Chinese Police Interrogate Associates of COVID-19 Whistleblower After Prison Release

Fang Bin (back, 4th from R) and friends gather for a meal on July 2, 2023. Courtesy of source

Chinese citizen journalist Fang Bin finally had his first meeting with friends and associates on July 2, over 2 months after the regime released him from a 3-year jail term and forced him to become homeless. However, his friends were targeted immediately after the meeting. At least 7 were summoned and interrogated by Wuhan police.

“All participants were being interviewed, one after another,” said Yiming (pseudonym), one of the participants, in an interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.

The police immediately visited one of the participants who had posted about the event online, warning him to keep quiet. The police also arrested another participant known as “Qianqian”—whose whereabouts remain unknown.

In the police interview, the questions included what was discussed at the dinner, and who had posted the news about the gathering. In addition, the police stressed that photos and videos of the gathering must be stopped from spreading, according to Yiming.

China’s Concealment of the Pandemic

In the early days of the COVID-19 outbreaks, human-to-human transmission of the virus was reported as early as mid-December, 2019.

Around Dec. 25, 2019, the Department of Gastroenterology at Wuhan’s Fifth Hospital and the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese & Western Medicine both found abnormal cases of pneumonia, and admitted three patients from Wuhan’s South China Seafood Market.

On Dec. 31, 2019, Chinese media in Wuhan were restricted from reporting pneumonia-related news. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission concluded that its investigations had found “no obvious human-to-human transmission.”

Despite the rapid and far-ranging spread of the disease in various hospitals in Wuhan, and the high rates of infection among medical staff, the authorities continued their claim that the virus was “preventable and controllable.”

The regime withheld the truth about the pandemic, and suppressed those who exposed the outbreaks.

Dr. Li Wenliang, for instance, was officially reprimanded by the police for “spreading rumors” when he tried to warn colleagues about the outbreaks in Wuhan in Jan. 2020. Dr. Li died that February after contracting the virus.

Mr. Fang, a Wuhan businessman, was the first person to bring to light the severity of the COVID-19 virus in the outbreak epicenter that was Wuhan City in early 2020.

Mr. Fang was disappeared on February 2 that year. Unofficial reports claimed that he had been secretly sentenced to three years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” in 2021.

Another citizen journalist, Zhang Zhan, visited Wuhan in February 2020 to record and upload videos online about the epidemic there.

Zhang Zhan stands outside a shop during a visit to Wuhan in Hubei province, China, on April 11, 2020. Courtesy of Melanie Wang via AP

She was arrested in May 2020 and sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” Ms. Zhang is currently still in prison.

The suppression of voices that exposed the truth behind the pandemic eventually drew international attention.

On April 1, 2020, Congressman Jim Banks (R-Ind.) called on the U.S. State Department to investigate the disappearance of three Chinese citizen journalists who had sought to expose the epidemic in Wuhan, including Mr. Fang, Li Zehua and Chen Qiushi.

Suppression Continues

For Mr. Fang, the suppression did not stop after he finished his jail term.

After his release on April 30, he was sent to Beijing, where his son lives. However, local authorities rejected his stay in Beijing, and local police drove him back to Wuhan that night.

Under the pressure of the Wuhan authorities, however, his family in Wuhan felt they could not offer him accommodation either. On May 1, therefore, Mr. Fang was left to sleep rough on the streets of Wuhan City.

Yiming said that local authorities confiscated Mr. Fang’s clothing company and warehouse, thus depriving him of his source of income.

Yiming also believes that the regime’s suppression of Mr. Fang will only continue in order to prevent the outside world from learning the truth about the pandemic.

Two official memos dated April 7, 2022 were released on Twitter this year on April 23. The leaked confidential documents were confirmed to have been issued by the Political and Legal Committee of the CCP’s Central Committee, according to the report by Radio Free Asia. The memos showed that a Wuhan court had handled Mr. Fang’s charge and verdict under the instruction of the CCP’s Political and Legal Committee.

Hong Ning contributed to this report.