Full-On Covid Tyranny By Brian Simpson
Covid-19 has exposed the system for the viciousness that lies within, with journalists across the world being arrested for coverage of this New World Order freak out.
“Journalism has long been a risky profession, but the COVID-19 pandemic has provided many governments with an excuse to increase its crackdown on journalists who counter government narratives about the virus and their handling of the pandemic.
Globally, at least 14 journalists have been arrested for “unfair and imprecise coverage” of the pandemic. Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told U.S. News that "COVID is a very convenient excuse to target journalists that regimes did not like before."
Information War 2020
According to two media rights groups — the CPJ and Reporters Without Borders — China tops the list of countries where suppression of journalism is taking place. Worldwide, 387 journalists were detained during 2020, just two fewer than were detained in 2019. Of those, 54 are being held hostage and four are missing in action. More than half — 61% — are held in China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Syria.
Attacks on female journalists has seen a particularly strong increase, with 35% more women journalists being imprisoned in 2020 compared to 2019. There’s also been a fourfold increase in “arbitrary arrests” of journalists this year, a majority of which appear to have been related to their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Reporters Without Borders:
“While most arrested journalists were held for just a few hours or, in some cases, a few days or weeks), 14 journalists who were arrested in connection with their coverage of the pandemic are still being held at the end of the year.”
Murders of Journalists Doubled in 2020
CPJ also reports that murders of journalists more than doubled in 2020, compared to 2019. The murders are labeled as “retaliatory killings” by gangs and militants in “violent but democratic nations,” and the murdered journalists were most often covering political issues.
In all, 30 journalists were killed, worldwide, in 2020 in relation to their work. Of those, 21 were murdered, a significant jump from the 10 murdered in 2019. An additional 15 deaths are also still under investigation by the CPJ to ascertain whether journalism was the motive, so the end tally could be higher still.
The countries with the highest numbers of retaliatory murders in 2020 were Mexico, Afghanistan and the Philippines. Adding insult to injury, in the vast majority of these murders, the killers go free.
China Sentences Citizen Journalist to Four Years in Prison
As mentioned, China detained the greatest number of journalists in 2020. As of December 1, 2020, 117 Chinese journalists had been placed behind bars.14 One of them is Zhang Zhan, a former Shanghai lawyer who was detained May 15, 2020.
She’d been posting daily video reports about the Wuhan outbreak on YouTube and Twitter since early February. While these social media platforms are blocked in mainland China, Zhang was using a virtual private network (VPN) to access the sites. According to Vice:
“Her videos stood in stark contrast to state media’s reports on the outbreak, which initially glossed over the severity of the virus and sought to highlight the heroic efforts of medical workers in treating patients.”
December 28, 2020, the Shanghai Pudong People’s Court sentenced Zhang to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” According to Vice, this “vaguely-defined charge” is one “that the Chinese government often uses to silence critics.”
Zhang reportedly went on a hunger strike in June and has been force-fed through a nasal tube since then. One of Zhang’s defense attorneys told Vice she began the hunger strike because “she couldn’t accept the fact that she was punished for exercising her freedom of speech, a right laid out in the Chinese constitution,” adding that “she views compliance as an insult to herself.”
Just add all this to the anarcho-tyranny pile. It is really getting to be an anarcho-tyranny mountain.
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