The death of Dr. Li Wenliang, who was harassed by authorities for alerting friends about the coronavirus, sparked outrage on Chinese social media.
This statement was originally published on globalvoices.org on 7 February 2020. It is republished here under Creative Commons license CC-BY 3.0.
Ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was one of the eight Wuhan-based doctors who alerted peers and friends online on December 30, 2019 about the outbreak of a new coronavirus. He disregarded a ban on sharing sensitive information on social media and was investigated by the police, who accused him of spreading rumors. He eventually contracted the new coronavirus, and died on February 6. News of his death has since spread like wildfire on Chinese social media, as netizens display messages and images expressing anger, frustration and grief, and pointing fingers at the government.
Li Wenliang dies twice: the government tries to cover up the news of his death
The world received conflicting reports about the timing of Li’s death, as state censors intervened in an attempt to control the news, and ordered Wuhan Central Hospital to freeze the announcement of his death. The Hong-Kong-based news outlet The Initium has detailed the attempt to manipulate the news:
The news about the death of Li Wenliang appeared in a number of news outlets at around 9:30 pm on February 6. In less than two hours, the topic ‘Dr. Li Wenliang passed away’ became a top search with 20 million search records, 540 million views and 73,000 posts on Weibo, the main Chinese social media platform. But after leading news outlets withdrew their posts, and Caixin magazine published a report stating that the medical team was still attempting to rescue Li, the search record had lowered to 1.9 million at around 11:30 pm, before disappearing altogether.
One hour later, at around 12:20 am on February 7, a reporter from a business news outlet who was standing outside the ICU ward of Li wrote on his Weibo that Li’s heart beat has stopped at 9:30pm, but that he was attached to an oxygenation machine. At 12:40 am, the Wuhan Central Hospital posted a message on Weibo urging netizens to “pray for Li” as the medical team was still attempting to save his life. Multiple Weibo outlets then published positive comments urging netizens to let Dr. Li “rest in peace”.
At the same time, unverified claims citing screen-capture and sources from a medical staff chatroom alleged that the medical team from the hospital had been instructed to “buy time” and refrain from announcing Li’s death without approval from the authorities.
At this point, Chinese citizens could no longer withhold their anger. Weibo was flooded with comments and images slamming the authorities for manipulating Li’s death (comments via the Initium):
