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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “morally culpable” through its negligence and repression, lies and propaganda for allowing coronavirus (COVID-19) to spread. It is having a lethal effect on the world’s poor, a cardinal from Myanmar says.
“The Chinese regime led by the all-powerful Xi Jinping and the CCP — not its people — owes us all an apology and compensation for the destruction it has caused,” Cardinal Muang Bo says.
Bo, who is head of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, denounced the CCP’s for hiding information about COVID-19.
He also condemned the CCP regime for punishing doctors and journalists who tried to warn the world of the virus’s potential danger.
“China as a country is a great and ancient civilization that has contributed so much to the world throughout history, but this regime is responsible, through its criminal negligence and repression, for the pandemic sweeping through our streets today,” Bo says.
He stresses that Chinese citizens are not to blame for the pandemic.
“Let me be clear — it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China, and no one should respond to this crisis with racial hatred toward the Chinese.”
“Indeed, the Chinese people were the first victims… and have long been the primary victims of their repressive regime. They deserve our sympathy, our solidarity and our support.”
“Many Chinese people did their best to alert the world to the potentially deadly disease, but were shut down,” Bo points out.
“Doctors who tried to raise the alarm … were ordered by police to ‘stop making false comments’.”
“One … was told he would be investigated for ‘spreading rumors’ and was forced by police to sign a confession. He later died after contracting coronavirus,” Bo says.
China’s secretive response is particularly damaging to the world’s poor, especially those living in countries neighboring China.
“Myanmar is extremely vulnerable,” Bo says.
It borders China where COVID-19 originated, and it is a poor nation without the health and social care resources more developed nations have.
“Hundreds of thousands of people in Myanmar are displaced by conflict, living in camps in the country or on our borders without adequate sanitation, medicines or care.”
“In such overcrowded camps the social distancing measures implemented by many countries are impossible to apply,” he explains.
“The healthcare systems in the most advanced countries in the world are overwhelmed, so imagine the dangers in a poor and conflict-ridden country like Myanmar.”
Infectious diseases physician and Harvard Medical School professor Richard Malley and the president of International Crisis Group Robert Malley, warn of “massive death tolls, economic meltdowns and skyrocketing unemployment and poverty” developing countries could be facing.
Furthermore, UN officials say an outbreak in the world’s refugee camps appears imminent.
As a means of compensation for exposing the world to COVID-19, Bo wants China to write off the debts other countries owe it.
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