Police in riot gear stormed an apartment in southern China on Friday where about 40 student activists and others supporting factory workers seeking to form a labour union were staying, according to activists who said they received a video of the raid as it was taking place.

The video footage, which was shared with Reuters, showed police armed with shields and helmets bursting into the activists’ accommodation and scuffling with the occupants.

The footage appeared to show an apartment where the students were staying in Huizhou, near the southern city of Shenzhen, that had been previously visited by Reuters. The video could not be independently verified.

It was not immediately clear what happened to the activists. Calls to police in the area and five activists who had been staying at the apartment went unanswered. Labour activists in other parts of the country who are following the case and had been in touch with various activists on the scene said they were unable to contact them.

The raid is the latest step by the Chinese authorities to clamp down on a growing labour movement in the southern province of Guangdong that started brewing last month when workers at a welding machinery company, Jasic International, were fired when they tried to create a union.

Labour activism is viewed as a challenge by the ruling Communist Party, which opposes independent unions and punishes protesters.

On July 27, police detained 29 people, including laid-off workers, their families and supporters. Fourteen people remain in detention.

Since then, support has poured in, with about 50 labour activists, most of them students, travelling to Guangdong to back the workers.

An activist who shared the footage of the raid with Reuters said the raid Friday took place just after 5 a.m. The activist, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the footage, said the images were received directly from students in the room when the police entered.

GROWING PRESSURE

Pressure had been mounting on the activists.

In interviews with Reuters a day before the raid, 15 activists involved in the Jasic case described a multi-pronged effort to force them to disengage from the workers’ cause.

The authorities have flown many of the young activists’ parents to Guangdong and put them up in hotels to undergo “training sessions” about how to raise their children, according to interviews with several students.

Authorities lectured the parents on text messages to send to their children. They also arranged to have parents show up at various places where their children were, including the apartment and shopping areas where protests have been staged, they said.

The Ministry of Education issued a notice five days ago to universities across the country telling them to stop students from travelling to Guangdong to participate in the protests, according to screenshots of messages sent by universities to students.

The universities gave a range of explanations to students about why it was unsafe for them to go to Guangdong including an approaching typhoon and the risk of being recruited into a pyramid scheme, several students said.

Reuters was unable to verify the order and the ministry did not respond to faxed questions.

The hashtag “What’s up with Guangdong?” started trending on Weibo as the Ministry of Education notice spread.

Several of the students’ university advisers had apparently also flown to Guangdong to try to persuade them to leave, according to some of the activists.

The protests have spread to Beijing where, on Wednesday and Thursday, a group of 20 students, activists and two worker representatives from Jasic submitted petition letters at the headquarters of the All-China Federations of Trade Unions and the All-China Women’s Federation.

Tensions between South Africans and foreigners rose again in Pretoria and parts of Johannesburg recently.

Authorities say despite government pleas for peace, damage to property, acts of violence and looting continue to be reported in Pretoria.

The Home Affairs minister spoke out Thursday to respond to reports from the Nigerian government claiming that 116 of its citizens had been killed in South Africa over the past two years.

“I’m not privy to the figures from the Nigerian government and how they collected them. And we haven’t, I don’t think it’s a discussion we want to get into. I think it will turn out very bad. Should we start counting how many South Africans have died in South Africa at the hands of Nigerian nationals? I don’t think that’s going to end up very well, in terms of our good relations, as countries,” said Malusi Gigaba, South African Home Affairs Minister.

More than 136 people have been arrested in relation to tensions between foreigners and locals.

A march, organized by a group called Mamelodi Concerned Residents, was meant to be peaceful, but soon chaos broke out between anti-migrants South African protesters and foreign nationals.

Some South Africans demanded that illegal immigrants be deported immediately. They blamed foreigners for crime, especially the illegal drug trade. They also accused migrants of taking jobs that could be held by South Africans.

“The foreigners who are operating businesses, we need to regulate them so that when they are operating their businesses, their employees must be South Africans strictly,” said a male protester.

The foreign nationals refused to be intimidated.

“We worked so hard for South Africa to be independent. We’re not to be treated like dogs. They’re fighting us. We married their sisters; our sisters are married to them,” said a representative of foreign nationals.

“We just want peace and stability in this country. We are all Africans. We don’t have any grudge for anyone,” said another representative.

Police dispersed the crowds of protesters, expressing worries that the scenes of xenophobic attacks in 2008 might resurface.

Later in the day, protesters handed a memorandum of their grievances to authorities. They maintained that those responsible for the chaos were not part of their group.

“We are not xenophobic. We don’t want any person to be attacked, any foreign national or any person. That’s why we said that the march is to the relevant department, institutions within South Africa that are set up to deal with this way. But the idea is we are in the sense, we South Africans are frustrated, South Africans are angry,” said Makgoka Lekganyane, a Mamelodi resident.

The government has pledged to take action against anyone who commits violent acts. The presidency has also released a statement calling for restraint.

“We also caution those engaging in violent and unlawful acts that the law enforcement agencies of this country will not tolerate such conduct and will act within the confines of the law,” said Khomotso Phahlane, acting Police Commissioner of South Africa.