Anger Over COVID-19 Restrictions & Cost Of Living Crunch: What Fueled Mass Protests in 2022?

The year 2022 had more than its share of upheavals that affected the lives of people across the globe, forcing them to vent their public discontent. From economic problems, such as surging inflation and the cost of living crisis, to restrictions imposed over the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, government decisions triggered waves of demonstrations across countries and continents. Let's take a look at some of the mass protests of 2022.

At the start of 2022, protesters took to the streets across Western Europe in protest against COVID-19 vaccine requirements, with more than 100,000 people rallying in France alone to oppose what they called government plans to restrict the rights of the unvaccinated. In the French capital, Paris, protesters – many of them unmasked – carried placards that read “Truth,” “Freedom,” and “No to vaccine pass.” Some also took aim at President Emmanuel Macron, who had caused an uproar by quipping he wanted to “p*** off” the unvaccinated by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting the jab.

The protesters retorted by adopting his language, chanting “We’ll p*** you off.”

Similar protests rocked other countries. In Canada, authorities introduced vaccination passport requirements in mid-January for truckers who cross the border with the United States, after the had latter introduced the same rules.

Tensions spiraled by February, as dozens of truckers gridlocked Canada’s capital, Ottawa, for weeks as part of a series of protests against the restrictions, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government forced to invoke extraordinary measures to disperse the “Freedom Convoy.”

Incidentally, French drivers, inspired by the protests in Canada, moved to Paris to hold a rally against COVID-19 restrictions in February. More than 7,000 police officers and gendarmes were mobilized in Paris to prevent the blocking of roads in the city by the Freedom Convoy, with police reporting that 500 vehicles were stopped near the capital and another 300 vehicles inside the city.

The Chinese government was forced to develop a new package of 10 measures aimed at easing its controversial zero-tolerance policy for COVID-19, which had triggered mass protests across the country towards the end of the year.

Acting upon numerous local COVID-19 outbreaks in the country in the fall, the Chinese authorities opted to introduce partial lockdowns in some areas, while also forcing residents to undergo PCR testing on a daily basis. Starting from November 24, restrictive measures were tightened in Beijing, Shanghai, and several other large cities. But exhausted residents responded by spilling their public discontent over the restrictions out on the streets. Protesters demanded an end to blanket lockdowns and daily testing.

The Chinese government has since ordered all regions to select epidemiological risk zones more carefully, designating as such only those buildings, apartments, floors, and households where there are confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the State Council. Furthermore, only those who work or temporarily stay in a high-risk area will have to undergo PCR testing, with PCR tests and electronic "health codes" no longer needed for traveling from one region of China to another.

In other countries, violent protests erupted in 2022 over economic issues that had hugely impacted their lives. Unrest erupted in Sri Lanka over the government’s mishandling of the island nation's economy. It rocked the country from March-end and peaked in May 2022.

Protesters blamed then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and members of his family, who occupied key Cabinet seats, for the country's woes. Thousands of protesters stormed the President's House in July, denouncing the financial mismanagement that had resulted in a foreign exchange crisis in the nation of 22 million people. People had been facing food and fuel shortages for months due to a crippling shortage of foreign currency reserves which left the import-reliant economy unable to pay for food, fuel, and other essentials. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to resign from the presidency and flee abroad in the wake of unprecedented public unrest. On July 20, the parliament elected Ranil Wickremesinghe as president.

In the United Kingdom, a country whose politics was rocked by turmoil in 2022, with three prime ministers taking over one after the other in just two months, protests were manifold throughout the year.

In February, from Plymouth to Glasgow, thousands of people took to the streets to protest against the cost of living crisis, climate change, and to show support for rail workers striking over pay. Organized by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) and the People's Assembly, the demonstrations came after regulator Ofgem announced a 54 percent increase in the energy price cap in April.

With inflation running rampant in 2022, the UK witnessed a severe increase in the prices of food and energy, and the country went on to see many more protests as the bitter squeeze on household budgets increased. Anger grew over the summer months, and spiraled ahead of winter. Britain’s economic woes resulted in several strikes across the country, with walkouts by rail workers, nurses, emergency responders, and postal workers. Disgruntled people demanded wages that would allow them to survive amid the ongoing cost of living crisis.

Climate protesters were not to be outdone, with activists carrying out blockades of several oil terminals in the country and even staging a lengthy protest in the capital in September and October. Just Stop Oil protesters demanded that the UK government halt all new oil and gas licenses.

France has also been gripped by a widespread protest movement amid the ongoing cost of living crisis. Public transport workers and other staff in Paris and across the Ile-de-France region took industrial action over wages. The social protest began with the enterprises of the transnational energy groups TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil on September 27. The staff of these companies demanded a salary increase of at least 10 percent against the background of galloping inflation.

Meanwhile, cost of living protests in Spain mirrored those happening across France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries. The Spanish government has introduced two extraordinary inflation-busting packages over the past few months to subsidize petrol and public transport, while also imposing windfall taxes on the excess profits of energy companies and banks.

As economic woes fueled, in large part, by restrictions slapped on Russia over its special military operation in Ukraine increasingly piled up across the continent, countries like the Czech Republic, Germany, and Moldova witnessed protests calling on their governments to change their pro-Ukraine posture and decrying it as responsible for driving up fuel prices and therefore exacerbating inflation.

Surging gas prices that followed the government's new liquefied gas pricing policy triggered mass protests in several Kazakh cities at the outset of the year. Clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officers occurred between late January 4 and early January 5 in the city of Almaty.

Prices skyrocketed, initially rising from around 60 tenges to 80 and then up to 120 tenges (around $3) per liter, prompting residents of Aktau and Zhanaozen in the southwestern Mangystau region to take to the streets. Shortly after the protests erupted, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered a commission to resolve the issue, with the government promising to lower gas prices. But the protests spread from the southwest to large cities, including the capital Astana. A state of emergency was introduced across all of Kazakhstan.

Nearly 10,000 were arrested in the Central Asian state in the wake of the unrest, with an investigation indicating that well-coordinated armed groups trained abroad had hijacked the protests over soaring fuel prices.

Pakistan braced for political drama when the country's ex-PM Imran Khan, who was ousted from power in a no-confidence motion in April by Shehbaz Sharif, then leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, began to hold large-scale public gatherings. He accused the US of instigating the no-confidence motion over Washington's unhappiness with Islamabad’s “independent foreign policy” under the previous PTI government. The cricketer-turned-politician had been calling for the dissolution of the country's parliament and early elections, and announced a "long march" organized by Pakistani opposition party Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by him.

Khan sustained bullet injuries during an alleged assassination attempt on November 3, days after kicking off the march to Islamabad in the last week of October. However, thousands of Khan’s supporters resumed the march without their leader on November 10.

Iranian authorities confirmed earlier in the month that over 200 people, including police officers, security forces personnel, civilians killed in terrorist attacks, and “innocent people who fell victim to plots of anti-revolutionary groups,” had died in violence over the two-and-a-half months of protests since September.

The unrest swept across many major cities following the September 16 death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini in a hospital in Tehran. The woman suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma after an argument with a minder at a morality police facility over alleged improper wearing of the hijab. The next day after her death, rumors spread that she had been beaten into a coma by police. This ignited protests in the capital, which quickly spread to other major population centers. However, medical records and security camera footage released by the government later showed that Amini did not appear to have suffered any physical mistreatment at the hands of the authorities.

Iran blamed the protests on outside forces, including American and Israeli intelligence. It also slammed a “political” “fact-finding mission” proposed by Western nations at the UN to investigate “human rights abuses” related to Tehran’s handling of the unrest.

The US saw mass protests over what was claimed by some to be an “attack on reproductive health care,” after, first, a leaked draft opinion by Supreme Court justices hinted at a looming reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. Protests and outcry began in early May, with demonstrators rallying in huge numbers outside the apex court on Capitol Hill, and even marching to the homes of some of the six conservative justices.

On June 24, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, a nearly 50-year precedent that had protected Americans' access to abortion as a federal right. Since the ruling, numerous pre-Roe laws banning abortion immediately reactivated, and several states rushed to pass new restrictive bills. At least 14 states have banned abortion.

While inflation, cost of living, and other hardships plaguing Europe have also made themselves felt in the Unites States, the latter has also reeled from a blight such as a rise in gun violence. Thousands rallied demanding action and urging gun control legislation in June, pointing to the Uvalde elementary school shooting in Texas that killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers, a shooting that left 10 Black people dead in a Buffalo supermarket, the Parkland tragedy, and hundreds of other mass shootings across the country.

In Washington, the demonstrations were organized by March for Our Lives.

In a vote that marked the first time in over 20 years that Congress passed a measure to outlaw the transfer, sale, or possession of assault weapons, the US House of Representatives passed a bill in late July containing language to "ban the sale, import, manufacture or transfer of certain semi-automatic weapons."