Hong Kong-based virologist Yan Li-Meng, currently in hiding at an undisclosed location, claims that the COVID-19 coronavirus came from a People’s Liberation Army lab, and not from a Wuhan wet market as Beijing has claimed.
EconoTimes reports on Yan:
Speaking on a live stream interview on Taiwan’s News Agency Lude Press, she said, “At that time, I clearly assessed that the virus came from a Chinese Communist Party military lab. The Wuhan wet market was just used as a decoy.”
“I knew that once I spoke up, I could disappear at any time, just like all the brave protesters in Hong Kong. I could disappear at any time, even my name would no longer exist,” Yan said according to a translation.
Yan has been in hiding in the U.S. after fleeing Hong Kong in April. She last made waves in July after an interview with Fox News:
Yan told Fox News in an exclusive interview that she believes the Chinese government knew about the novel coronavirus well before it claimed it did. She says her supervisors, renowned as some of the top experts in the field, also ignored research she was doing at the onset of the pandemic that she believes could have saved lives.
She adds that they likely had an obligation to tell the world, given their status as a World Health Organization reference laboratory specializing in influenza viruses and pandemics, especially as the virus began spreading in the early days of 2020.
“The reason I came to the U.S. is because I deliver the message of the truth of COVID,” she said then, but today’s report is the first time Yan has claimed the coronavirus originated in a Communist China army lab.
Beijing’s Communist regime hasn’t exactly been making friends of late, going so far as to sic their impressive hacking community on coronavirus research labs last month in a state-sponsored effort to steal their work.
Coronavirus ‘Key Information’ Withheld by China, Leak Shows
“The China government refused to let overseas experts, including ones in Hong Kong, do research in China,” she told Fox News. “So I turned to my friends to get more information.”
There have long been rumors that the novel coronavirus might have begun as a bio-weapon, but Yan’s statement is the first time the claim has come from anyone who might have insider knowledge.
Back in February during the initial global phase of the coronavirus pandemic, Defense One reported that the PLA was “largely MIA” in fighting the outbreak.
At a moment when hospitals across China are posting cries for supplies on social media, the anemic response by the People’s Liberation Army calls into question some of its most lauded capabilities: powerful logistics and mass military-civil contingency response mobilization.
Defense One also reminded readers that “governments often mobilize military units” during a major crisis, and yet…
…the first group of PLA medical units began to arrive in Wuhan only on Jan. 24, nearly a month after the virus began to spread. They arrived in relatively small numbers: three medical teams were reported to have been sent from Shanghai, Chongqing and Xi’an, totaling 450 personnel. The subsequent lack of any major following deployment was striking, especially as needs ranged from supply to construction, such that regime officials even turned to making false claims of building hospitals in record time.
If you’re getting a little paranoid — and in 2020, who isn’t? — you might be thinking the PLA kept their hands off the virus during the outbreak because they had their hands dirty with it during its development.
We may never know the truth about the origins of the novel coronavirus, whether it was an army lab, bat soup, or something else.
But if people choose to believe the worst about Chinese Communist strongman Xi Jinping’s regime, he’ll have no one to blame but himself.
Finally, here is the 35-minute livestream, although it is in Chinese and there are no subtitles.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member