China is facing accusations of sending people to so-called “quarantine camps” just a few weeks ahead of the Winter Olympics.
Videos, purportedly from China, showing brutal and sparse-looking quarantine camps with cell-like buildings surfaced on social media amid the country’s lockdown of its third city.
On Monday, the Associated Press reported that China has locked down the city of Anyang, home to 5.5 million people, after two cases of the Omicron variant were reported. The city’s lockdown comes amid the ongoing lockdown of the city of Xi’an, home to 13 million people, and Yuzhou, which has a population of 1.1 million. However, it is unclear how long China plans to maintain the policy.
With the Winter Olympics approaching, which opens on February 4 in Beijing, the emergence of the Omicron variant has reportedly brought back massive lockdowns in a bid to curb outbreaks and prevent them from spreading to other parts of the country.
Videos posted on Twitter show staff in white hazmat suits standing near rows of small white cubicles lined up on the grounds of a sports stadium.
Millions of chinese people are living in covid quarantine camps now!
2022/1/9 pic.twitter.com/wO1cekQhps— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) January 9, 2022
Other footage, detailed by the New York Post, appears to have been taken from one of the cells, with the occupant showing its bare interior.
As the Post reported:
Another clip going viral on Chinese social media shows staff — again fully decked out in protective clothing — going around leaving trays of food on shelves outside the prefab units.
One Twitter user claimed “millions” have been moved to the camps, mostly in Xi’an.
“There is nothing here, just basic necessities… Nobody has come to check up on us,” said a Weibo post, according to the BBC. The poster alleged that “more than a thousand people” were forced into the quarantine camps, including children and pregnant women, in the middle of the night.
Sometimes kids will be locked alone without their parents guardianship. pic.twitter.com/8TC9XxlfYt
— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) January 9, 2022
In the first days of the pandemic, videos from China purported to show men and women going into seizures or simply dropping unconscious while standing in line at clinics or in the middle of the street. The scary footage, which promptly went viral, prompted numerous world governments to institute widespread lockdowns, social distancing, and restrictions on international travel, much of which remains in place.
