A protest breaks out in China People demand the truth
After a student dies mysteriously.
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
You don’t see protests like this very often in mainland China.
That’s from the city of Chengdu.
Students outside of the No. 49 High School there were chanting
“We want the truth.” It wasn’t long until Chinese police “handled” the situation.
The crowd is demanding the truth of what happened to a 17-year-old student at their school.
They think authorities at the school and in the government are covering up how he died.
The student, named Lin Weiqi, was found dead at their school on May 9.
His mother posted this on social media.
“On May 9th at 9 o’clock, I received a notice from the school that my son had passed away.
The school simply informed me that the cause of death was a fall from the corridor…”
“Now, the school is not letting the parents in to see what happened...
The school immediately dismissed all the class students and warned them to keep silent...
School authorities had given her practically no information about her son’s death.
Only that he had “fallen”.
According to Radio Free Asia, “Local media mentioned the matter was highly
sensitive in Chengdu, and all media reporters were told not to speak up.”
Huh, that’s not suspicious.
Then this photo began to circulate on social media.
It’s Lin’s mother holding a picture of him outside the gates of the high school.
More people began to pay attention to her sad story, wanting to know more details.
And they watched how the school did nothing to shed light on the situation.
His mother then posted, “Last night at 9 o’clock the police station told us what happened...
We learned that by the time the ambulance had arrived at 8:30, my son had no heartbeat,
and he was taken straight to the funeral home instead of the hospital.”
“The first thing we did was report this to the police. The police said they would investigate...
They showed me surveillance footage of that day, except only the incident was not caught
on camera... I read this kind of news many times but never thought it would happen to me one day.”
How odd that the one time surveillance footage would actually be helpful,
it’s not available. Normally, Chinese citizens are under constant surveillance.
But the incident was getting more and more public attention.
The next afternoon, authorities rushed to release a public notice to address the incident.
It reads, “On May 9th at around 6:40 PM, a student fell from the top floor corridor. The
school immediately called the emergency number. By the time an ambulance arrived to investigate,
the student already had no pulse. The Public Security Bureau has launched an investigation.
The school expresses its deepest condolences.”
So...still no further details on how he died.
What’s weird is, the nearest hospital is less than 10 minutes from the school.
According to the mother’s social media post, the ambulance arrived at 8:30,
just before she was notified about the death at 9 o ‘clock that evening.
But that means the ambulance didn’t arrive until nearly two hours after Lin fell.
And “When asked about the two-hour delay in telling Lin’s parents of their son’s death,
the school’s safety director Mi Ping said that after finding the body at about 7pm,
all of the form teachers were called to help identify him
but the process took a long time due to the injuries he had suffered.”
And that just raised more suspicion among the public.
With so many missing details, rumors began to spread suggesting the student had been pushed
off the building, or that teachers or students had bullied him into taking his own life.
Others began to question if authorities were covering up something even worse.
Then early the next morning, the ‘Chengdu Chenghua
Education Branch’ issued a statement on Weibo—attempting to dispel all the rumors.
“Lin died from a high fall according to the climbing traces, footprints and fingerprints
at the scene. It was determined to be a personal act, criminal cases were excluded,
and no corporal punishment or insults to students were found in the school...The student was not
found to be bullied at school...The student committed suicide due to personal problems.”
Yes. He killed himself, completely unprompted—even
though no students ever bullied him, and school authorities never punished him.
It just happens, people. And that’s why state media are not allowed to report on it.
Then state-run Xinhua said the reason there was no surveillance footage is actually that
“[Police officers] had taken away the recording for investigation [as it was] key evidence.”
Yes, key evidence...of nothing suspicious having happened.
State media also claimed “Lin’s father had watched the complete
recording on Monday morning in the company of a lawyer.”
Meanwhile, articles began circulating on the Chinese internet,
saying the issue had been resolved between the school and Lin’s parents,
and they ultimately signed and agreed to have the body cremated.
But, that might not be true. According to Lin’s parents. His mother said,
“I solemnly declare here that I do not agree with the statement issued
by Chenghua District this morning. There are many questions about the content of their statement!
I will continue to fight the police and the school to give me the truth. I want to speak
with my son’s teachers, and I want to see all the videos! I do not agree with this result.”
Which brings us back to the protests. Students gathered at the school holding
white flowers to mourn Lin Weiqi as they chanted,
calling for the truth. And videos like this caused more anger at the way authorities handled it.
But this protest seems to have brought too much attention—which I’ll explain after the break.
Welcome back. After this protest video went viral,
authorities had a problem. Not just the problem of how to handle Lin Weiqi’s mysterious death, but
also how to handle large numbers of young people protesting, and spreading those videos online.
Their solution? Blame foreign forces and Hong Kong pro-democracy groups for instigating the protests.
Some Chinese netizens were quick to side with local authorities,
and jump on the “hostile foreign forces” bandwagon.
Here are some examples:
“Losers, quit the act. To think you flew all the way from Guangdong and Hong Kong with your
broken Mandarin speech and cameras, wearing masks so no one will recognize who you are.
You have some nerve to come to Chengdu and make a scene.”
Yes, this guy thinks that Hong Kong protesters flew to Chengdu to “make a scene.”
“I can’t take it anymore! Open your eyes everyone, don’t fall into the trap of the foreign forces!
Notice how their chanting seems staged! Not to mention everyone was able to hold
flowers and cameras, there was even a girl who was assigned to cause a scene in the video!
They obviously pushed the girl and made it seem like the police’s fault,
when they were actually trying to save her! It’s too obvious, everybody WAKE UP!”
Yeah, wake up, sheeple! Don’t you realize communist authorities are the good guys?!
And then there’s doxxing. This post identifies a woman in the crowd,
and claims she’s a friend of someone who worked at the local US consulate.
The consulate that was closed down last year. And somehow she made $300 million dollars from this?!
Wow, I wish hostile foreign forces would pay *me* 300 million dollars just to attend a protest.
I’ve been funded by hostile foreign forces for years, and they’ve never given me a cent!
Now you’d think posts like this would not get much traction online, because they’re too stupid.
And yet, the provincial cyber police just doubled down on the message.
They wrote, “The peace and tranquility of the motherland today are not easy to come by.
Generations of revolutionary martyrs exchanged their blood and lives for national independence,
and generations of Chinese sons and daughters have used their youth and sweat to fight for
prosperity and strength. No one is allowed to destroy it. We will never sit back and watch
the damage to national security and development interests. We will never allow hostile forces
to undermine the security and stability of the country and the peaceful life of the people.
We will never allow the color revolutions to occur on this land. Anyone who wants to carry
out such a situation, try, you will be hit head-on! #Vigilance Against Color Revolution”
Yeah, hashtag vigilance against color revolution—which
no one was actually suggesting was happening, except for you.
But if anyone knows how dangerous a revolution can be, it’s China’s revolutionary martyrs
who exchanged their blood and lives for national independence.
And now it’s time for me to answer a question from you,
a fan who supports the show through the crowdfunding website, Patreon.
Lucien Furneaux says, “I am interested in knowing more about 'gain of function' research and how the
CCP had been using it in regards to Covid 19, and how they are continuing to implement it.”
Good question, Lucien. The simple answer is, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing
gain of function research on coronaviruses before Covid-19 spread.
According to one of their funding proposals, “gain of function”
meant scientists there were experimenting to see if they could make coronaviruses
more contagious—and then use this knowledge in the future to help *stop* global pandemics.
Hindsight, of course, is 2020.
Thanks for your question.
But speaking of, there’s more and more consensus that the most likely origin of Covid-19
was an accidental lab leak from Wuhan. So if you’d like us to do an episode about this,
leave your comments below, and we just might do it for you. It will get demonetized by YouTube.
Which is why your support on Patreon is so important.
Go to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored to learn more. The link is below.
I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching.