A medical worker administers a COVID-19 test in the Yunyan District of Guiyang in southwest China. In the city of Guiyang, a zoo put out a call for help last week, asking for pork, chicken, apples, watermelons, carrots and other produce out of concern they could run out of food for their animals.

BEIJING —  

Residents of a city in China’s far western Xinjiang region say they are experiencing hunger, forced quarantines and dwindling supplies of medicine and daily necessities after more than 40 days in a virus lockdown. 

Hundreds of posts from Ghulja riveted users of Chinese social media last week, with residents sharing videos of empty refrigerators, feverish children and people shouting from their windows. 

The dire conditions and food shortages are reminiscent of a harsh lockdown in Shanghai earlier this year, when thousands of residents posted complaints online that they were delivered rotting vegetables or denied critical medical care.

But unlike in Shanghai, a glittering, cosmopolitan metropolis of 20 million people and home to many foreigners, the harsh lockdowns in smaller cities such as Ghulja have received less attention until recently.

The lockdown in Ghulja is also evoking fears of police brutality among the Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic group native to Xinjiang. For years, the region has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown, ensnaring huge numbers of Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities in a vast network of camps and prisons. An earlier lockdown in Xinjiang was particularly tough, with forced medication, arrests and residents being hosed down with disinfectant.

Yasinuf, a Uyghur studying at a university in Europe, said his mother-in-law sent fearful voice messages this

past weekend saying she was being forced into centralized quarantine because of a mild cough. The officers coming for her reminded her of the time her husband was taken to a camp for over two years, she said.

“It’s judgment day,” she sighed in an audio recording reviewed by the Associated Press. “We don’t know what’s going to happen this time. All we can do now is to trust our creator.”

In the city of Guiyang, in the mountainous southern Guizhou province, a zoo put out a call for help last week, asking for pork, chicken, apples, watermelons, carrots and other produce out of concern they could run out of food for their animals. 

Elsewhere in the city, residents in one neighborhood complained of hunger and missing food deliveries, prompting a surge of comments online. Local officials apologized, saying that despite their best efforts, they were overwhelmed.

“Due to lack of experience and inappropriate methods,” they said in a public notice, “the supply of basic necessities wasn’t enough, bringing inconvenience to everyone. We are deeply sorry.”