Beijing indictes Chen Mei and Cai Wei for publishing banned articles on Covid-19

The two activists had been arrested on April 19. They had posted an interview with Ai Fen, the doctor who had launched the alarm on the coronavirus. New outbreak of the disease in Beijing. Ten residential areas of the capital are isolated and quarantined.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Two Beijing activists will be tried for posting government censored articles about the coronavirus crisis. The news of the indictment of Chen Mei and Cai Wei was reported yesterday by their family members.

Chen and Cai were arrested on April 19th. They had published the interview given on March 10 to  "People" magazine by Ai Fen, the doctor from Wuhan who first launched the alarm on Covid-19 on GitHub - the largest open-source website in the world.

In the past two years, through their collective project "Terminus 2049", Chen and Cai have circulated material prohibited by the authorities, including articles on the "MeToo" movement against violence and gender discrimination, and on the eviction of a large number of migrant workers from some Beijing homes.

Chen and Cai live in Beijing, where a new coronavirus outbreak has occured. Yesterday 36 cases of contagion were counted in the capital, all related to the Xinfadi market. In total, 79 new infections have been registered in the capital since 11 June. Other infections have occurred in the provinces of Hebei and Liaoning.

China is the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last month, the government said it had eradicated the disease. There are 84,729 confirmed cases in the country and 4,645 deaths. The authorities fear a second wave of infections after last December. To counter the spread of the virus, they have isolated and quarantined 10 residential areas of the capital.