Video After The Jump
Violent clashes erupted on a bridge between China’s virus-stricken Hubei province and neighboring Jiangxi province, days after authorities relaxed an epidemic lockdown.
Police vehicles were overturned and police scuffled with each other amid large crowds of shouting people, according to a series of videos posted to Chinese social media. The confrontation came after authorities in Jiangxi blocked entry to people from Hubei, local media reported.
Hubei this week lifted its lockdown of areas of the province outside Wuhan.
But deep distrust has taken root across China toward people from Hubei, fueled by fear of COVID-19, which spread widely in the province, as well as skepticism of official reassurances that the epidemic has been successfully suppressed. People from Hubei have been refused entry to hotels and their homes, even if they were not in Hubei during the past two months. On social media, people have reported being barred from entering Beijing merely because their hometown is in Hubei.
Now, the release of lockdown measures means large numbers of people from Hubei are attempting to move elsewhere in China, threatening new hostilities.
On Friday, videos of the bridge confrontation showed a line of uniformed officers behind riot shields positioned across the bridge, blocking movement from Hubei province across the Yangtze River into Jiujiang, a city in Jiangxi. A large crowd marched toward the blockade chanting “Let’s go, Hubei!” In another video, Ma Yangzhou, the secretary of the party committee in Huangmei County on the Hubei side, urges people to disperse. “It’s dangerous for you to gather like this on the bridge,” he said, citing both the block to transportation and “the risk of virus infection.”
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