WUHAN, China (AP) – A relative of a coronavirus victim in China demands to meet with a team of visiting experts from the World Health Organization, saying he must speak to affected families who say they are being smothered by the Chinese government.
China approved the visit of researchers under the auspices of the UN agency only after months of negotiations. He did not say whether they would be allowed to gather evidence or talk to families, saying only that the team could exchange views with Chinese scientists.
“I hope that WHO experts do not become a tool for spreading lies,” said Zhang Hai, whose father died of COVID-19 on February 1, 2020, after traveling to the Chinese city of Wuhan and becoming infected. “We have been looking for the truth tirelessly. This was a criminal act and I don’t want WHO to come to China to cover up these crimes ”.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The WHO team, which arrived in Wuhan on January 14 to investigate the origins of the virus, is expected to begin field work later this week after a 14-day quarantine.
Zhang, a native of Wuhan who now lives in the southern city of Shenzhen, has organized relatives of coronavirus victims in China to demand accountability from authorities.
Many are angry because the state has minimized the virus at the beginning of the outbreak, and tried to file lawsuits against the Wuhan government.
Relatives faced immense pressure from the authorities not to speak out. Authorities rejected the lawsuits, questioned Zhang and others repeatedly and threatened to fire relatives of those who speak to foreign media, according to interviews with Zhang and other relatives.
Zhang said family chat groups were closed shortly after the WHO team arrived in Wuhan, and he accused the city government of trying to silence them.
“Don’t pretend that we don’t exist, that we’re not looking for responsibility,” said Zhang. “You destroyed all of our platforms, but we still want everyone to know through the media that we haven’t given up.”
WHO says its visit to China is a scientific mission to investigate the origins of the virus, it is not an effort to attribute the blame, and that “interviews and in-depth analysis” of the first cases are necessary. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China initially rejected the demands of an international investigation after the Trump administration blamed Beijing for the virus, but gave in to global pressure in May for an investigation into the origins.
On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease officer in the United States, said at the World Economic Forum that the origins of the virus that brought the world to its knees are still unknown, “a big black box, which is horrible . “
The mission was repeatedly delayed by negotiations and setbacks, one of which generated an unusual public complaint by the WHO chief.
The arrival of the WHO mission reignited controversy over whether China allowed the virus to spread globally by reacting very slowly in the first few days.
From the beginning, WHO officials have been trying to get more cooperation from China, with limited success.
Audio recordings of WHO internal meetings obtained by the Associated Press and broadcast for the first time on Tuesday show that even while the WHO praised China in public, the authorities were complaining in particular about not getting enough information.
The UN agency has no supervisory powers, so it must rely on the goodwill of member countries.
Keiji Fukuda, a public health expert at the University of Hong Kong, called the visit an “image-building mission”, with China eager to be transparent and WHO eager to show that it is acting.
“Both China and WHO hope to get some brownie points,” said Fukuda, a former WHO official. “But it all comes down to what the team will have access to. Will they really be able to ask the questions they want to ask? “
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Kang reported from Beijing.