Coronavirus: residents of Hubei community defy lockdown to protest against overpriced food
- Tensions bubble over at Sea Mountain estate in Yingcheng after man is detained for providing alternative to government-sanctioned suppliers
- People tired of having to pay inflated prices for food and other essential items, resident says
For the past several weeks, the supply of food to the tens of millions of people forced to live in isolation across Hubei province has been carefully controlled by local government agencies.
But many residents of Yingcheng, a city of 600,000 people about an hour’s drive from Wuhan, considered the goods on offer to be overpriced. So when a man was detained by the police for providing the same products at lower prices, they decided enough was enough.
According to a post on social media by the city government’s Covid-19 emergency command centre, the protest began at about 7.30pm at the Sea Mountain residential complex, which is home to about 8,000 people.
Defying the terms of the lockdown, hundreds of residents gathered on a basketball court within the compound to vent their anger. They dispersed only after local government officials and police arrived at the scene.
The demonstration was sparked by the detention of a Sea Mountain resident surnamed Cheng, who used his personal connections to supply his neighbours with groceries, The Beijing News reported on Friday.
He was detained on the charge of “unlicensed sales” but released after about an hour, the report said.