Chinese Whistleblower, Who Claims COVID Manmade, Says Mom Arrested by Communist Party
Virologist fled China claiming government made coronavirus in a military lab
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The Chinese whistleblower, who fled China alleging that her government had intentionally created COVID-19 in a military lab, claims her mother has now been arrested by the ruling Communist Party.
Li-Meng Yan, one of China's top virologists who claims to be a former researcher at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, says she fled to the United States earlier this year after uncovering evidence that the coronavirus was cooked up in a military lab.
Yan says the Chinese virus was built by merging the genetic material of two bat coronaviruses.
The news of her mother's arrest was first announced during a radio show this week by Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese tycoon who is known for his criticism against the Communist Party.
Yan confirmed her mother's reported arrest to the American-Chinese website The Epoch Times but did not provide any further details.
In mid-September, Yan made global headlines after making her claims about the origins of the virus during an interview on Fox News.
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Yan, who fled to the US in April following her bombshell claim, said COVID-19 was "man-made" and "not from nature," according to The Daily Mail.
Her Twitter account was taken down in mid-September after she accused China of intentionally manufacturing and releasing COVID-19.
In an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, Yan claimed she was suspended because "they don't want the people to know this truth."
"I have evidence to show why they can do it, what they have done, how (they did it)," she told Fox News.
"The scientific world also keeps silent... works together with the Chinese Communist Party, they don't want people to know his truth.
"That's why I get suspended, I get suppressed, I am the target that Chinese Communist Party wants disappeared."
A video of the interview segment posted on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show's page now comes with a warning that reads: "False Information. This post repeats information about COVID-19 that independent fact-checkers say is false."
Fox News and Tucker Carlson accused Facebook of censorship after users were blocked from viewing the video.
Yan has also published a report which she claims backs up her theory that the contagion was built by merging the genetic material of two bat coronaviruses.
She said its spike protein – a structure on the surface of the virus which it uses to bind with cells – was edited to make it easier for the virus to latch on to human cells.
But scientists have slammed her report as "unsubstantiated" and said it "cannot be given any credibility."
Research papers have already determined the origin of the virus as bats, leading to top experts dismissing suggestions the virus was created by humans as having "zero evidence."
SARS-CoV-2 — the scientific name of the pathogen — is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans and jumped to people after an earlier version of it mutated.
The previous virus is thought to be one that infected bats and then reached humans via another animal.
Ms. Yan's report has not been published in a scientific journal and has not been peer-reviewed, meaning it has not been checked and approved by scientists.
But it has gained widespread public attention, going viral after being posted on the website Zenodo, which is operated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.
Ms. Yan writes that her research discounts the theory that coronavirus evolved in the wild and was then transferred to humans, claiming it "lacks substantial support."
"SARS-CoV-2 shows biological characteristics that are inconsistent with a naturally occurring virus," she wrote.
"The evidence shows that [the virus] should be a laboratory product created by using bat coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21 as a template and/or backbone."
She alleges the virus "should" have been built using stores of these bat viruses, of which she claims samples are kept in Hong Kong and China.
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Yan wrote in her paper that theories the virus is from nature and the meat market in Wuhan are a "smokescreen," alleging she was told this by CDC scientists working in China.
She has previously accused Beijing of lying about when it learned of the killer infection and engaging in an extensive cover-up.
Ms. Yan claims she fled to Hong Kong and escaped to America in April to "raise awareness" of the pandemic.
She claims she was working at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, a reference laboratory for the World Health Organisation, but she was cut off after trying to alert people to the human-to-human transmission of the virus in December.
She also claims that before leaving China her information was wiped from the Government database.
The lab has denied that Ms. Yan ever "conducted any research on human-to-human transmission" and said her assertions have "no scientific basis."
In April, President Donald Trump claimed he had seen evidence that the coronavirus was built in a laboratory in Wuhan as he suggested the US Government may impose sanctions on China in response.
"Yes I have. Yes I have," Trump said when asked if he had seen proof the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Technology.
However, the president would not divulge what the evidence was that confirmed his suspicions when asked by a reporter.
"I can't tell you that. I am not allowed to tell you that," he responded.
The lab in question is located near the wet market in Wuhan, which is thought to have been the center of the outbreak.
