This Chinese Woman Posted About Protesting In The A4 Revolution And Now She’s Disappeared
“If you are seeing this video, that means I have already been taken away by police, like my other friends.”
Weeks after the A4 Revolution protests that broke out in China following a fire that killed 10 people in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, a video by a woman protester was widely shared on Monday Jan. 16, raising concerns about protestors’ safety.
In the video, a 26-year-old woman editor, Cao Zhixin, warned that she could vanish because all of her friends began disappearing after they attended the protests in November.
“I have asked my friends to post this in case of my disappearance,” she says in the video. “If you are seeing this video, that means I have already been taken away by police, like my other friends.”
Cao said she and her five friends attended a vigil at Liangma River in Beijing to mourn the victims of the fire in Urumqi on Nov. 27, 2022.
They were then summoned by police on Nov. 29 but were released after 24 hours, she said.
However, just over two weeks later, police detained her friends one after another, starting from Dec. 18.
Cao said police made her friends sign blank arrest warrants and refused to disclose the location they were detained or the crime they had been accused of committing.
Cao was the last of them to be detained on Dec. 24 and has not been seen since, according to the Guardian.
“We pay attention to the society we live in. When our fellow people die, we have rightful feelings we want to express. We are filled with sympathy for those who lost their lives. That’s why we went to the vigil,” Cao said.
“At the scene, we followed the rules, didn’t clash with the police under any circumstances,” she said. “Why must the lives of ordinary young people be used as the price?”
Cao ends the video making a plea for people to help them.
“Don’t let us disappear from this world under mysterious circumstances. Don’t let us be arbitrarily taken away or convicted,” she said.
Beijing authorities have made no official comment about the detentions, according to CNN.
