Series of protests are growing in China over the country's due to COVID-19 measures. Fresh protests have broken out in major cities, with hundreds rallying at Beijing's elite Tin Hua University chanting, we want freedom. Many also holding up blank sheets of. Paper in a symbolic protest against state senators, the ship. More issues have also been started in in main city following clashes with police overnight. Public offence arising after a deadly apartment block fire, with many blaming an ongoing lockdown for hampering rescue efforts.
Hundreds facedown police and called on President Xi Jinping to step down. Many in the crowd do not to hide their identities despite potentially severe effects against them for their disobedience. Scuffles eventually broke out with officers warning the crowds to move back. As police reinforcements arrived, a woman can be heard yelling, you are employees. You have food to eat and money to make. What about us? It's been three years. Saturday's, protest came to a head following a candlelit vigil for the victims of an apartment fire that's shaken the country.
At least ten died in the blaze. Which broke out on Thursday. In the northwestern city of Urum Chi. Many have blamed the deaths on lockdown restrictions, which they say hampered rescue efforts. With some locals banned from leaving their homes for over three months, urumqi residents are now also rising up here, they chant lift the COVID lockdown. The tension with officials boils over as protesters break through offense. The protests come just weeks after Xi Jinping was reappointed as the country's leader for an unprecedented third term. His covert restrictions are some of the harshest globally, with officials sticking to a zero COVID policy while much of the rest of the world tries to coexist with the virus. But despite the public backlash, xi shows no signs of backing down. And we can talk now to correspondent Fabian Creschma who is in Beijing. Fabian, first of all, what more can you tell us about the situation there? basically seeing the biggest protests in China since at least the 1990s. It's really remarkable. In the night from Saturday to Sunday, several hundreds of young people in Shanghai gathered. They did not only voice their criticism against the zero COVID policy, but also against Xi Jinping's rule. They were shouting down with Xi Jinping, down with the party. I mean, that's really unheard of.
And you have protests in basically all of the country. I'll give you one noticeable example. Here in Beijing, at the really very prestigious Qinghai University, also several hundred, maybe even more than 1000 students are gathering, also shouting slogans, demanding freedom. And they are very courageous is they are basically for the first time speaking up. And that comes really at a great risk. I mean, the Chinese government is known to have a very low tolerance for criticism.
What does it tell us that so many are willing to defy the regime, to be courageous, as you just said? Yeah, many have had enough. They feel also like they have nothing to lose. I would say they are different motifs, especially, let's say, migrant workers. For them, the lockdowns are an existential economic threat. So really, they have nothing to lose. For the students, for example, at Cinco University, for them, I'm sure it's a moral obligation. They want to show solidarity because on Thursday night there was a fire in Urbancic in Xinjiang.
Ten people died, and many people in China believe those deaths could have been prevented. They were basically a side effect of those very excessive lockdowns. And it's not the first time that people had to die because of those lockdowns. Basically, every day on social media, you see people desperate, suicidal, jumping from the roof because they've been for weeks, sometimes months, locked down in their home. So, they had the feeling, now it's too much.
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