Wuhan Woman Arrested for Demanding Justice After Coronavirus Killed Her Daughter

24-year-old Tian Yuxi of Wuhan, China, was killed by the coronavirus in early February. According to the Epoch Times, her mother Yang Min was arrested two weeks ago for accusing the Chinese government of being responsible for her death.

Yang Min was reportedly dragged away from the Wuhan municipal complaints office on May 11 by four unidentified men because she arrived to file her complaint carrying signs that read, “Injustice,” “Give Me Back My Daughter,” and “The Government Conceals the Truth About the Epidemic.”

Yang told the Epoch Times the heart of her complaint is that the Chinese government concealed the extent and lethality of the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic, so Tian went to the Wuhan Union Hospital for an unrelated matter without realizing how dangerous it was. Tian contracted the coronavirus while in the hospital and died there on February 6. 

“If we had known about this virus, we would not have gone to the hospital and my child would not have left,” Yang said.

Yang said she wants the officials responsible for hiding the truth of the epidemic to be investigated and charged with crimes against humanity if appropriate. The Chinese government is highly unlikely to consider it appropriate.

The New York Times reported in early May that Yang was not alone in demanding accountability from the Chinese government, but most of the other Chinese citizens brave enough to complain about relatives who died in China’s brutal quarantine zones or were turned away from hospitals have been intimidated out of pressing their cases.

Human rights activist Yang Zhanqing said some of the families he is working with were threatened into silence by the police, lawyers have been pressured into dropping their cases, and “volunteers who tried to thwart the state’s censorship apparatus by preserving reports about the outbreak have disappeared.”

“They are worried that if people defend their rights, the international community will know what the real situation is like in Wuhan and the true experiences of the families there,” said Yang, who fled to New York after he himself was pressured by the Chinese police. 

Zhang Hai, whose father contracted a lethal case of coronavirus in a Wuhan hospital just like Yang Min’s daughter, said Chinese newspapers have been forced to spike interviews they conducted with him, and even his attempt to crowdfund a monument to victims of the epidemic has been censored.

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) determination to erase the true history of the coronavirus is so intense that people who were building archives of censored news reports have warned each other to erase everything on their computers before they get arrested. Victim support groups have been forced to disband and public mourning of the coronavirus dead has been discouraged, in part, because the government wants to conceal the true number of infections and deaths, say families.

“If anyone dares to make a request and the government fails to meet it, they immediately are seen as a threat to national security It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lawyer or a victim, it’s like you’re imprisoned,” warned Chen Jiangang, one of the bereaved family members working with Yang Zhanqing.