public health insurance system. The protests were sparked by cuts to monthly allowances paid to retirees under China’s vast public health insurance system. The changes, gradually introduced since 2021, come as local government finances are strained following years of strict and costly zero-Covid policies. On Wednesday, a crowd of demonstrators rallied in front of a park in the central Chinese city of Wuhan…
Elderly Chinese people protest in Wuhan against medical benefits cuts
Thousands of older people have staged a rally in the rain in central China to protest against significant cuts to their medical benefits, in the latest outburst of public discontent since nationwide protests against Covid curbs gripped the country late last year. Video clips on social media show a large crowd of elderly protesters in raincoats and holding umbrellas gathering outside the Wuhan city government by the Yangtze River on Wednesday, while police officers form a line to stop them from approaching the gates. The location of the rally has…
‘We just want to live in a normal world’: China’s young protesters speak out, and disappear
Cao Zhixin was an ordinary young woman with no political ambition, but a fateful decision to take to the streets one night last year has inadvertently turned her into the face of resistance in China. “She was just a girl who was keen on books, she didn’t have great ambitions,” says a close friend who spoke to the Guardian but requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “She said all she wanted was a husband, kids and a warm bed.” But on the night of 27 November, driven by anger over…
Hong Kong: landmark national security trial of 47 democracy advocates begins
Hong Kong’s largest national security trial began on Monday, involving 47 of the city’s most high-profile democracy advocates, in a hearing that has been labelled a trial of the territory’s pro-democracy movement itself. The group of former politicians, activists, campaigners, and community workers are accused of “conspiracy to commit subversion” over the holding of unofficial pre-election primaries in July 2020. The case is at the centre of the Hong Kong and Beijing governments’ crackdown on opposition and dissent in the city, after the mass pro-democracy protests in 2019. Among the…