Author: cswpress

Crowded hospital halls, frantic doctors and nurses in protective suits, patients lying in the corridors, body bags piled up in a funeral van outside a hospital… In early February 2020, 57-year-old businessman Fang Bin drove around Wuhan and documented what he saw in five hospitals. The short videos he posted on social media gave a rare glimpse into what was happening in the epicentre of the pandemic under lockdown.

Mr Fang was detained by police briefly on 1 February 2020. In the next few days, he became more outspoken. Videos were widely shared on social media in which he commented that ‘tyranny lies at the root of this virus’. Then, on 9 February 2020, he vanished after calling ‘all citizens to resist’ tyranny and the government to ‘return the power to the people’ on YouTube, a platform banned in China.

The disappearances of Fang Bin, Zhang Zhan and at least two other citizen journalists drew the attention of world media. Although Mr Fang and his wife are known to the authorities as veteran Falun Gong activists, people who are familiar with him hesitated in mentioning his faith background when calling for his release. They may have been conscious of the social stigma attached to this belief group in China, or feared that he might be jailed not for his online speech but for his faith, or even that he might face mistreatment for it in police custody.