Barrister Mizanur Rahman :
US President Donald Trump came into direct conflicts with US National Intelligence reports over the issues on coronavirus origination in China. The office of the US National Intelligence Director says that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified. In a statement issued on 30 April, it rejected the most extreme of the conspiracy theories about the virus’s origin that it was conceived as a bio-weapon. The statement also mentioned that “the intelligence community will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan”.
But Donald Trump claims to have gathered evidence to substantiate the unproven theory that the virus originated at the Wuhan lab. When asked about what evidences he has, Trump denied revealing that.
The critics say that the US President is repeatedly trying to point the finger to Beijing as a tactic for winning the upcoming Presidential election to be held in November this year. Donald Trump claimed that China ‘will do anything’ to stop his re-win. As the US-China tension escalates over the issue of coronavirus origination, President Trump recently said, in an attempt to make it a major issue,: “I Don’t want to disperse, I just will tell you that China would like to see sleepy Joe Biden (Donald’s competitor in next election) win the presidential election in November. China Doesn’t want to see me re-elected”.
Even the President’s recent attacks on China correlate with leaked Republican Party memos, published by Politico, encouraging party candidates to target Beijing aggressively in their public remarks on the pandemic.
On the other hand, China refused to allow WHO to take part in the investigations into the origins of Covid-19, though being requested repeatedly. Dr Hayden Galea, the WHO representative in China, has told Sky News on 1 May 2020 that, “We know that some national investigation is happening but at this stage we have not been invited to join”. He said that WHO has not been able to look at logs from two laboratories that were working on viruses in China, but that WHO researchers are convinced that the disease was not manufactured.
“From all available evidence, WHO colleagues in our three-level system are convinced that the origins are in Wuhan and that it is a naturally occuring, not a manufactured virus”, Dr. Galea said.
On 1 May 2020, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, “what we have before us doesn’t say that a lab in Wuhan is a likely source”. His government has called for an ‘Objective assessment’ into the origination of the virus by an “independent international team”. The standing of Australian government on this issue displeased China and they warned that the relationship between two countries could be damaged ‘beyond repair’. Australia took it as a treat to bilateral relationship, and defied China, unequivocally, in this saying that Australia will continue to defend their call for “entirely reasonable and sensible” investigations into the origins of the virus.
Although nothing is proved yet, China’s fierce attitude to the Australia’s call for independent international investigations together with the facts of disallowing WHO into their national investigation cast undoubtedly a serious doubt on the innocence of China’s role into the origination of the pandemic. At the same time, China has been placed under pressure to disprove it.
(Barrister Mizanur Rahman writes from London, UK)
