Canada stands with people ‘expressing themselves’ amid China COVID-19 protests: Trudeau

'Obviously, everyone in China should be allowed to express themselves, should be allowed to share their perspectives and indeed, protest,' Trudeau said.

Canada stands with people “expressing themselves” in a rare wave of protests across multiple cities in China, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says.

He made the comment on his way into a cabinet meeting Tuesday morning, as China grapples with its biggest public display of dissent since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — which ended in a massacre when the army violently crushed the student-led pro-democracy movement.

The latest protests are a response to Beijing’s continued use of a “zero-COVID” strategy amid the COVID-19 pandemic — a strict policy that aims to isolate every infected person to limit the spread of the virus. As a result, millions of Chinese citizens have continued to face broad quarantine orders, mandatory testing and severe restrictions, all of which are the target of growing protests across the country.

As protests continue across China, Trudeau said Canadians “are watching very closely.”

“Obviously, everyone in China should be allowed to express themselves, should be allowed to share their perspectives and indeed, protest,” he said on Tuesday.

“We’re going to continue to ensure that China knows we’ll stand up for human rights, we’ll stand with people who are expressing themselves.”

The protests have erupted in at least eight major cities in China as well as on several school campuses. The match that lit the fuse was a fire in a residential high-rise building in the city of Urumqi last Thursday.

The blaze killed 10 people — and as videos of the incident tore through social media, accusations grew that lockdowns played a role in the fatal fire.