Shanghai’s Residents Attack Police After Being Evicted To Create Quarantine Centres

Apocalyptic scenes in Shanghai show angry residents attacking police after being evicted to create quarantine centers and try to break barricades in the hunt for food.

Dozens of buildings in the city have been converted to make-shift isolation hubs as local officials struggle to contain record daily infection rates, which have breached 25,000 in recent days.

Separate clips posted online seem to show police pinning angry protestors to the ground and forcibly restraining them in both Shanghai and Haining, located 125km southwest.

Residents stuck in Shanghai, which has been locked down since April, have flooded social media with complaints of food shortages and over-zealous officialdom which has forced them into an ineffective state quarantine.

Footage has even shown desperate citizens bursting through barricades demanding food. Cases began rising in Shanghai in late March and have surpassed 25,000 in recent days.

The city first implemented a phased lockdown on March 28, with just parts of the city being shut down. A full city-wide lockdown was implemented on April 3 as cases continued to rise.

Despite the drastic action, the vast majority of virus cases detected each day are in people with no symptoms. Shanghai, often described as China’s economic engine room, has officially reported no deaths in this outbreak.

Social media has been flooded with complaints of food shortages, while protests have kicked off against the strict measures.

Videos circulating online show residents outside a compound shouting at ranks of officials holding shields labeled ‘police’, as the officers tried to break through their line. In one clip, police appear to make several arrests as the residents accuse them of ‘hitting people’.

The incident was triggered after authorities ordered 39 households to move from the compound ‘to meet the needs of epidemic prevention and control’ and house virus patients in their apartments, according to Zhangjiang Group, the developer of the housing complex.

In one live-streamed video, a woman reportedly asks ‘why are they taking an old person away?’ as officials appeared to put someone into a car. Zhangjiang Group said it had compensated the tenants and moved them into other units in the same compound.

The developer recognized that videos of the compound that had ‘appeared on the internet’ on Thursday and said ‘the situation had now settled down’ after ‘some tenants obstructed the construction of a quarantine fence.

Search results for the name of the apartment complex disappeared from China’s Twitter-like Weibo by Friday morning. Separate clips shared on Twitter appear to show police in hazmat suits arresting protestors in Shanghai.

Twitter user Jennifer Zeng, a human rights activist who tweeted the clip and said the footage was from the Nashi International Community Pudong New Area in Shanghai, said one woman shouts ‘the police are hitting us’.

Her subtitles on the clip suggest one local shout: ‘The police beat people up. I am begging you. What do you want to do?’ Some Shanghai residents have poured their anger at the handling of the virus onto the internet.

They have ripped into authorities for allowing food shortages as well as heavy-handed controls, including the killing of a pet corgi by a health worker and a now-softened policy of separating infected children from their virus-free parents.

Other videos and audio clips have indicated increasing desperation among city residents, including some showing residents bursting through barricades demanding food.