People from the province where the virus originated were shunned and abused throughout the outbreak. With CCP’s help, the mistreatment continues today.
by Deng Jie
Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, the CCP has issued numerous orders, demanding authorities on all levels and regular citizens to monitor residents of Wuhan—the city in the central province of Hubei where the coronavirus outbreak originated. Those who returned from the area were also put under a magnifying glass. As a result, innocent people, wrongfully accused of spreading the virus, were shunned and discriminated against. Although the 76-day lockdown of Wuhan was lifted on April 8, many continue to suffer abuse in their daily lives.
On January 28, a Hubei resident working in Guangzhou, the capital of the southern province of Guangdong, was fired. His boss explained that the government demanded to “take particular care of people from Hubei,” meaning that they should not be allowed to work. Even though the man had not been to Wuhan for five years, he was ordered to leave. On top of that, he was also told to move out of his residential community immediately. Neighborhood officials in the village he resided told him that “the central government had issued an order to purge all Hubei residents.” The man stood his ground, demanding to know why he was discriminated against. Angered with his persistence, the village head sent in personnel to take his temperature and ordered him to self-isolate, regardless that he had no fever or any other coronavirus symptoms.
The man was allowed to leave his home a week later, but he had to register with the epidemic prevention staff in the village every time he went out, informing them about his destinations and plans. As his savings dwindled, he attempted to look for a job, but all recruitment notices had disclaimers, preventing Hubei residents from applying.
“The Communist Party regards people from Wuhan as ‘reactionary terrorists,’ inciting the entire nation to discriminate them,” the man told Bitter Winter. He is angered that people in China have no rights and freedoms, as the government does not care about them at all.
“Government officials told us not to leave our homes,” a woman with a Hubei registration who now lives in Hangzhou, the capital of the eastern province of Zhejiang, remembered the start of her quarantine. “We could be reported by our neighbors if they found us outside. We would then be taken to the hospital for 14-day insolation at our own expense.” A week into the lockdown, she called the residential community staff, asking for some food and medicine for high blood pressure. The response was: “We are too busy. Deal with the problems yourselves.”
On April 8, the lockdown of Wuhan was lifted, but the woman’s movements were still limited, as she had to show her ID or scan her health code when going to a pharmacy or a market. She said that other people from Hubei also face additional scrutiny.
“Xi Jinping promised to take good care of Hubei people when he visited Wuhan, but this has turned out to be yet another broken promise,” the woman said bitterly. “The government says one thing in the public but behaves differently from what they claim. Being a resident of Hubei now means constant struggle.”
According to a report by the New Tang Dynasty Television, a US-based broadcaster founded by Falun Gong practitioners, the CCP issued secret orders to keep people from Hubei, especially Wuhan, under strict scrutiny even after the lockdown was lifted.
Not only citizens from Hubei suffered discrimination amid the coronavirus outbreak. Authorities in some provinces and cities adopted strategies to purge all out of town people.
A woman, who rented an apartment while working in Guangzhou, told Bitter Winter that between February 12 and 15, she received two messages from her landlord on WeChat, informing her that “the village committee ordered to remove all tenants from rental homes as the epidemic spreads. Tenants from out of town must leave.”
“It was raining cats and dogs; I felt like the gloomy sky was about to fall,” the woman remembered vividly the day she had to move out. “I didn’t know where to go. I was so frustrated that I just wanted to cry.”
She tried to persuade the landlord to allow her to move out after a few days but to no avail. He told her that any failure to implement the order would lead to his punishment, and if someone gets infected, the village authorities would blacklist the rental house or even demolish it. “The landlord also told me that if I refused to leave, the village committee would capture me by force,” she said. “Similar orders were issued everywhere.” The woman later learned that some of her colleagues were also fired because they were not local.
