【4分リスニング&クイズ】BBC News: China has no domestic cases of coronavirus but lockdown in Xinjiang continues

Quiz　答えは下にあります

1. ビールフェスティバルが開催された場所はどこですか？
2. 現在厳しいロックダウンが課せられている新疆ウイグル自治区の首都ウルムチで、コロナウイルスのクラスターが見つかったのはいつですか？
3. 地元の人々がスクリーンショットをポストするのはなぜですか？

全文）
The coronavirus pandemic began in China but in recent months officials say the transmission of the virus inside its borders has been contained and only imported cases have emerged. Chinese state media have been releasing footage of children back at school, transit systems across the mainland reopening. In the city where COVID was first discovered Wuhan a beer festival was held recently as well as club events and other celebrations. However, in Xinjiang, a strict lockdown has been imposed for over a month after a virus cluster was identified in the state capital Urumqi in mid-July. Officials say the cluster’s been contained and no new cases have been identified but still the lockdown continues. Now Chinese state media have released this footage said to show an elderly in Urumqi being treated for COVID-19 but very little else and there are concerns that the lockdown is being used as another means of detaining people in their homes. This time Xinjiang state operates a highly secure and secretive detention system. And this footage released in July is believed to show Uighur Muslims bound and blindfolded before being put on rail transports. Around half of Xinjiang’s 21 million people are ethnic Uighur or other Muslim minorities. But China’s ruling communist party denies carrying out a campaign of political and religious oppression.
This video has been widely circulated on Chinese social media. It is believed to be the residents of Urumqi yelling from their homes in despair after weeks of lockdown. Let’s talk to Kerry Allen, our China media analyst for BBC monitoring joining us live.
Kerry good to see you. Just tell us more about what’s been in these videos, pretty distressing.

Yes, you can hear people screaming from their buildings and shouting. It’s unclear that people are saying but this is footage that’s circulated on platforms like Sina Weibo and a number of posts in recent days have really been appearing on this platform from locals venting their frustration about not being able to go downstairs. It’s now been 10 days since Xinjiang seen any new cases. And in Urumqi where there’s been this localized outbreak, people were expecting that like with other local outbreaks that they’d be able to get back to life as normal. But there have been messages appearing on social media platforms, some of the ones that I’ve seen in recent days from people saying that volunteers are almost kind of acting like their local police and people feel afraid to go downstairs. And these are posts that I saw a few days ago and now if I try to access them, they’ve been deleted on error message displays and this is in line with censorship that happens in China quite a lot, if messages are against what the government wants people to see. So, I’m very critical of the government.

Right. I was going to ask you how quick and how widespread the disappearance of all this information that was coming out has been how quick were the authorities to get rid of it crack down.

I would say quite quick. Normally what happens in China anyway is that certain keywords are censored. For example, there were rumors circulating that people were actually handcuffed outside their buildings, as a way of shaming people for going outdoors if they were not allowed to. But if you type in the handcuff on Sina Weibo, this is a censored search word. So, If I type it in, I won’t see any messages from say ordinary local citizens. What I’ll see instead of just messages from official media or government official accounts. There is censorship in place but what people have been doing is they’ve been getting around this. So they’ve been posting screengrabs so they avoid mentioning censored search terms to say the message that they want to say. And video is obviously a lot more easy to get messages out. Which is why this footage of people screaming from their buildings which is very similar to footage I saw back in January when the Wuhan outbreak happened. Which is why this footage is still circulating

secretive　隠したがる
detention　拘留
despair　絶望
distressing　悲惨な、痛ましい
in line with　～と一致して、～に従って
censorship　検閲、抑圧
handcuff　手錠、～に手錠をかける、～を無力にする、～の動きを邪魔する
screengrab　スクリーンショット screenshot

Answer

1. 武漢（ウーハン）
2. 7月の中旬
3. 検閲される検索表現を発することを避けるため