Where does Covid-19 come from?
In Wuhan, China, the question divides
A WHO mission must be able to visit Wuhan in China from January 14.
Noel Celis AFP / File
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
A year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic that killed more than 1.9 people around the world, the origin of SARS-CoV2, the new coronavirus, remains unknown.
A WHO mission must be able to visit Wuhan in China from January 14.
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With our special correspondent in Wuhan,
Stéphane Lagarde
Blue walls around the building, a police officer is posted at the crossroads: a year after the start of the pandemic,
the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan
is still not accessible to the public.
Neon orange jacket, Li Zi He, 56, is one of the neighborhood roadmenders.
“
It's been almost a year since the epidemic.
There are no longer any viruses in this market
, she says.
They cleaned everything up.
No store is open.
Everything is closed, everything is walled up!
"
This first outbreak declared and now cleared could theoretically be part of the places visited by the World Health Organization (WHO) team, such as the CCDC [Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention] laboratory in side.
Where does the virus come from?
Right in front of the market, for Brian, a 22-year-old college student who wants to pursue his education in the United States, the answer is not obvious.
"You ask where the virus came from, and you think about here?
he declares.
At first it's true, people thought like that, but now many believe that the virus is from Europe.
Nobody knows and to say it, you need proof.
It can take ten, twenty years ”.
Evidence is also what Zhu Hong, 52, a seller of light and sound sabers, asks tourists on the nearby Yangtze ferries.
For her, "
only scientific evidence would allow us to know the origin of the coronavirus.
And I read on the internet that the virus is actually coming from abroad.
Since Wuhan has zero cases of Covid-19, planes have returned to China.
This is where we saw new cases appear ”.
This hypothesis of a coronavirus, no longer born in China, but abroad, has been repeated for months now by some Chinese media and experts.
Persecution of whistleblowers
In China, citizen journalists have tried as best they can to publicize an inconvenient truth, that of saturated hospitals and a regime caught off guard by the virus.
Chen Mei, a 27-year-old Chinese, is one of the victims of this draconian censorship.
With a friend, he had saved hundreds of critical articles on the American platform GitHub, previously deleted by the police from the web.
Chen Mei is now awaiting trial in Beijing.
From Paris, his brother Chen Kun is fighting for his release.
“After the death of the whistleblower,
Dr. Li Wenliang
, many Chinese people were angry and posted comments and pictures to demand more freedom of expression,” he
recalls.
But then the government regained control.
If you say something contrary to propaganda, you may disappear.
I have friends who were arrested just for wanting to host an online poem reading in honor of Doctor Wenliang.
The government is afraid of losing face.
He wants to make people believe that China is powerful and that it has won the victory against the epidemic
”
.
“
To this day, I haven't heard from my brother
,” Chen Kun continues
.
The lawyer I had chosen to defend him was refused.
My brother was forced to accept two court-appointed lawyers.
He is being held in Beijing.
He is accused of having sought a quarrel and of having caused disturbances, which can earn him up to five years in prison ”.
► To read also: In Wuhan, a Chinese New Year in the shadow of the coronavirus
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