Shi Jun, a neurosurgeon in Heilongjiang, China, who reportedly volunteered to treat patients in Wuhan at the onset of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, killed himself by stabbing his thigh with a toothbrush after being arrested and facing five-hour interrogations, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Thursday.
Shi’s death surfaced in reports on Chinese government-controlled social media outlets like WeChat and Weixin. An extensive Weixin post featuring photos of Shi and allegedly-deleted reports praising his work in Wuhan before his arrest remains available through the Internet Archive, but visiting the original URL of the post pulls up a message stating that the post violated the site’s “regulations.”
The news of Shi’s death recalls the similar case of Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, where the Chinese coronavirus originated, who police arrested, interrogated, and forced to issue a humiliating “apology” in early 2020 after Li told fellow doctors in a WeChat group that he had seen patients with symptoms of an unknown respiratory infection. Believing it to be contagious, Li reportedly told the other doctors to take infectious disease precautions like washing their hands and wearing masks, which Wuhan police used to accuse him of spreading panic in the days before China admitted to the discovery of a novel virus. Li died in February 2020 of a Chinese coronavirus infection, according to Chinese Communist Party media.
Like Li, Shi’s death is reportedly fueling growing bitterness around the country against the Communist Party for its insistence of using wide-sweeping lockdowns to contain coronavirus infections. Last month, Communist Party authorities admitted to uncontrolled outbreaks erupting in 28 of the country’s 31 provinces, the largest ones surfacing in Jilin province – a northeastern region bordering Heilongjiang – and Shanghai, the economic capital of the country.
As of this week, the central government in Beijing has forced a brutal lockdown over Shanghai that has resulted in many of the city’s 26 million residents struggling to procure food, being shipped off to quarantine camps, and being torn away from their infant and toddler children. Much of the city is trapped in their homes at gunpoint. Chinese state media, run from Beijing, has reported that dictator Xi Jinping and the Communist Party Politburo have ordered Shanghai officials to “strictly” implement the lockdown, seemingly against their wishes.
While reportedly taking place nearly 1,500 miles away, Shi’s death, Radio Free Asia reported, is reflective of growing discontent with the government’s handling of the pandemic.
Radio Free Asia confirmed with a fellow doctor identified only as “Chen” that Shi had died “in the course of the investigation” that resulted in his arrest. Several attempts to reach government offices and confirm Shi’s fate resulted in nervous refusals to clarify the situation.
According to RFA – citing the Chinese-language reports circulating on social media – Shi was arrested after an outbreak of Chinese coronavirus occurred at his hospital.
“The outbreak was started by a woman who used her mother’s PCR test result to gain admission to the hospital for brain surgery, but who passed the virus on to other patients, causing an outbreak that led to a county-wide lockdown and billions of yuan in economic losses, according to local media reports,” RFA relayed.
Police reportedly identified Shi, the head of neurosurgery at the Jidong County People’s Hospital in the northeastern province, as the person primarily responsible for the outbreak, although the reports indicated that he, too, was a target of the alleged fraud that spread the disease.
A post from the anonymous Chinese WeChat account “Letters from Katyusha,” reproduced on Weixin but censored shortly thereafter, claimed that Shi was subjected to “four-to-five-hour interrogations” and accused of costing Jidong County “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“During this time, he endured a medical examination wearing handcuffs and shackles and suffered humiliation in front of his peers,” the account claimed.
“The superposition of the two factors caused his mental breakdown. When he came back from the physical examination, he used a toothbrush to stab the aorta in his thigh,” the report claimed.
Radio Free Asia’s report aligns with the WeChat posts, and RFA confirmed with “Chen,” the fellow doctor who served as a source, that Shi had died. Government offices refused to address RFA’s questions, according to the agency’s report.
“Calls to the Jidong county police department, the county health bureau and the Jidong county government rang unanswered during office hours on Thursday,” RFA reported.
New Tang Dynasty (NTD), a television network affiliated with the persecuted Falun Gong spiritual movement, similarly reported Shi’s suicide and the detail that Shi had volunteered to treat patients in Wuhan in 2020. According to NTD, Chinese news reports praising Shi had disappeared from the internet.
Social media users spread a video this week of the alleged report showing a man, who they claim is Shi, featured as a national hero for volunteering in Wuhan. In the video, the man appears to be greeted by his twin daughters. Breitbart News could not independently confirm that the man in the video is Shi.
Chinese Communist virus kills another hero of the epidemic‼️
Two years ago, the heroic doctor Shijun, who assisted Hubei province for 39 days, worked as the chief doctor of Jidong People's Hospital in Heilongjiang and during the Spring Festival this year, an epidemic broke out. pic.twitter.com/Vpyk4l98hL
— 澳喜要闻（新号） (@ahnewspace) April 4, 2022
Li Wenliang, the Wuhan ophthalmologist, similarly became the focus of rapidly-deleted unverified reports through Chinese social media following his initial detention. Li was reportedly among eight people arrested before China admitted to the discovery of a novel virus in early 2020 for spreading “rumors”; Li had warned fellow doctors to be more cautious about washing hands and wearing surgical masks as he had seen evidence of an unknown contagious disease spreading.
In February 2020, conflicting reports out of China claimed that the 34-year-old was simultaneously dead and “clinging to life,” as the Global Times, a national state propaganda outlet, had published an obituary but Wuhan Central Hospital told CNN that he was still alive. The Global Times deleted its obituary but republished it minutes later, suggesting some conflict regarding how Communist Party officials wished to approach the news.
Li remains a prominent figure in the minds of Chinese citizens. His page on Weibo, a Chinese government-approved social media network, has become a message board for citizens to express gratitude to health workers, frustrations with the government, or simply attempt to talk to Li and update him on the state of the pandemic posthumously.
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