Updated April 22, 2020, 8:59 a.m.
Since February, no trace of Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua has been found. All three reported from Wuhan, full clinics, dead people, problems. Security forces took them away – but what happened to them?
Li Zehua was part of the system until he no longer wanted to belong. “A state security car is chasing me, I’m in Wuhan,” said Li. It’s one of the last signs of life of the former television host, recorded on Youtube.
Li quit his job at the state television broadcaster CCTV in early February to report on the situation in the epicenter of the corona crisis. The mid-twenties posted videos of crematoriums, laboratories and funeral homes within the restricted zone on the Internet. And his cell phone camera also streamed live as Li was taken away by security forces. That was on February 26th.
Since then, there is no trace of him. Just like in the case of two other men: Fang Bin disappeared in central China on February 9, Chen Qiushi on February 6. All of them were independent citizen reporters who wanted to show their fellow citizens and the world what was happening in Wuhan. But even two months later, it’s still not clear what happened to them.
Also read: All developments related to the corona virus in our live blog
Excuse for quarantine
The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) Interest Group listed nearly 900 cases at the end of MarchChinese police have punished Chinese Internet users for their Internet activities or online information sharing about the corona virus.
According to Fang, “scaremongering” is accused, there are no further details for Li and Chen. A friend Lis said that US magazine “Vice”that Li had been taken away by unidentified officers on that day and that he had not heard from him afterwards. But nobody knows who exactly took Li and where he is being held.
The procedure is similar to that of the other two missing men: According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, which referred to family and friends in mid-February, police officers picked up blogger and former textile retailer Fang and lawyer Chen “under the pretext of quarantine” – since then they have been diving no longer on.
Images from overwhelmed hospitals
Both had filmed in the overwhelmed hospitals in Wuhan, thereby spreading critical information from the authorities’ perspective at the beginning of the outbreak. Chen said in an online video: “There are not enough face masks, not enough protective suits, not enough material and, more importantly, not enough tests.”
The Chinese authorities have still not commented on the whereabouts of the men. “I have never heard of this person,” said the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, in one Interview with the US news website “Axios” on the case of Chen. Reports of its disappearance had been going around the world for weeks. “I didn’t know him then and I don’t know him today,” said Tiankai after several questions.
The China expert at Amnesty International, Patrick Poon, worries that citizen journalists will be tortured or otherwise ill-treated. “Anyone who disappears is at very high risk of torture,” said Frances Eve, vice research director of CHRD, the British tabloid “Daily Mail”. Attempts are being made to “force critics to admit that their activities have been criminal or harmful to society,” said Eve.
Observers believe the three men are stuck in secret detention centers. According to the “Daily Mail”, extra-judicial detention is described by officials as “surveillance of living space at a specific location”.
Censorship comes before health
The impact of Chinese news control, “which puts the enforcement of censorship orders on health protection in case of doubt”, “felt the whole world in the corona crisis”, the journalist organization told Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday.
China has come under increasing pressure in the past few days because of its handling of the corona crisis. However, the government in Beijing denied allegations to have covered up the scale of the epidemic in their own country. However, the authorities corrected that a little later Number of corona deaths in Wuhan up 50 percent.
To the fate of “corona Whistleblower “reminded former European Liberal leader and current Brexit chief negotiator of the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, on Monday.
Europe and the whole world must ask themselves what happened to them, the 67-year-old appealed on Twitter. “They were all heroes. We can’t let them down!”
Sources used:
- With material from dpa and AFP
- “Vice”: “A Chinese Citizen Journalist Covering Coronavirus Live Streamed His Own Arrest”
- Deutsche Welle: “Stay critical as a pillar of democracy”
- BBC: “Coronavirus: Why have two reporters disappeared in Wuhan?”
- “Daily Mail”: “China‘s disappeared “
- “Axios”: “Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai on Missing Journalist”
Experts believe that the coronavirus comes from an animal market in Wuhan. Another theory has recently been circulating, especially in the USA. However, China has now rejected this.
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