WHO investigators arrived in Wuhan on January 14 to shed light on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.

They met there relatives of victims of the disease who claim to receive pressure from the Chinese authorities to be silent.

Investigators are not sure whether they can visit the Wuhan virology laboratory.

Bribery or intimidation: Chinese authorities are putting pressure on families of Covid victims to dissuade them from coming into contact with WHO investigators in Wuhan, say relatives of the deceased.

More than a year after the appearance of the new coronavirus in the metropolis of central China, a team from the World Health Organization arrived in Wuhan on January 14 to investigate the origin of the pandemic.

After two weeks of quarantine, the dozen experts are preparing to begin their field investigation on Thursday, as Beijing is trying to convince that the epidemic has not appeared on its soil and could have been imported.

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Whistleblowers dismissed

In this context, relatives of victims accuse the communist regime of trying to dissuade them from approaching international experts.

These families gathered last year to demand sanctions for local officials who played down the epidemic a year ago, going so far as to reprimand the very first whistleblowers.

Several of them have tried to take legal action but say that their complaints were immediately deemed inadmissible.

Since the arrival of WHO experts, pressure from the authorities has increased, they say.

While nearly a hundred relatives of victims exchanged on WeChat messaging, very popular in China, their discussion group was brutally blocked ten days ago, reports to AFP Zhang Hai, one of the animators of the movement.

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"This shows that (the authorities) are very nervous. They fear that these families will come into contact with WHO experts," the 51-year-old man, whose father died at the start of the year, told AFP. epidemic, without the death being officially linked to Covid, for lack of tests at the time.

"When the WHO arrived in Wuhan, (the group) was forcibly dismantled. As a result, we lost contact with many members," he laments.

Like other social networks in China, WeChat, run by internet giant Tencent, regularly blocks content deemed sensitive by the authorities.

"The same song"

The epidemic has officially killed 3,900 people in Wuhan, the vast majority of deaths recorded in China (4,636 deaths).

The country managed to largely halt the pandemic as early as the spring, although limited cases have erupted in recent weeks in some regions.

With less than 90,000 patients according to official figures, China remains very far from the balance sheets recorded in the rest of the world, with now more than 100 million people infected.

Many relatives of victims say they doubt these figures, saying that many of them died before they could be formally identified as sick with the coronavirus.

A retiree, who believes her daughter was killed by the virus in January 2020, told AFP that she was summoned last week by authorities who ordered her not to "speak to the media nor let it handle ".

"After that, they came to my house yesterday, sang the same song to me and gave me 5,000 yuan (640 euros) in condolence," she testified.

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"Courage"

Questioned by AFP, the Wuhan town hall did not respond to questions relating to the families' requests.

As for Zhang Hai, he called on WHO experts to have "the courage" to meet with the families, saying they feared that they would be bamboozled by the authorities or be blocked in their investigation.

According to him, the testimony of families on the explosion of the virus in Wuhan could usefully enlighten international investigators, as Beijing seeks to evacuate all responsibility.

According to the first elements provided by Chinese investigators at the beginning of 2020, the virus would have been transmitted by a bat to another animal, before attacking humans.

The contamination allegedly exploded in a Wuhan market where wild animals, including pangolins, were sold alive.

Another theory, spread in particular by former US President Donald Trump, blames the Wuhan virology laboratory, where researchers were working on coronaviruses. It is not said that international experts will have access to this laboratory during their stay in Wuhan.