China censors photos of people without masks at the World Cup

Amidst the growing wave of protests in China against Covid zeroChinese state TV censors photos of people without masks at the World Cup. In recent days, thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the harsh rules of social confinement and demand the resignation of Xi Jinping, the dictator who was reappointed for a third term in October. On Sunday, the 27th, there were countless concentrations of people in Beijing and Shanghai.

To avoid further public discontent, the CCTV channel It systematically replaced, in broadcasts of the match between Japan and Costa Rica, images that showed people sitting close to each other, with pictures of players or pictures of the crowd taken far enough away that the faces could not be recognized and that there were no masks.

However, it is possible to watch the broadcast without censorship on the Internet, even on Douyin’s Chinese version of TikTok. China is the last major global economy to continue implementing an aggressive strategy against the coronavirus, called covid zero, that includes locking up entire neighborhoods and cities, quarantine periods and mass testing.

In recent days, an open letter was widely circulated on the WeChat messaging network, which questioned whether China was “on the same planet” as Qatar and criticized the Chinese government’s health policy. A message, however, ended up being censored by the authorities.