Reporters Without Borders denounces persecution of Chinese journalists has prevented people from preparing in time for the COVID-19 pandemic

Reporters Without Borders denounced this persecution of journalists by Chinese regime may have contributed to the spread of COVID-19, which has already left over three million deaths and hundreds of millions of infections worldwide.

According to the organization, preventing whistleblowers from warning Beijing about what was happening in the early days of the Wuhan outbreak prevented the world from being better prepared for the unexpected virus.

In the index provided by Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday, China is the fourth of the 10 with the weakest press freedom in the world. In the first three positions are the totalitarians Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistanand follows Djibouti, Vietnam, Iran, Syria, Laos and Cuba.

Regarding Xi Jinping’s regime, RSF stated that “continues to drive online censorship, surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented levels”.

“We can stay in the UK and believe that everything is fine here, but in reality what is happening on the other side of the world can affect us,” said Rebecca Vincent, the organization’s director of international campaigns. “I have said and will insist that if the press had been freer in China, then it is possible that a global pandemic would have been averted.”.

When the first cases of coronavirus were known, at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, the Chinese regime applied all its brutal force of censorship to stop any information about what was happening. Even the Chinese authorities persecuted Dr. Li Wenliang, who was the first to report what was happening and who later died of COVID-19.

Vincent said China is using its global influence to try to hide its abuses against its people and try to sell a different image of itself to the world. “China has more journalists in prison than any other country in the world, and this is leaking and starting because of international intelligence systems. The regime does everything possible to try to influence the way we obtain and perceive information„.

Many regimes have taken advantage of coronavirus emergencies to further restrict press freedom, which faces a “difficult situation” in 73 of the 180 countries analyzed and “very serious” in another 59, totaling 73% of the total. . “

At a time when misinformation, rumors and invitations to hate are spreading through social networks, where journalism is the best vaccine against these evils, in 73% of countries this vaccine is blocked “, assures Efe the general secretary of Reporters without frontiers (RSF), Christophe Deloire. The emergence of the health crisis has shaped the trends already mentioned in the last report, by favoring violations of press freedom. Deloire pointed out that in more than half of the UN states these types of violations have been registered.

(With information from AFP and EFE)

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