President Xi Jinping’s “Zero COVID” policy has been a powerful tool for repression. Under the guise of safeguarding their health, lockdowns and other such procedures immensely aided the government in putting into place its massive and hyper-technological system of citizen control and surveillance.
According to Marco Respinti in the Italian publication Bitter Winter, which focuses on religious liberty and human rights, the Chinese Communist Party’s lockdown tactics have evolved into a weapon for increased monitoring and control over the Tibetan population.
Zero Covid policy: a tool for repression
President Xi Jinping’s “Zero COVID” policy has been a powerful tool for repression. Under the guise of safeguarding their health, lockdowns and other such procedures immensely aided the government in putting into place its massive and hyper-technological system of citizen control and surveillance.
Religious organizations, racial and ethnic minorities, as well as various dissenters and dissidents, were once more the victims of repression during the COVID era, according to Respinti.
Tibet’s ordeal
The issue was summed up by “Voice of America (VoA)” in a story published on September 22. According to the post, “Tibetans are scrutinized more closely and subject to harsher punishments than anyone elsewhere because of the political sensitivity of the region.” People were “quarantined in abandoned stadiums, schools, warehouses, and unfinished buildings,”, especially in Tibet’s ancient capital Lhasa.
According to Bitter Winter, the situation in Tibet was intolerable, and protests against a lockdown that had been in place since August 8 started initially on social media in September before moving to the streets on October 27.
For daring to post COVID-related images and videos online, Tibetans were even detained. A nomad named Rinchen Dhondup and six other Tibetans were detained on September 14 for this offense, according to media reports on their case. Indictments for comparable offenses were made against other Tibetans in Lhasa, Nagqhu, and other regions.
Tibetans & Anti-Covid measures
One important feature in this purportedly anti-COVID coercive stance on Tibetans is particularly concerning. Tibetans were first forced in large numbers to submit to antigen tests to determine infections, claimed Respinti.
Images and videos of Tibetans lined up in long rows in cold rain were shared on social media. Many of them were mothers with young children, and they all had to wait for their tests in uncomfortable circumstances.
Second, according to Bitter Winter, even some individuals who had negative tests were isolated, confined, and continuously observed.
A Tibetan woman’s anti-COVID test came back negative, according to VoA, and the woman and her three small children were transferred to the Lhasa Beijing Middle School Quarantine Center. Authorities “forced the entire family to confine with 800 people,” according to VoA.
When there were no doctors, medications, or medical attention available, two of those young children developed fevers at the school facilities. Respinti stated that it is challenging to characterize this as a precaution to preserve Tibetans’ health.
Even though they had all tested negative for COVID, “in a viral audio recording, a Tibetan father begs a government official at one of the Lhasa quarantine sites to not remove him from his year-old child.” The Tibetan father bemoaned, “Now that we have tested positive, you want to take our child away.” Once more, it is challenging to describe this as a precaution to preserve Tibetans’ health.
Tibetans were subjected to tests every day throughout the lockdown, and in some places, twice a day. Was this evidence of Tibetans receiving special attention for their health? questioned Respinti.
China
Chinese authoritarian rule oversees the health of oppressed and tightly regulated populations like the Tibetans.
The horrifying practice of organ harvesting, whose victims are people the CCP targets as enemies, is a vast and successful industry in a totalitarian state like CCP-led China.
Of course, it is strategically important for organ harvesting to use DNA profiling and to closely monitor the victims’ health state.
According to Respinti, antigenic testing on Tibetans is a tool in the hands of organ harvesters, and the Chinese lockdown measures are methods to control the populace even more severely.
