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'Hero who told the truth': Chinese rage over coronavirus death of whistleblower doctor
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1 month old
Demands for freedom of speech in the wake of Li Wenliangโs death have been censored by the authorities amid widespread outpouring of anger
Verna Yu in Hong Kong
Fri 7 Feb 2020 05.10 GMTLast modified on Wed 18 Mar 2020 10.58 GMT
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Li Wenliangโs blogs on coronavirus crisis in Wuhan were censored by authorities at end of December. He died on 6 February 2020. Photograph: Handout
The
death of a whistleblowing Chinese doctor who was punished for trying to raise the alarm about coronavirus has sparked an explosion of anger, grief and demands for freedom of speech among ordinary Chinese.
Li Wenliang, 34, died in the early hours of Friday local time after he was infected during the fight against the outbreak, said Wuhan central hospital, where he worked, in a statement.
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Li warned colleagues on social media in late December about a mysterious virus that would become the coronavirus epidemic and was detained by police in
Wuhan on 3 January for โspreading false rumoursโ. He was forced to sign a police document to admit he had breached the law and had โseriously disrupted social order.โ
โThey owe you an apology, we owe you our gratitude. Take care, Dr Li,โ said a Weibo post from Xiakedao, an account under the overseas edition of Communist Partyโs Peopleโs Daily.
โGood people donโt live long, but evil lives for a thousand years,โ said another post mourning Liโs death, with a candle emoji. An image also posted on Weibo showed a message, โfarewell Li Wenliangโ, carved into the snow on a riverbank in Beijing.