Ready and waiting: Many more police lined the streets and appeared at the places where protesters were meant to meet
- ‘We want food, work and fairness’ protesters told to chant
- Egypt-style get-togethers planned for 13 cities
- Word ‘jasmine’ blocked on most popular social network site
Chinese authorities moved quickly and with force to quash a pro-democracy ‘Jasmine Revolution’, believed to have been inspired by the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
More police than usual were scrambled to line the streets today, and there were a number of activists detained after online sites had organised staged protests in Beijing, Shanghai and 11 other major cities.
Citizens were urged to shout: ‘We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness’ – a slogan that highlights common complaints among ordinary Chinese.
In Beijing and Shanghai, hundreds of people gathered today but were dispersed by police in both places.
In Beijing, people gathered in front of a restaurant in Wangfujing Street, but were ordered to leave by officers.
In Shanghai, crowds gathered around the People’s Square at the same time – around 2.00 p.m.
Three people were detained by police, after a man aged around 30 began a speech at the intersection of Yunnan Zhong Road and Hankou Road.
However, yesterday’s call to protest did not seem to garner much traction among citizens.
There were no reports of protests in other cities where people were urged to gather, such as Guangzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan and Chengdu.
Ahead of the planned protests, more than 100 activists in cities across China were taken away by police, confined to their homes or were missing, the Hong Kong-based group Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.
Families and friends reported the detention or harassment of several dissidents, and some activists said they were warned not to participate.
Today, searches for ‘jasmine’ were blocked on China’s largest Twitter-like microblog, and status updates with the word on popular Chinese social networking site Renren.com were met with an error message and a warning to refrain from postings with ‘political, sensitive … or other inappropriate content.’
And mass text messaging services was unavailable in Beijing due to ‘technical issues’, according to a customer service operator for leading provider China Mobile.
In the past, Chinese authorities have suspended text messaging in politically tense areas to prevent organising.
The call for a Jasmine Revolution came as President Hu Jintao gave a speech to top leaders yesterday, asking them to ‘solve prominent problems which might harm the harmony and stability of the society’.
Hu told the senior politicians and officials to provide better social services to people and improve management of information on the Internet ‘to guide public opinion’, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Aftermath News 
