Matters India Reporter
Yangon, April 2, 2020: Cardinal Charles Bo, head of the Catholic Church in Asia, has minced no words in blaming the Chinese regime for the global contagion – Covid 19.
“International voices are rising against the negligent attitude shown by China, especially its despotic Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by its strong man Xi,” Cardinal wrote April 1, demanding apology from the Chinese rulers for negligence in governance that escalated the pandemic. The prelate, who is also the archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar, wants China to accept moral culpability for the pandemic and pay compensation for the worldwide destruction it has caused.
According to the World Health Organisation, nearly 1 million people have been infected so far, and more than 40,000 have died. By the time this is over the global death toll is expected to be millions.
Cardinal Bo leads the Myanmar Church’s national coordination team on Covid-19 that prioritizes prevention and awareness campaigns as well as offering quarantine centers in the 16 dioceses across the country in collaboration with public health departments.
James Kraska, an esteemed law professor, writing in the latest issue of War on Rocks published on March 23, says, China is legally responsible for COVID 19 and claims could be made in trillions.
An epidemiological model at the University of Southampton found that had China acted responsibly and quickly just three weeks, the number affected by virus would have been cut by 95 percent. Its failure has unleashed a global contagion killing thousands, it said.
The soft spoken cardinal was insistent when he pointed out, “But there is one government that has primary responsibility, as a result of what it has done and what it has failed to do, and that is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing.”
He further clarified saying, “Let me be clear – it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China, and no one should respond to this crisis with racial hatred towards the Chinese [people].”
The cardinal had words of empathy for Chinese people and called for sympathy and solidarity when he said, “Indeed, the Chinese people were the first victims of this virus and have long been the primary victims of their repressive regime.”
The prelatel decried the repression, the lies and the corruption of the CCP that were responsible for the pandemic when he said, “Instead of protecting the public and supporting doctors, the CCP silenced the whistleblowers. Worse than that, doctors who tried to raise the alarm – like Dr. Li Wenliang in Wuhan Central Hospital who issued a warning to fellow medics on December 30 – were ordered by the police to “stop making false comments.”
Dr. Li, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist, was told he would be investigated for “spreading rumors” and was forced by the police to sign a confession. He later died after contracting coronavirus.
Cardinal Bo recalled “Young citizen journalists who tried to report on the virus then disappeared. Li Zehua, Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin are among those believed to have been arrested simply for telling the truth. Legal scholar Xu Zhiyong has also been detained after publishing an open letter criticizing the Chinese regime’s response.”
Decrying the CCP’s conduct as symptomatic of its increasingly repressive nature the 72-year-old cardinal said, “In recent years we have seen an intense crackdown on freedom of expression in China. Lawyers, bloggers, dissidents and civil society activists have been rounded up and have disappeared. In particular, the regime has launched a campaign against religion, resulting in the destruction of thousands of churches and crosses and the incarceration of at least one million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps.”
An independent tribunal in London, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who prosecuted [Serbian President] Slobodan Milosevic, accuses the CCP of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. And Hong Kong – once one of Asia’s most open cities – has seen its freedoms, human rights and the rule of law dramatically eroded.”
The cardinal affirmed China as a country “is a great and ancient civilization that has contributed so much to the world throughout history.” The cardinal did not hesitate to hold “this regime responsible, through its criminal negligence and repression, for the pandemic sweeping through our streets today.”