He ducked Chinese authorities to report on coronavirus
in Wuhan. Then he disappeared.
By
Feb. 10, 2020 at 2:51 a.m. GMT+11
A Chinese lawyer and
citizen journalist whose dispatches from Wuhan have offered a chilling glimpse
of the conditions inside the coronavirus hot zone has been missing since
Thursday, friends and relatives say.
Chen Qiushi slipped
into the city of 11 million on Jan. 24, just after a citywide lockdown took
effect, and spent days interviewing people about the outbreak and filming what
he saw.
On Thursday, after
several of his reports circulated around the world, Chen stopped responding to
calls and messages, setting off an online campaign to track him down. The
34-year-old knew he would be a likely target for law enforcement, so he gave
select friends access to his accounts, instructing them to change the passwords
if they went more than 12 hours without hearing from him.
According to Chen’s
friends, authorities told his family over the weekend that he had been forcibly
quarantined in an undisclosed location.
Xu Xiaodong, a
well-known mixed martial artist and friend of Chen’s, said in a YouTube live stream that
Qingdao public security officers and state security officers told his parents
he had been “detained in the name of quarantine."
“Qiushi’s mother
immediately asked them where and when he was taken away; they declined to say,”
said Xu, an outspoken critic of the Chinese government.
The friend who is now
managing Chen’s Twitter account told The Washington Post on Sunday that Xu’s
video was authentic.
“We can do nothing,
not even his parents,” said the friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
to protect Chen. “They didn’t even tell his parents where he is or how he is
now. They didn’t allow them to make any phone calls.”
Onboard a government plane
evacuating Americans from the coronavirus epicenter
On Feb. 5, the U.S. government began evacuating hundreds of
Americans from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, using
chartered jumbo jets. (The Washington Post)
In one of his most
widely circulated videos, Chen said he knew the risks he was facing.
“I’m afraid. In front
of me is disease, behind me is China’s legal and administrative power,” he
said, according to multiple translations. “But as
long as I’m alive, I’ll speak what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard. I’m not
afraid of dying. Why should I be afraid of you, Communist Party?”
Chen’s disappearance
fueled an upsurge of anger over the Chinese government’s response to the
coronavirus outbreak, coming just days after the death of Li Wenliang, the “whistleblower doctor”
who is considered the first to have sounded the alarm about the new strain of
the disease in late December.
Li, who was the same
age as Chen, was detained and silenced in early January by Wuhan police, who
accused him of “rumor-mongering.” He contracted coronavirus after he returned
to work and died last week, triggering an outpouring of grief
and rage and transforming him into a symbol of Beijing’s failures.
Chen, a rights lawyer
from northeastern China, drew international attention last August when he traveled to Hong Kong to
report on the city’s pro-democracy uprising, challenging the narrative pushed
by state media that the protesters were violent separatists. He said Chinese
authorities deleted his social media accounts shortly afterward.
When news of the
coronavirus outbreak started percolating, Chen initially did not know whether
to take it seriously, in part because domestic and foreign coverage of the
virus were so different, as he told Quartz this month.
When Beijing
announced that the entire city of Wuhan would be quarantined, however, he
decided to investigate on his own, well aware that he would be putting himself
in danger.
He took a train to
Hankou on the northwestern edge of Wuhan, carrying little more than a backpack,
sleeping bag and cellphone, he told Quartz.
Over the following
days, he posted videos of patients languishing in overflowing hospital lobbies
that were shared around the world, along with vivid descriptions of the
desperate struggle to contain the disease.
The coronavirus is
forcing cruise ships to take drastic measures
Cruise ships and their passengers are being quarantined and
denied entry into ports of call over fears of spreading the coronavirus
further. (The Washington Post)
Using privacy tools
to circumvent the country’s tight restrictions on Twitter and YouTube, he
accused the Chinese government of concealing the true scope of the outbreak,
which as of Sunday morning had killed more than
800 people worldwide and sickened more than 37,000.
Chen told Quartz he
had been to four Wuhan hospitals and the construction site of a temporary field
hospital.
“In the beginning,
there were not many people in hospitals,” he said. “But after I met more local
youngsters, I heard from them that the situation is still severe. They do not
have enough testing kits or beds, and doctors are extremely overwhelmed.
Workers and their leaders at the construction sites for the new hospitals are
exhausted, too.”
His activities put
him on authorities’ radar almost instantly. On Jan. 25, he was banned from WeChat.
A few days later, the country’s censors blocked his face and name on the
popular Chinese messaging platform, according to the Hong Kong Free Press. At
some point, police went looking for him at his parents’ house, he said.
“They ‘educated’ my
parents to tell me not to spread negative comments about the government,” he
told Quartz.
The friend operating
Chen’s Twitter account said Chen did not report any signs of sickness in their
last exchange before he disappeared.
“I asked about his
health condition. He answered, ‘I’m good, I’m good,’ ” the friend said.
When Chen stopped
answering messages, the friend said he tried not to worry. “At first I thought
it was nothing, because it happened many times. I try my best not to disturb
him too frequently because I know he must be very busy there,” the friend said.
“But as time passed by, my concerns grew and grew.”
To protect himself
from the disease, Chen wore gloves, safety glasses and a long winter coat, and
sprayed himself with disinfectant every time he came in from outdoors, he told
Quartz. He vowed to keep reporting at any cost.
“As one of the
remaining reporters on the front line, I could help spread some information,”
he told Quartz. “For the political risks of doing so, I have no time to worry
about that for now."
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