‘AFRICANS IN the Chinese city of Guangzhou. evicted, sleeping on streets and quarantined to thwart the spread of COVID-19 from Guangzhou’s African community’.

AFRICANS IN the Chinese city of Guangzhou. evicted, sleeping on streets and quarantined to thwart the spread of COVID-19 from Guangzhou’s African community.
As a result, many Africans were kicked out of hotels, barred from returning to their homes or even evicted. The FRANCE 24 Observers team spoke to several people affected.In early April, a rumour started circulating that the African community living in the Yaotai neighbourhood, located in the centre of Guangzhou, had been put under lockdown after a large number of new COVID-19 infections. On April 8, local authorities publicly discredited these rumours; stating that there hadn’t been a second wave of infections and the community hadn’t been put on lockdown. They did say that there had been 111 new cases of coronavirus recorded amongst new arrivals to the city, which included five Nigerians. These rumours have had a massive impact on Africans living in Guangzhou.”My housemate spent two nights sleeping outdoors”
Kingsley is a student in Guangzhou who is originally from Nigeria. He lives in a student residence in the city centre along with his roommate Francis (whose first name has been changed to protect his identity), who is from Togo. Kingsley says that Francis was barred from returning home on Tuesday. He called me, saying that he was being prevented from entering our building. After several phone calls, I finally sent him some documents proving that he did indeed live in our building. But the security guard refused to look at it.
Unable to get into the building, my roommate ended up gathering with several other people who had also been kicked out of their buildings. They were stuck all night outside. And it got worse — he told me that they were camping under a bridge when the police from a nearby station came and chased them out.
On Wednesday morning, Francis went to the hospital to get tested for COVID-19. I also took the test, but at home. When his test came back negative, he was finally able to come back home on Thursday morning, after spending two nights outside.

Francis, Kingsley’s sroommate, took this picture when he was barred from returning home and had to spend two nights sleeping in the street. Kinglsey’s roommate Francis appears in this video posted on Twitter (see below). It shows a group of Africans walking next to a road in pouring rain in search of shelter.
“They cannot give us house, they cannot give us home, they cannot provide a place where we can stay. They are just following us, they want us to stay one place. After we have spent 15 days in the hotel, quarantine also for 15 days,” says the person who is filming the video (in English). Our team spoke to a Nigerian man named Henry who came to Guangzhou for business on March 18. He says that these videos show business people who were kicked out of their hotels, including some of his friends. Henry himself has had to change hotels twice and has already completed two quarantines. It all started when the authorities made us leave our hotels to go into quarantine. They brought us to a hotel that was a bit more expensive than the one where we were. The doctors checked our temperature every day and tested us for coronavirus. Finally, after 14 days, we were able to leave. We went back to our original hotel, but when we got there, we were forced to undergo another 14-day quarantine.
Some of my friends weren’t able to go back to their original hotels because the owners refused to take them back in, citing government directives. My friends spent two days sleeping outside. It’s been raining a lot in Guangzhou and one of them was feeling sick, like he had caught a cold. The police accused him of having the virus and took him away.”Our landlord asked us to move into our new house in the middle of the night” observers.france24