Guwahati: The international organisation for media safety and rights, Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), laments the recent deaths in China of two top journalists who suffered complications from Covid-19. Yang Lianghua, 74, a former reporter for the People’s Daily, passed away on Thursday, while Zhou Zhichun, 77, a former editor of the China Youth Daily, passed away a week earlier, according to a media report by Reuters with the dateline Beijing/Shanghai on December 16, 2022. Since the pandemic’s start three years ago, these are the first journalist deaths reported in China.
Many people perished after the Communist regime abandoned its rigorous corona policy on lockdowns, and both the Chinese media employees and they lost the corona wars in Beijing. However, after the domestic epidemic control policies were abandoned on December 7 as a result of huge public protests against President Xi Jinping, the nation’s national health authority has not reported any deaths associated with Covid-19-aggravated illnesses.
Since the Lunar New Year holidays begin on January 22, when rural areas will be overwhelmed by travellers, concerns have been raised because such villages and towns have not been exposed to the virus in the previous three years.
According to Blaise Lempen, president of the Geneva-based PEC, at least 2000 members of the media or former journalists died with Covid-19 in 95 different nations through March 2022. Since that time, about 100 more writer-journalists have perished globally from the unique coronavirus. In order to honour the victims of the media corona, PEC established the corona-ticker in March 2020.
Until March 2022, PEC recorded 30 most affected countries as Brazil (314 media corona-casualties), India (284), Peru (199), Mexico (129), Colombia (80), USA (70), Bangladesh (69), Italy (61), Venezuela (60), Ecuador (52), Argentina (50), Indonesia (43), Russia (42), Iran (35), United Kingdom (33), Dominican Republic (31), Turkey (30), Pakistan (27), Egypt, Nepal (23 each), Bolivia (21), Honduras (20), South Africa, Spain, Ukraine (19 each), Panama (17), Poland (14), France, Guatemala, Nigeria (11 each).
Those are followed by Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe (10 each), Algeria, Cuba, Paraguay (9 each), Philippines (8), Uruguay (7), Kazakhstan, Kenya, Romania (5 each), Morocco, Cameroon, Iraq (4 each), Albania, Azerbaijan, Costa Rica, Portugal, Salvador, Sweden (3 each), Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guyana, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Uganda (2 each).
Single journo-victim was reported from Angola, Barbados, Bosnia, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kirghizstan, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Togo, Tajikistan, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen.