SCMP (South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)): Scholar blames state secrets law for cover-up on the mainland

By: Charles Snyder in Washington

May 14, 2003

A prominent scholar has blamed the state secrets law for China's failure to tell the world of the Sars outbreak when the disease began to spread rapidly in Guangdong late last year.

Huang Yanzhong, the director of the Global Health Studies Centre of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, told a US congressional commission in Washington that early this year doctors in Guangdong knew of the extent of the problem but were prohibited from disclosing it because of the secrets law.

The law, enacted in 1988 but not implemented until 1996, bars publication of the existence of a disease until the health ministry discloses it officially.

Local health officials are not required to monitor a disease unless it is on a list of diseases under surveillance and listed in the law covering the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Sars was not on the list when the disease first began to spread.

Under the law "any disease such as Sars should be classified as a state secret until they are announced by the Ministry of Health", Dr Huang told a hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

The commission is charged with monitoring human rights in China under part of the law that granted the nation permanent normal trade relations.

Dr Huang said any citizen or journalist who reports the existence of a disease can face penalties under the law. "In terms of professional ethics, I think that in the Guangdong case, evidence suggests that many physicians were briefed or informed about the disease prior to" the Lunar New Year holiday when millions of Chinese would be travelling.

But those people, probably because of the state secrets law, which prohibits people from speaking out, remained silent, he said.

The silence was broken, he noted, when one local doctor spoke publicly to Western journalists and others suggesting the extent of the disease in Guangdong, which by that time had run out of control. It was not until February that the Chinese authorities conceded publicly the early facts about the outbreak. Sars has since been added to the list of diseases under surveillance, but the leadership has not moved to change the law.

 Yearly Archive   Printer Version