Legal Body Seeks Damages Against China at the UN Human Rights Council for Causing Pandemic

Chinese security personnel wearing protective masks march through Tiananmen Square during a national mourning of victims of COVID-19 in Beijing on April 4, 2020. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

London-based International Council of Jurists (ICJ) and All India Bar Association (AIBA) have jointly filed a complaint against China with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), seeking unspecified compensation for Beijing’s role in causing a pandemic.

The complaint dated April 4 was penned by ICJ President and AIBA Chairman Dr. Adish C. Aggarwala. It alleged that China has committed “grave offenses against the humanity throughout the world” due to its inaction and negligence in the face of the CCP virus outbreak.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus as the CCP virus because the Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.

The complaint asked that the UNHRC “ensure and direct” Beijing to “adequately compensate the international community and member states and particularly India.”

Aggarwala told The Epoch Times in an email that ICJ also intends to file a lawsuit in India and London against China, to hold it accountable for the spread of the virus.

“The inaction and irresponsibility of the Chinese government in dealing with the early outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus has directly led to the global pandemic in the present scenario,” the complaint said.

Aggarwala pointed to the case of Li Wenliang, a whistleblower doctor who was silenced by Beijing after he posted on Chinese social media in December about a new form of pneumonia that was spreading in Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province.

When China announced its “first steps for a quarantine of Wuhan” on Jan. 23, “a significant number of Chinese citizens had traveled abroad as asymptomatic, oblivious carriers,” the complaint said. The Wuhan mayor said five million people left the city before it was placed under lockdown.

More than 40,000 families who lived in the Baibuting residential compound also attended an annual banquet on Jan. 18. The banquet was organized by local authorities despite a warning from neighborhood committee staff over fears of the pneumonia spreading.

Less than a week later, on Jan. 24, Chinese Lunar New year festivities began, a time when hundreds of millions of Chinese travel around China and abroad to celebrate the occasion with their families.

The complaint added: “The Chinese government...did not sufficiently contain and curb the travel of infected persons from further contaminating the world.”

It also said Beijing “deliberately misled the WHO (World Health Organization) in their disclosure relating to the deadly COVID-19 virus.”

On Jan. 27, the WHO admitted in a report that it had wrongfully assessed the risk of the virus. In a footnote, it explained that it had stated “incorrectly” the global risk as “moderate” in its earlier reports from Jan. 23 to 25.

It added that the risk was in fact “very high in China, high in the region, and high globally.”

The complaint alleged that Beijing’s response to the virus has violated various charters and guidelines issued by the United Nations.

“The lack of transparency in the dissemination of information relating to the spread of this virus and continued misleading statements had resulted in the violation of human rights of the entire global community warranting immediate interference and prompt action against China as mandated under Article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Aggarwala said in a statement given to Indian media.

The complaint also alleged that the virus was developed by Wuhan Institute of Virology—a “P4” laboratory that handles the most dangerous types of pathogens—to fulfill Beijing’s desire to “take control of the world’s economy.”

There is currently no conclusive evidence that the virus is manmade—nor that the Wuhan lab was involved. The lab has also denied the allegations, but the complaint cited a February report by Indian newspaper Economic Times, in which it detailed how Chinese scientists at Canada’s National Microbiology Lab, who are being investigated by Canadian authorities, had traveled to the P4 lab in Wuhan in 2017 to 2018. The report alleged that the researchers later developed and released the virus.

The complaint named China, Wuhan Institute of Virology, and China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, as the respondents.

The P4 lab is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has close ties to the Chinese military in its research programs.

The Chinese regime is also being sued in several lawsuits filed in the United States, seeking to hold it accountable for the damage it has infected on Americans.

Florida law firm The Berman Law Group, in partnership with Washington-based lobbying firm Lucas Compton, filed a class-action lawsuit against the Chinese regime on March 12, alleging that Beijing’s initial coverup resulted in the worldwide pandemic.

The lawsuit alleges that the Chinese regime “knew that COVID-19 was dangerous and capable of causing a pandemic, yet slowly acted, proverbially put their head in the sand, and/or covered it up for their own economic self-interest.”