Coronavirus: Chinese web users mark anniversary of ‘wrong’ done to Li Wenliang, the doctor who raised alarm over outbreak
- Tributes left on medic’s Weibo page a year to the day after police reprimanded him for warning colleagues about outbreak
- Li’s death from Covid-19 caused an outpouring of grief and anger that the authorities have been trying to damp down since then
The Wuhan doctor died of the disease in February, causing a national outcry and transforming Li into a symbol of China’s initial missteps in handling the outbreak.
On January 3, 2020, Li was summoned to a police station to receive an official reprimand for sharing a warning message about an unknown type of viral pneumonia that was circulating in the city.
“Your behaviour has seriously disrupted social order,” read the reprimand record, which Li shared on his Weibo account. “The police hope that you can cooperate and cease your illegal behaviour, can you do that?”
“Yes, I can,” Li responded, according to the notice.
The notice specifies that Li was summoned because he sent messages to a WeChat group of his university classmates to warn them about seven cases at a seafood market, which were later linked to the first confirmed cases of Covid-19.