Relatives of Wuhan’s coronavirus dead yesterday said that Chinese authorities have deleted their social media group and are pressuring them to keep quiet while a WHO team is in the city to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins.
Scores of relatives have banded together online in a shared quest for accountability from Wuhan officials, who they blame for mishandling the outbreak that tore through the city a year ago.
The effort has been thwarted by official obstruction, monitoring of social media groups and intimidation, the next-of-kin say.
However, pressure has escalated in the past few days, apparently to muzzle any criticism and avoid embarrassment during the highly sensitive WHO investigation.
A WeChat group used by 80 to 100 family members over the past year was suddenly deleted without explanation about 10 days ago, said Zhang Hai (張海), a group member and a vocal critic of the outbreak’s handling.
“This shows that [Chinese authorities] are very nervous. They are afraid that these families will get in touch with the WHO experts,” said Zhang, 51, whose father died early in the outbreak of suspected COVID-19.
The WHO experts arrived in Wuhan on Jan. 14, and are due to emerge from a 14-day quarantine today and begin their probe into the virus’ origins under tight security.
“When the WHO arrived in Wuhan, [authorities] forcibly demolished [the group]. As a result we have lost contact with many members,” Zhang said.
Other next-of-kin confirmed the group’s deletion.
WeChat is operated by Chinese digital giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊). Popular platforms routinely censor content deemed objectionable by the government.
Relatives accuse the Hubei Province and Wuhan governments of allowing COVID-19 to explode out of control by trying to conceal the outbreak when it first emerged in the city in Dec. 2019, then failing to alert the public and bungling the response.
According to official Chinese figures, it killed nearly 3,900 in Wuhan, accounting for the vast majority of the 4,636 dead that China has reported.
Many next-of-kin distrust those numbers, saying that the scarcity of testing in the outbreak’s chaotic early days meant many likely died without being confirmed as having the disease.
Another family member, a retiree who says her adult daughter died of the virus in January last year, said that she was last week summoned by authorities and warned not to “speak to media or be used by others.”
Authorities came to her door on Tuesday “and sang the same old tune and gave me 5,000 yuan (US$773) in a ‘condolence payment,’” she said, requesting anonymity.
Zhang called on the WHO experts to “bravely” meet with next-of-kin, saying the investigators are likely to be misled or obstructed by Chinese authorities.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has