Masked pollution protesters in China held briefly by police
Short-lived sit-in over smog problems in Chengdu quickly broken up by police, who continued to block access to square in city centre on Monday
Police in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu stepped up security amid mounting public complaints about smog, after briefly taking away eight mask-wearing protesters for questioning on Sunday night.
The protest came as pollution problems worsen in China, forcing the government to be extremely sensitive about social unrest over environmental issues.
The demonstrators were artists staging a brief sit-in after a mass protest over the pollution – planned for the weekend – was pre-empted by police. Police had closed the square where it was to be held.
Photographs and posts on social media by the artists’ friends and relatives showed that they were taken away from a busy shopping area in Chengdu, Sichuan province, where they had been sitting in a row for about 10 minutes with their masks on.
They were taken to a nearby police station and released a few hours later, according to the posts.
The city’s Tianfu Square, where the mass weekend protest had been planned, was still closed on Monday, with parked police cars and officers preventing people from entering.
