Chinese Journalist Sentenced to Four Years in Prison

The CCP silences another COVID-19 whistleblower for “maliciously spreading” information.

The police move to drive away journalists, citizens and rights activists who asked to enter the courtroom before the trial of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan. (Photo: Handout)

The sad story of Dr. Li Wenliang takes only a few sentences in the telling.

Li was one of the first to report a strange new virus in Wuhan, China, months before anyone had even whispered “Coronavirus”.

In any other nation, Dr. Li Wenliang would have been celebrated. Had Chinese authorities heeded his early warning, many might have been saved. COVID-19 might never have left mainland China at all.

Instead of alerting the international medical community to the dangers of a new novel coronavirus, he was jailed for “spreading rumors”, “making false comments” which “disturbed the social order.”

Social order, around the world, was about to become a great deal more disturbed, but we didn’t know it.

Dr. Li Wenliang eventually succumbed to COVID-19 himself. The Chinese Communist Party, never interested in any narrative that might disturb the social order of the Chinese Communist Party’s firm grip on China, lionized Dr. Li Wenliang posthumously

At the same time, the CCP continued to silence reporting on COVID.