China is getting its own "Chornobyl moment" due to Beijing's attempts to hide and distort key scientific data on the COVID-19 pandemic and its crackdown on whistleblowers questioning the government's response to the outbreak, say the authors of an open letter published Tuesday. 'A self-inflicted wound'"We should never forget that China's Chornobyl moment was a self-inflicted wound," the letter says. More recently, reporters who have spoken critically about Beijing's response to the pandemic have disappeared and are probably being held in isolation in China's vast network of prisons and camps, Burton said. The pandemic has laid bare the risks involved in the suppression of information and freedom of expression in China, Burton said. In an earlier open letter, a group of 100 Chinese scholars urged their American counterparts to refrain from "politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic."

Source: CBC News April 14, 2020 20:37 UTC