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CNN INTERNATIONAL: China Tightens Security Amid Widespread Protests; NATO Chief: Putin Wants To Use "Winter As A Weapon Of War"; France: New E.U. Sanctions Being Prepared Against Tehran; Iran To Face USA In Must-Win Match Overshadowed By Politics; Rare Dual Volcanic Eruptions On Hawaii; Ukrainians In Kherson Struggle With Lack Of Power, Water. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 29, 2022 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:02]

ZAIN ASHER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. I am Zain Asher in New York. My colleague Max Foster is off today. Just ahead this hour, China tightened security. Police are out in force on the streets of many cities after widespread protests over the country's zero-COVID policies. We'll have all the details coming up for you later on the show.

Plus, Team USA and Team Iran prepare to meet for a critical World Cup match as, of course, controversy swells both on and off the pitch. We will have a full report on that. And take a look at this. Hawaii's Big Island experiences a rare double, double volcanic eruption. We're going to give you all the best pictures from that.

Right, China's top health officials are promising to modify some COVID-19 restrictions following a weekend of unprecedented protests against the country's zero-COVID policy. But they're also deflecting blame over the fallout as well. And then there's this, from Monday into Tuesday, so overnight, an overwhelming presence of the police on the streets and pretty much no sign, if you look closely at this video, of the angry demonstrations that shook the nation over the weekend.

Now, as COVID spikes across the country, the Chinese government says that it is launching an action plan to boost vaccinations among the elderly. They're also adjusting COVID-19 measures that in some cases have kept citizens under very, very strict lockdowns for months at a time. Because that is, of course, how all of this started.

CNN's Ivan Watson joins us live now from Hong Kong, where he's been sort of talking to protesters. So, Ivan, we know that some of the protests, in terms of what we're seeing on the streets there in China, some of the protests have died down, but there is a very strong security presence on the streets. Just walk us through it.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think that what China witnessed, what was so striking was a weekend of these protests just erupting in city after city across the country, and now the state is kind of reacting. And on the one hand, we see a large police presence in the streets of Beijing and of Shanghai, hearing from people who participated in the protests of the weekend in Shanghai about police putting up barricades to prevent people from being able to gather on the sides of roads and of detentions.

And even anecdotal accounts of police going through pedestrians' phones and looking for images to show whether or not they have been witnesses of the protests. We're hearing about universities starting to send students home early in the semester after some of the university campuses became the grounds for some of these demonstrations over the course of the weekend.

And at the same time, we've been hearing from top health officials who've kind of been acknowledging maybe there were some excesses in the implementation of some of the COVID restrictions, saying that they're going to be adapting some of these to ensure that they don't put as much pressure on the populace. Also saying that they've announced an action plan to vaccinate the elderly who have much lower vaccination levels than the rest of the population in China.

And again, it is all a response to this remarkable phenomenon we witnessed over the course of the weekend in Mainland China. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON (voice-over): Anger on the streets of Chinese cities. The biggest nationwide display of discontent this tightly controlled country has seen in a generation. Protesters pushing back against police and the government's zero-COVID policy. The unrest triggered by a deadly fire in Urumqi, in China's western Xinjiang region last Thursday.

Videos emerge of fire hoses barely reaching the blaze, which killed at least 10 people. Among them, Karminissahan Abdurahman (ph)and four of her children.

WATSON (on-camera): What happened to your mother and your brothers and sisters?

SHARAPAT MOHAMMAD ALI, FAMILY KILLED IN APARTMENT FIRE (through translation): The fire started on the 15th floor. The smoke poisoned my family. The government could not stop the fire in time.

WATSON (voice-over): Two surviving adult children of Karminissahan to me from Turkey. Unable to see their family since 2017 due to the harsh crackdown. The government accused of putting up to 2 million of their fellow ethnic Uighurs and members of other minorities in internment camps. They say their loved ones were trapped in the building by COVID measures.

MOHAMMAD MOHAMMAD ALI, FAMILY KILLED IN APARTMENT KILLED (through translation): They could not escape because the fire escape was blocked and the fire escape to the roof of the building was also blocked.

[08:05:00] WATSON (voice-over): Accusation CNN cannot independently confirm, but Chinese authorities have been seen literally locking residents into buildings. Outrage over the Urumqi fire, compounded by previous deadly incidents in recent months directly linked to COVID prevention.

Though CNN verified 16 protests in eleven Chinese cities this weekend, a Chinese government official told a journalist, they just didn't happen.

ZHAO LIJAN, CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESPERSON (through translation): What you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened. China has been following the dynamic zero-COVID policy and has been making adjustments based on realities on the ground.

WATSON (on-camera): On Monday, the white papers that have become a symbol of the protests in Mainland China spread hereto Hong Kong, where these small groups of demonstrators are holding a vigil for what they say are the victims of China's zero-COVID policy.

JAMES, PROTESTER FROM SHANGHAI: I am a victim. I cannot go home for many years. Like two to three years, right? My parents were locked down for three months. And even relatives of my good friends, they suicide because of the lockdowns.

WATSON (voice-over): With China reporting record breaking new daily cases of COVID, there appears to be no end to the lockdowns in sight. Meanwhile, siblings Mohammad and Sharapat cannot even pray for closure after suffering the unimaginable loss of five immediate members of their family.

(on-camera): Will you go home for the funeral of your family?

M. ALI: We want to attend the funeral of our family members. But if we went back now, China will put us in jail or even torture us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON: Let me just explain a little bit of background here. That's an ethnic Uighur family. Those two siblings, they hadn't seen their loved ones in Xinjiang, in China, since 2017 because of that mass crackdown, and they couldn't even make phone calls to their own mother and siblings. And they discovered that these family members died after seeing their bodies on social media.

They say that their father and another surviving brother were taken away years ago to internment camps. And they don't even know how to geta message to them that five immediate members of their family died in this terrible fire. Now, moving back to the reaction to these protests, one of the strangest developments has involved a stationary company in China called M&G Stationery.

It has more than 80,000 retail outlets across the country. And on social media in China, a statement came out where it announced on Monday a ban on the sale of A4 paper, printer paper, stationery, presumably because those pieces of paper became a symbol for the protest. The company has since denied that they've banned the sale, but we are hearing anecdotally that you can't order paper online anymore. Zain?

ASHER: Gosh, that really is a bizarre twist, yes, because as we've seen the images, we were just showing images on the screen, Iva, of people actually holding up those blank pieces of paper, which has become a symbol in these protests.

Ivan Watson, live for us there, thank you so, so much for your reporting from Hong Kong.

NATO Secretary General says that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to use winter as a weapon of war in Ukraine. Jens Stoltenberg spoke ahead of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Romania to mobilize support for Kyiv. A wave of Russian strikes on critical infrastructure has left millions of Ukrainians without water and without power.

The NATO chief says that more attacks can be expected because Russia is failing on the battle field.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL (THOMPSON: President Putin is failing in this brutal war of aggression. He is responding with more brutality. We see wave after wave of deliberate missile attacks on cities and civilian infrastructure, striking homes, hospitals, and power grids. This is terrible for Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ASHER: CNN's Salma Abdelaziz joins us live now with more on the meeting. So, Salma, you just heard Jens Stoltenberg there basically saying that, look, as Russia continues to fail on the battlefield, as they endure more losses on the battlefield, what you're seeing is that they're instead targeting critical infrastructure, which is why you're seeing Ukrainians going into the winter with barely any power or heat.

What sort of, a, lethal and, b, nonlethal aid is NATO committing -- committed to providing to help Ukrainians weather the winter that they endured (ph) right now?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very good question, Zain. I think what's interesting about this meeting, in particular for NATO foreign ministers, is that perhaps the non-lethal aid portion of this could be more important this time around than even ammunitions and weapons on the ground.

[08:10:03]

And that's because, as you said, for weeks now, Russia has carried out a sustained attack on Ukraine's civilian infrastructure. That means it's power grids, it's cell phone towers, it's water supplies, and it's absolutely been devastating, particularly in Kyiv, the capital, where the city's operating at, I think, about 60 percent capacity when it comes to its electricity supply.

That capacity needs to be used for the most important parts of infrastructure. So I think hospitals, and that means many families are left for hours in the dark without power during these scheduled blackouts. There's emergency blackouts as well. These hospitals are highly concerned at times that water pumps aren't working. So you can imagine being in a hospital at a time of conflict without running water, without electricity.

All of this highly concerning to Ukraine's allies who are trying to toughen up the country ahead of winter. So nonlethal aid would mean generators, equipment to fix those power grids that have been damaged, fuel, winter supplies, food, all of that to really bolster the civilian population very far from the front lines, where the United Nations says there is serious humanitarian concerns as they head into a cold, dark winter, Zain?

ASHER: Yes, having to endure a brutal war is one thing, but having to do it with barely any heat, barely any water, barely any electricity is another thing altogether. God bless the Ukrainians for their resilience. Salma Abdelaziz live for us there. Thank you so much.

All right, as Iran prepares to face the U.S. in a hugely symbolic match at the World Cup later, new global pressure is mounting on Tehran. France says a new round of E.U. sanctions is being prepared over Iran's ongoing treatment of protesters. This as Tehran has summoned the German ambassador over a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution which has agreed to investigate the crackdown on protesters starting first with a fact-finding mission.

Nada Bashir is monitoring the developments from London. So let's talk about this new round of sanctions that France is talking about at this point. Nada, you know, obviously symbolic in nature, but can it actually have a real impact, do you think?

NADA BASHIR, CNN REPORTER: Well, there are certainly focus on the international community now to really drum up pressure on the Iranian regime as these protests continue, but also, of course, as the regime's crackdown intensifies. We've already seen sanctions in place and expanded against the Iranian regime and other entities in Iran by the European Union and the U.S. and other Western allies.

This would be the third packet of sanctions from the European Union. And of course, we've previously seen sanctions being placed against individuals, part of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, part of Iran's state media and other security entities in Iran charged with perpetrating human rights abuses. This is expected to be an expansion of these sanctions and it's set to be prepared ahead of a meeting of E.U. foreign Ministers on December 12.

So there is still some time before those sanctions are put before the European Union. But of course, while pressure is mounting from the international community, we are still seeing that crackdown intensifying. In fact, we heard from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking over the weekend, a concerning remarks from the supreme leader describing the paramilitary troops charged with these human rights abuses, praising them, but also describing the protesters as rioters and thugs. The same sort of rhetoric we've been hearing for weeks now. Zain?

ASHER: All right. Nada Bashir, live for us there. Thank you so much.

At the World Cup in Qatar, the spot light is on a showdown that is coming up later today between Iran and the United States. It is a do or die situation for both teams. World Sports Amanda Davies reports for us from Doha.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANDA DAVIES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR (voice-over): A winner take all match at the World Cup, bringing politics center stage. The U.S. Men's Soccer Team will face off against Iran in a match that will determine which team proceeds to the knockout stages here in Qatar.

GREGG BERHALTER, MANAGER, U.S. NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM: There's no real distractions. You know, I know there's a lot going on here, but the group is focused on how do we get a win.

DAVIES (voice-over): This is the first time the two teams have played in a World Cup match since 1998, when Iran beat the U.S. In recent days, Iran's state media has called for Team USA to be disqualified from the games after the team changed Iran's flag on its social media accounts for 24 hours to show solidarity with protests for women's rights.

MICHAEL KAMMARMAN, SPOKESPERSON, U.S. NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM: It was meant to be a moment. We made the post at the time. All of the other representations of the flag remain consistent and will continue to.

DAVIES (voice-over): The players and their coach say they had no previous knowledge of the post.

TIM REAM, DEFENDER, U.S. NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM: We support women's rights. We always have, we always will. That message will remain consistent. And what we're doing as a team is supporting that while also trying to prepare for the biggest game that the squad has had to date.

[08:15:08]

DAVIES (voice-over): At a press conference Monday, an Iranian reporter called for U.S. Team captain Tyler Adams to correct his pronunciation of the country's name and pushed him to address discrimination in the U.S.

TYLER ADAMS, CAPTAIN, U.S. NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM: My apologies on the mispronunciation of your country. Yes, that being said, you know, there's discrimination everywhere you go. You know, one thing that I've learned, especially from living abroad in the past years and having to fit in in different cultures and kind of assimilate into different cultures is that in the U.S., we're continuing to make progress every single day.

DAVIES (voice-over): This comes as a source involved with the security of the games tells CNN that Iranian players families were threatened with imprisonment and even torture if the players did not behave ahead of the match. These threats were made after the Iranian players did not sing the national anthem during one of their matches. The players sang during their following game against Wales just days later.

CAMERON KHANSARINIA, NATIONAL UNION FOR DEMOCRACY IN IRAN: What we're seeing right now in the past two months of this protest movement is any indication it could be very dire. They could be killed, they could be tortured, they could be prevented from leaving the country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ASHER: That was our Amanda Davies reporting there at World Sports. We'll have much more from Doha. That is coming up in about 15 minutes time.

All right, still to come here, a dual volcanic eruption leads to a spectacular show in Hawaii. Stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ASHER: Hawaii's National Guard right now is on standby as the Mauna Lao volcano roars to life after nearly 40 years of lying dormant, it joins a neighboring volcano, Kilauea, which began erupting last year. Well, certainly makes a pretty show kind of. Hawaii's health department is warning that Hawaiians and tourists of possible poor air quality due to the ash and the smoke, of course, being spewed by the volcano.

CNN's Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir is joining us live now from New York. So, Bill, I understand that you traveled to this area, travel to the big island last year. And, you know, what I found interesting about part of the piece that you add earlier was this idea that for a lot of native Hawaiians, there is a sort of spiritual significance to the eruption of this volcano because many of them worship Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes.

But is -- how much of a threat is there to local communities is there on top of that?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, just by the nature of this particular volcano, Zain, there's really more fascination than fear right now, both with native Hawaiians who have this sort of reverence and community, sense of community with the natural forces around them, and volcanologists who have been studying this.

[08:20:09]

This is one of the most measured volcanoes in the world. And it really hasn't gone off since the mid-80s. And back then, it came within 5 miles of Hilo, which is the biggest community on the Big Island there. But the way the lava is flowing right now, it seems to be away from recent developments there.

And so, yes, there's the ash, but also this is more of like a burping lava, you know, as it runs down than the big ash plumes that we've seen in Icelandair and other parts of the South Pacific. There were some canceled flights, I think, out of precaution. And again, there's this material, it's almost like strings of glass they call Pele's hair that you wouldn't want to breathe. And so, they're taking precautions on that. And as you said, National Guard is there and they would have time to evacuate. That's the thing about these volcanoes in 2018, even as it took away communities. People had plenty of time to get out of the way of the lava.

ASHER: Pele's hair, but they're not talking about the footballer, are they?

WEIR: Right.

ASHER: How quickly could the situation change, though, Bill? I mean, I know you said this is more fascination than fear right now. Could things change with short notice?

WEIR: Of course. Of course. And that's the thing, even though this is the most measured scientifically. There still is not the science to precisely measure interruption. In fact, this one caught the volcanologist by surprise. It came in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend in the United States, and so now they're rushing in there to study it as it moves.

But there should be indications, the number of earthquakes have doubled around there. That's an indication that something is cooking underneath. But it's really fascinating from a scientific. This is how islands are born. After the 2018 eruptions, that island grew by some, I don't know, 800 hectares or something. So it's really fascinating and hopefully it'll stay that way with no danger.

ASHER: Yes, let's hope so. Bill Weir live for us there, thank you so much.

WEIR: You bet.

ASHER: All right, still ahead, residents of Kherson scavenge the basic necessity that they face a harsh winter without power and heat. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ASHER: It's been more than two weeks since Russian troops withdrew from Kherson in southern Ukraine, but the city is still coming under daily attacks from Kremlin forces across the river, making survival even harder for the residents who remain. Matthew Chance has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The devastation Russia's retreating forces left behind. A village in southern Ukraine torn to shreds and until now, abandoned to this war.

Valery (ph) told me he's lived here 51 years, and after evacuating for eight months, he's home to stay, even amid this wreckage. It's like a stone weighing on my soul, he says. We built everything here with our own hands. It's hard to look with what those Russian scum did to us here. A short distance away in newly liberated Kherson, a pool of blood where Russia is attacking the city it just left behind. Four were killed when this grocery store was hit. Now one desperate resident picks through the debris, looting scraps of food and toilet paper.

[08:25:03]

Is everything so bad, we ask. It's not good, he response.

(on-camera): All right. Well, getting basic supplies, though, in Kherson has become a massive risk. We've come to the seaport. Well, it's the riverport, really, right on the Dnipro River with this woman here, Tatiana, from Kherson, to collect water so she can do her washing up and wash her clothes and get the toilet and things like that.

The water supplies have been completely cut off by the Russians. This is the only way -- you can hear the artillery shells going off soon in the background. This is the only way she can get water for her house. And it's dangerous because this is basically the front line. The Russian forces have retreated to the other bank, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Speaking Foreign Language)

CHANCE (on-camera): Yes. So the Russian forces are just across the river.

(voice-over): But the risk is one that has to be taken.

What can we do, Tatiana asks. We can't live without water.

There's this electricity either, and people are cramming into makeshift charging stations like this one just to stay connected. We found defiance here, too, in the face of hardship. There's no water or power, Hannah (ph) tells me. But also no Russians, so we'll get through this.

(on-camera): What do you think?

I think our enemies will all die soon, says Nastia (ph), who's only just turned nine. We'll show them what you get for occupying Ukraine, she says.

For many, the hardships are already too much. Roads out of Kherson cramped, with residents trying to leave. But for those who stay, it is a desperate struggle to survive.

Matthew Chance, CNN, Kherson.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ASHER: All right, thank you so much for joining me here on CNN Newsroom. I'm Zain Asher in New York. "WORLD SPORT" with Alex Thomas with all the World Cup action is up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)