"'Wuhan Corona Reality Exposure' Missing Chinese Citizen Scheduled for Release After 3 Years"

by Kim Daehyun

Published 30 Apr.2023 20:57(KST)

On November 27 last year (local time), Chinese police subdued participants of an anti-'Zero COVID' policy protest held on a street in Shanghai. The photo is not directly related to the article content. [Image source=Yonhap News]

Major foreign media reported that a citizen who was missing after exposing the on-site situation in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, where COVID-19 first spread in 2020, through a video is scheduled to be released after three years.

On the 30th, the Associated Press (AP) cited sources and reported that Chinese authorities are planning to release Fang Bin, who went missing three years ago, according to his relatives and others.

A source who requested anonymity claimed that Fang Bin uploaded videos of the COVID-19 situation in Wuhan online and was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of "picking fights and provoking trouble." This charge is mainly used by Chinese authorities to suppress dissidents.

Earlier, on February 1, 2020, Fang Bin filmed the overcrowded Wuhan Fifth Hospital with patients and bodies being carried out in body bags and posted the footage on Twitter and other platforms. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, he was merely a little-known clothing businessman, but he was arrested by authorities immediately after posting the video and gained fame.

Fang Bin explained that on February 2, authorities confiscated his laptop and interrogated him about the circumstances of filming the body bag footage. In the last video he posted on February 9, he showed a paper that read, "All citizens resist. Return power to the people." After that, he disappeared. Along with him, several others who exposed the situation in Wuhan through videos either went missing or were arrested.

China maintained a strict "zero-COVID" policy for three years but eased quarantine measures following the "blank paper protests" in November last year. In January, the country reopened its borders and transitioned to a "with COVID" approach.