Protester breaks silence on China’s crackdown on COVID demonstrators

HAMBURG/BEIJING, April 19 (Reuters) – Dazed and terrified, Yicheng Huang narrowly managed to escape being detained by police in Shanghai while attending historic protests calling for an end to China’s COVID-19 curbs that spread across numerous cities last November. The protests, unprecedented in President Xi Jinping’s decade in power, were suppressed by police within days but helped hasten the end of three years of restrictions, sources have previously told Reuters. Four months later, 26-year-old Huang fled to Germany and decided to speak out in support of fellow demonstrators, some of whom remain in detention. He is one of the first…