Remembering Dr. Li Wenliang: the hero who warned about the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China and paid a terrible price

How the Chinese Communist Party prioritized power, punishing whistleblowers such as Dr. Li Wenliang, and plunged the world into a pandemic.

Dr. Li Wenliang warned about Covid-19

 

Today remembering Dr. Li Wenliang, the hero who warned about the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. He was grabbed by secret police in the middle of the night and threatened with prosecution for making "untrue statements." 

He died two years ago today on February 7, 2020. The police state had silenced him and COVID-19 took his life, but the whistleblower is not forgotten despite the efforts of Beijing to erase him. 

On March 15, 2020 this blog warned about Communist regimes, such as the ones operating in China and Cuba, to engage in the "denial of objective reality, truth and an ability to systematically lie to achieve is sometimes effective in taking over a country and imposing a totalitarian dictatorship, but is a disaster when dealing with infectious diseases, and an outbreak such as the coronavirus."

Dr. Li Wenliang warned about intitial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan

Others in China, who questioned the Chinese Communist dictatorship's response to COVID-19 went missing. A high profile case was Chinese tycoon Ren Zhiqiang who "wrote in a scathing essay that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was a power-hungry 'clown.' He said the ruling Communist Party’s strict limits on free speech had exacerbated the coronavirus epidemic," reported  Javier C. Hernández in The New York Times on March 14, 2020. 

Mr. Zhiqiang went missing at the time, and reappeared in September 2020 when he was found "guilty of corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds" in a Beijing court fined $620,000 and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The message to the Chinese populace is clear: criticize the Chinese Communist leadership at your own peril. Transparency and the free exchange of ideas and data are non-existent in such an environment. 

This is not good in the midst of a pandemic.

Rewarding this behavior that has led to the loss of millions of lives with a Winter Olympics is an outrage. This is part of the reason why I am boycotting the Winter Olympics in Beijing this year, and encourage others to do so.

Please watch and share "The Story Of Coronavirus Whistleblower: Dr Li Wenliang" made by Brut India.