People attack and overturn police car in Henan to defy fireworks ban in China

A nationwide ban on fireworks in China has angered citizens who have now resorted to defying the ban with violence. In the Henan province, people attacked and overturned a police vehicle late Monday. According to social media posts, residents in other cities set off fireworks in a show of protest.

The police said that revelers on the Hongdaoyuan Square in Henan's Luyi County "deliberately vandalized a police car" and caused chaos at the scene. The incident happened around 11 pm local time on January 2 and six people were arrested, the police further informed.

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The police was trying to enforce the fireworks ban when some people in the crowd got angry and stopped the police car from leaving. Some of them started throwing drinks on the car and smashing it. Later, the scene became even violent when few others jumped on the car and removed the license plates.

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People can be seen jumping onto a police car in videos of the incident uploaded on social media. Another man can be seen showing off a police car license plate he ripped from the vehicle to the surrounding crowd.

Another video clip uploaded much later showed the police car overturned, according to the Twitter account "Mr Li is not your teacher". The handle curates and reposts video footage from incidents that happen in China to Twitter assuming that they will be deleted or blocked by Chinese social media platforms.

While fireworks have been banned until Lunar New Year in the country, people say that that hasn't stopped several of them from bursting crackers.

Guangxi, Shandong, and Chongqing also reported defiant fireworks being set out by the people, according to social media posts.

Political commentator Wang Jian told Radio Free Asia that the fireworks were a deliberate act to defy the ban. The blockade on crackers, he says, came as a response by the government to the "white paper" movement in late November which happened against strict Covid measures.

Notably, the white paper movement say people holding up blank sheets of paper to demand for an end to the country's zero-Covid policy and for Xi Jinping to step down as the leader.

(With inputs from agencies)

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