China Censors Photos of Tedros After W.H.O. Chief Condemns Lockdowns

FILE - World Health Organisation Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus waves as he arrives for a meet
AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, file
Frances Martel

China’s government-controlled social media outlet Weibo began censoring the official United Nations account and banning users from publishing comments by World Health Organization (W.H.O.) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday – and reportedly censoring photos of top official – after Tedros called China’s coronavirus lockdown policy “unsustainable.”

Tedros – who won the top stop at the W.H.O. with Chinese support and has been a consistent vote of confidence for communist dictator Xi Jinping – made the remarks Tuesday in response to a question from Reuters about China’s use of mass house arrest and quarantine camps to eradicate the disease. While much of the world has moved on to using vaccines and therapeutics to contain the damage caused by the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party continues to embrace what it calls “dynamic zero-Covid,” a total lockdown policy. China’s largest city, Shanghai, has been under lockdown for over a month.

“As we all know the virus is evolving, changing its behaviors, becoming more transmissible and with that changing behavior, changing your measures will be very important,” Tedros said, according to a transcript posted online by the W.H.O. “When we talk about the zero COVID strategy, we don’t think that it is sustainable considering the behavior of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future, and especially when we have now a good knowledge, understanding of the virus.”

Tedros said that his organization had attempted to explain this to “Chinese experts and … indicated that the approach will not be sustainable and, considering the behavior of the virus, I think a shift will be very important.”

The United Nations’ Weibo account shared a post on Wednesday relaying Tedros’ comments that nearly immediately disappeared from the site, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

“A Chinese post on the United Nations Weibo account giving notice of the comments was removed and soon after being censored, internet users searching for the post were given a notification that the content was illegal,” the newspaper observed. “While traces of the removal were then further erased from Weibo – China’s Twitter-like social media platform – many Weibo users complained that not only were screen captures of the UN post removed, but even pictures of Tedros became a target of China’s sophisticated social media censorship apparatus.”

Other media outlets reported that searching Weibo for hashtags like #Tedros and #WHO revealed no results as of Wednesday.

Tedros has faced tremendous criticism for his handling of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic since it became a global problem in 2020 largely because of his supportive attitude towards the Communist Party. Under Tedros, the W.H.O. shared misinformation on Twitter in January 2020 claiming that the Chinese coronavirus was not transmissible from person to person. The agency has also insisted on banning the nation of Taiwan from participating in its World Health Assembly and ignored a warning from the Taiwanese government in late 2019 that it had evidence of a contagious respiratory disease spreading in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus originated.

“Taiwan did report our concern on the severity of coronavirus last December to the WHO,” the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in the United States told Breitbart News in March 2020. “But as a rule, our reporting is always a one-way street. WHO mostly ignored our messages and never shared information as they do to other countries.”

 

A report in the German newspaper Der Spiegel published in May 2020 accused Tedros of delaying the declaration of a pandemic at dictator Xi Jinping’s request. The W.H.O. denied that the phone call Der Spiegel claimed prompted the delay ever happened.

Tedros was most recently in Beijing in February to promote the 2022 Winter Olympics – an event widely condemned around the world given the fact that China is currently engaging in genocide against ethnic minorities within its borders.

The Chinese Communist Party granted Tedros the honor of carrying the Olympic torch.

“Olympics is about hope, solidarity, unity, and peace. Especially hope to end this pandemic,” Tedros said in a video posted to Twitter from Beijing.“The Olympic Games bring the nations of the world together in competition, as athletes strive to fulfill the Olympic motto of ‘faster, higher, stronger, together.’”

China’s “dynamic zero-Covid” policy – fueled by the mass house arrest and internment of millions into camps – has devastated the country’s economy, particularly following the decision to lock down Shanghai. Shanghai’s first-quarter economic growth dropped five percent behind its growth during the same time in 2021 and has seen catastrophic drops in industrial production, retail sales, and consumer prices. The lockdown has also resulted in reports of widespread human rights abuses, particularly the starving out of people trapped in apartment buildings as the government fails to provide its promised food and medical aid.

In an attempt to contain the damage, the Chinese government has allowed some major manufacturers to return to business, but only if factory workers are trapped within the factory and subjected to routine coronavirus testing.

Chinese officials have predicted that the Shanghai lockdown will continue for at least another month.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

 

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