China’s war on free speech may have played a role from the very first moment of the outbreak, as the regime censored reports and even warnings from doctors.
“In February 2020, a doctor who was accused of “spreading rumours” and silenced after sounding the alarm over the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, died from the spread of the very virus he was trying to stop. News of Li Wenliang’s death sparked anger across China, with people mobilizing online to oppose censorship of news about the virus outbreak, which has so far taken over a thousand lives.”, amnesty.org reported.
During a press briefing about the COVID-19 outbreak, the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked if the US plans to sue China over the outbreak and the fact that China censored important information from the beginning of the pandemic:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201128194416if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xq5rbbsn6B4?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1 Video PBS NewsHour on YouTube.
“With respect to the first, I’ll leave to Congress. I’m not doing that anymore, I’ll leave to Congress to decide how they want to proceed. But as I said earlier, today is not the day for recriminations and accountability.
We need to make clear that the information that is available to everyone in the world is available. That means full transparency by everyone, including by the Chinese Communist Party.”, Pompeo said.
It turns out, nation-states are “immune” from such lawsuits, but the world is definitely aware that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for the censorship and possible the death of the doctor who tried to warn us about the new virus in a private chat which probably was spied on by the government, the doctor was then reprimanded by police and died later from the virus.
Events like this and the Hong Kong protests are triggering the people in China who are starting to notice that their government’s war on human rights and free speech is causing global devastation.