China shuts down ‘iPhone City’ after cracking down on worker protests demanding better pay

Six million residents of Chinese cities ZhengzhouHeadquarters of the largest mobile phone factory iPhone Worldwide, starting this Friday, it will be limited to a few Clash between police and factory workerswho are asking for salary improvement.

Authorities ordered residents of eight counties in central Henan province’s Zhengzhou to stay in the area for five days and erected fences around residential buildings deemed “at high risk” and checkpoints to restrict movement.

In the city, no more than a handful of cases coronavirus.

The order comes after hundreds of workers were laid off at the iPhone factory FoxconnOn the outskirts of the city, they will hold a protest demanding salary improvement. This Friday, new images of the procession were released.

A video posted on social media, obtained by AFP, shows people walking down a street in the east of the city, some holding banners.

“So many people!” A man can be heard saying. AFP could not verify when exactly the protest took place.

Dozens of workers walked out of the factory on Thursday after accepting 10,000 yuan (about $1,400) in pay. But according to videos posted on Chinese apps Douyin and Kuaishou, the Taiwanese company has banned many employees who have recently joined the company.

Many of these new employees will be confined to hotels outside the factory, several workers told AFP.

“We are in quarantine at the hotelAnd we cannot go to the Foxconn complex in any way,” explained the employee, who requested anonymity.

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A climate of turmoil

Another worker claimed that wage earners who were not allowed to go to work were promised 10,000 yuan in compensation for going through the quarantine, but only received a fraction of that amount.

“They don’t let us start work and we can’t go home, Zhengzhou is locked down,” one soldier who was forced into quarantine in the city of Ruzhou, southwest of Zhengzhou, told AFP.

He said there are smaller protests in other cities in the province, organized by disgruntled Foxconn employees who, like him, could not get new jobs due to the quarantine.

The unrest in Zhengzhou comes amid unrest over the Asian giant’s strict “zero Covid” policy. The strategy, which includes widespread lockdowns, travel restrictions and massive testing, has also hit the world’s second-largest economy hard.

Despite this, China, a country of 1.4 billion people, reported 33,000 new cases of Covid-19 this Friday.

In an industrial city GuangzhouMillions of people in the Southeast have been forced to test negative for Covid-19 to be able to leave their homes.

In that city, some residents of the Haizhou district tore down barricades and threw objects at police in protective suits, according to videos posted on social media and geo-located by AFP.

“What are they doing? What are they doing?” shouts a policeman equipped with a shield and tries to protect himself from the projectile with his colleagues.

According to AFP

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