A government employee in the central Chinese province of Hubei – home to Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in China – is suing the provincial government over its handling of the outbreak.
This news comes as Hubei residents say lockdowns in the province have been reinstated amid reports of fresh waves of coronavirus infections across China, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Thursday.
Tan Jun, a civil servant from the town of Yichang, filed a lawsuit at the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court calling the government to account for the “unprecedented loss” of life and property as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The lawsuit accuses Hubei provincial authorities and the Wuhan municipal government of covering up the fact that the coronavirus can be easily transmitted between human beings, says RFA, who saw a copy of the lawsuit.
Tan cites a notice issued by the Hubei Health Commission on January 11 denying that person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus existed. This contradicts a March 19 report by the State Supervisory Commission that says human-to-human transmission was known about as early as December, according to Tan’s lawsuit.
The commission’s March report was conducted as part of an investigation into the state’s reprimand of late Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang, who tried to warn the public about the coronavirus outbreak.
According to Tan’s lawsuit, the Wuhan People’s Congress also knew that the virus was transmissible between people on January 19 when it allowed a mass Lunar New Year banquet known as the “10,000 Families Banquet” in Wuhan to proceed as planned, which directly caused a large cluster of infections. An estimated 130,000 people, many of them seniors who are more vulnerable to severe coronavirus complications, attended.
“The authorities’ concealment and playing down of the epidemic caused people to neglect prevention measures … and gave rise to the rapid spread of the virus,” Tan alleges in his lawsuit.
He said the government’s concealment of the virus outbreak and its severity caused the people of Hubei to suffer an “unprecedented loss” of life and property. Tan called on authorities to be held accountable, to apologize to the people of Hubei, and to pay the costs of litigation.
Chinese legal experts say the government is unlikely to allow the lawsuit to be successful because this would encourage further lawsuits.
“It is problematic because there is the matter of compensation,” a Guangdong lawyer surnamed Zhan told RFA on Thursday. “They would need to hold somebody responsible. And if this lawsuit is successful, then many more people will bring cases, So they won’t let this case be successful.”
News of the lawsuit comes as Hubei residents say lockdown restrictions have been reimposed across the province.
On Thursday, a Hubei resident told RFA that his neighborhood had seen restrictions on people entering and exiting the area reinstated since the lifting of Hubei’s provincial lockdown on March 25.
“The government won’t let us go back to our homes, and it won’t say why. They have told us to find somewhere else to stay temporarily,” the Hubei resident said.
China’s Premier Li Keqiang recently claimed fresh clusters of coronavirus infections were popping up in Chinese hospitals, RFA reported on Thursday.
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