Communist China launched a new campaign of criminal persecution and intimidation to tighten information control over the infected regions.

 

In response to the images and videos from the desperate people in Wuhan that contradicted the official statements about the success of the countermeasures against the coronavirus, the Chinese authorities introduced the capital punishment and raised penalties for spreading rumours. “Those who intentionally spread new coronavirus pathogens and endanger public safety may be suspected of violating the provisions of Article 114 and 115, Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Law, ‘Dangerous methods threaten public safety’, the new law stated. Heilongjiang Higher Peoples’ Court issued new regulations, the “Urgent Notice on Severely Combatting Criminal Crimes Related to Epidemic Prevention and Control”. “The maximum sentence is the death penalty”, the court stated.

In a separate effort to prevent the Chinese netizens from sharing the information embarrassing for the Chinese Communist Party, the Court increased penalties for spreading rumours to 14 years imprisonment.


Chinese police officers at the door of the private apartment demanding from
a person to remove her social media posts. (Source: O: Video from Wuhan)


One video posted by the account, which The Owner confirmed as the one of a Wuhan inhabitant, showed a group of four uniformed policemen standing at the door of an apartment and demanding from a person inside to remove her posts from her social media account.

Communist Party continued its fight against those, who tried to reveal the truth by censoring the report in a popular newspaper Caijing on the recent situation in the hospitals in Wuhan.

In the article, a doctor from Wuhan was quoted saying, that there is no medicine against the new type of pneumonia. He revealed that many patients are being sent home, and only critically ill can be admitted to the hospital.

Caijing  journalists also revealed that the local Communist Party introduced the standards, which sick must meet if they want to be hospitalised, or even examined by a doctor. For instance, the patient’s CT must reveal so-called “ground-glass” changes in both lungs, and their body temperature must be above 37.5 degrees.

The article "People outside the statistics: They died of "general pneumonia"?" challenged the accuracy of the official statics regarding the sick, and deaths due to the coronavirus. The journalist said, that if the patient did not receive a diagnose in the hospital, it would not be included in the official numbers. The Wuhan health officials did not include some case of deaths in the official numbers because they claimed, they died due to "general pneumonia".

The authors also quoted anonymous sources in the medical staff of the hospitals in Wuhan, who said that only 75 per cent of severely sick that required hospitalisation could be admitted due to the catastrophic shortages. “A department director of a designated hospital told the Caijing reporter, that about one hundred and twenty fever patients a day received treatment in the outpatient clinic, and about eighty had lung infections, but only five could be admitted to hospital”, the article stated.

"The virus is a biological weapon"

Challenging the official version of the origins of the epidemic the international expert on biological weapons said that he is confident that that the virus originated from the Biosafety Level 4 laboratory (BSL-4) in Wuhan. Dr Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law drafted the U.S. domestic legislation for the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, approved unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush stated.

Dr Boyle stated in an interview with Geopolitics and Empire internet show, that he believes the virus is potentially lethal and an offensive biological warfare weapon or dual-use biowarfare weapons agent genetically modified with gain of function properties, which is why the Chinese government originally tried to cover it up and is now taking drastic measures to contain it. The expert argued that the laboratory has a close links with WHO therefore the organisation is aware of the threat.

"This system does not tell the truth"

Distinguished Chinese intellectuals accused Communist Party authorities in Beijing for the disaster in Wuhan and demanded an apology from the First Secretary Xi Jinping.

“Mr Ma Guoqiang, Secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Communist Party Committee, sounded very guilty and remorseful”, observed Honorary Editor-in-Chief of Beijing Spring Mr Hu Ping. “But Xi Jinping was the appropriate person to apologise”, he emphasised. Mr Hu Ping also stated that Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang revealed that he could not inform about the transmission of the coronavirus without authorisation of Beijing Central Authorities of Communist Party.

Chinese intellectuals discussed the reasons for the catastrophic disaster in China during the show on the channel Voice of America for Chinese speakers.

"This has been the worst crisis we have faced, and it is probably only the second-worst to the famine of the 1960s", observed an eminent historian Zhang Lifan. Mr Zhang argued that the monopoly of the one-party dictatorship resulted in a monopoly over the aid resources, including relief supplies. He explained that the Beijing Central Communist Party imposed an information blockage after an incident. "This system is one that does not tell the truth, and this led to such a major disaster", Mr Zhang emphasised.

The WHO Director, Mr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged the international community to prepare for an outbreak of the coronavirus worldwide. He emphasised the business sector needs to provide reliable information to employees and how to protect them from getting infected.

On Tuesday night the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department stated that it was sending 300 "journalists" to Hubei and Wuhan, Chinese cities most affected by the coronavirus infection.