Now a professor at one of the country’s leading universities has called on authorities to stop excessive law enforcement and acknowledge the sacrifice made by people under strict preventive measures.
In an article in China Newsweek magazine, Shen Kui, a professor at Peking University’s law school, said governments at all levels should compensate people for the material and psychological toll that the strict preventive measures brought.
Shen said the zero-Covid strategy had a “surprise attack effect”, causing upheavals in the lives of people who suddenly are designated as confirmed or suspected cases, or ordered into personal isolation or community lockdown.
“Such changes may cause great difficulties to the everyday lives of some people, disrupting their food supplies, accommodation, medical treatment, and childbirth,” he said.
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Citing China’s law on the prevention and control of infectious diseases, Shen said the government had a responsibility to guarantee the livelihood of people in quarantine and compensate people whose individual interests were sacrificed for the public good.
“This basic principle has been generally recognised, and it has also been expressly stipulated in the constitution and other laws of our country,” he said in the article.
Shen said the government should apologise to and thank the individuals affected, and clamp down on excessive law enforcement.
“[Authorities must also] prevent all possible situations that may cause greater disadvantages to the few people who have made special sacrifices,” Shen said.
Zhang Qianfan, a law professor at Peking University, said epidemic control had become a “campaign” of law enforcement driven solely to achieve zero cases at the expense of protecting personal freedoms.
“Now it’s a movement-style law enforcement, and the first task is to clear the cases, greatly squeezing people’s freedom,” Zhang said.
Referring to the cases of the two women in Xian who miscarried and others who could not get treatment during lockdowns, Zhang said these situations showed that “the government is not balancing epidemic control with other needs”.
Other lawyers have highlighted excesses in other control measures.
Qu Zhenhong, a lawyer at Beijing Huayi Law Firm, said that in some places, epidemic prevention and control had become placed “above all things”.
“The events in Xian more prominently reflect that epidemic prevention and control has become a task above everything else. This is ridiculous,” Qu said.
She said the vaccination campaign in the city of Linxia in Gansu province was another case.
“The issue of vaccination was stressed so much in July and August, that places such as Linxia introduced forced vaccination practices that … damaged the rights and interests of ordinary citizens,” Qu said.
She said the city’s ban on allowing unvaccinated people to enter public places was forced vaccination in disguise and she wrote to the Linxia government last year asking them to correct the orders.
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One cause of excessive law enforcement is the value local officials place on retaining their positions rather than the benefit to the public, according to Tsinghua University law professor Zhang Jianwei.
“The epidemic itself is a disaster, and there have been a series of secondary disasters, which further highlighted the reality that individual’s freedom is not respected in the process of social governance,” he said.
“Some officials have a kind of fear that if there’s a case here, it will affect their career, so they have to remove risks. As a result, the preventive measures are overdone.”
