Pompeo accuses China of COVID cover-up
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has once again accused Beijing of a cover-up in regard to origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pompeo on Tuesday demanded that Chinese authorities release Zhang Zhan, who he claims is a citizen journalist who used to report news about the pandemic from Wuhan where the disease originated.
Pompeo called on Chinese authorities to "release her immediately and unconditionally."
The 37-year-old former lawyer, who has been in custody since May, was on Monday handed a four year prison sentence by a judge in a Shanghai court for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble."
Critics of Beijing, however, claim the ex-legal adviser was unjustly convicted over her early online accounts that provided a rare glimpse of the city of Wuhan where the mysterious disease was first detected a year ago.
Zhang's reports challenged the official news that the government had defeated the virus, questioning hospital capacity and access to virus testing in the early days and showing aggression on the part of Chinese authorities to her filming on her phone.
Pompeo has repeatedly accused Beijing of a cover-up in its role in the origins of the pandemic, which has claimed more than 1.78 million lives worldwide.
"The Chinese Communist Party has shown once again it will do whatever it takes to silence those who question the party's official line, even regarding crucial public health information," President Donald Trump's secretary of state said.
The outgoing Trump administration has pursued an aggressive foreign policy in regard to China, fighting Beijing on multiple fronts.
American scholar and political analyst Dennis Etler told Press TV that Washington continuous state of war against other countries with no clear conditions that would lead to its conclusions was in an attempt to bring them in line with its so-called new world order.
Etler told Press TV that the order pursued by Washington was established by demonizing other countries.
“Only by demonizing China, Russia, and Iran can the powers that be in the US maintain their hold on power. Both Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, all play the same game and the “good American” people swallow it hook, line and sinker,” Etler pointed out.
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