Chinese police called out for crackdown on coronavirus rumour

Police have been called out by China’s top court over the harsh punishment given to those thought to be spreading rumours about the coronavirus.

China’s top court has handed out a rare rebuke of the country’s police force over the harsh punishment dolled out to people accused of spreading rumours about the coronavirus outbreak.

An estimated 170 people have died in mainland China as a result of the virus and there have been more than 7000 confirmed cases.

The coronavirus has been likened to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which China experienced an outbreak of in 2002 and 2003.

The spread of this new infection has now surpassed the global reach of the SARS outbreak.

Authorities suspect the disease originated in a wild animal market in the central city of Wuhan, and told the World Health Organisation about the new virus on the last day of 2019.

A day later, eight people were detained by police after claiming online that Wuhan was in the grip of a fresh SARS outbreak.

The group were punished for “publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification”, a police statement at the time said.

But the country’s Supreme Court has now lashed out at the police over the incident, with judge Tang Xinghua saying while the information might not have been accurate, the people involved did not deserve to be punished.

“If the public had believed these ‘rumours’ at the time, and carried out measures like wearing masks, strictly disinfecting and avoiding wildlife markets … it might have been a good thing,” he said in an article published to the Supreme Court’s social media account.

Tang said the indiscriminate crackdown on online rumours could have “become negative textbook material for weakening public trust in the government” or a “vicious event” eroding support for the Communist party.

Police have been criticised for their punishment of people thought to be spreading virus rumours. Picture: Philip Fong/AFP

Wuhan police responded in a post on the social media platform Weibo that they had only given “education and criticism” to the eight and had not meted out harsher punishment such as “warnings, fines, or detention.”

However, not everyone was impressed with the response from the police, with one social media user demanding they apologise.

“Is it so hard to acknowledge you have done wrong?” one person asked.

This isn’t the first time authorities in Wuhan have been criticised for their decision making regarding the coronavirus.

The decision by authorities to withhold information about the infection until the end of last year, despite knowing about the new illness weeks earlier, also didn’t sit well with many people.

Earlier on Wednesday, authorities in the northern city of Tianjin said they had sacked a municipal health commission member for dereliction of duty, in what appeared to be one of the first punishments of an official in connection with the outbreak.