lørdag 8. februar 2020

Li Wenliang: Chinese academics call for justice for coronavirus whistle-blower

A group of Chinese academics have published an open letter urging the government to protect free speech and apologise for the death of Li Wenliang, the doctor who lost his life to the
coronavirus just weeks after being reprimanded by the police for trying to warn people about it.

Tang Yiming, the head of the School of Chinese Classics at Central China Normal University in Wuhan – the city at the centre of the outbreak – said he and his fellow signatories spent a day discussing the content of the letter. “The key point is freedom of speech, rights guaranteed by the constitution,” he said. “If the words of Dr Li had not been treated as rumours, if every citizen was allowed to practise their right to voice the truth, we would not be in such a mess, we would not have a national catastrophe with an international impact.”