(This article originated in A Catholic Voice special supplement )

At the time of writing, there have been almost 2 million reported cases worldwide of the Chinese virus first identified by Communist authorities in Wuhan on 17 November 2019 but not reported to the World Health Organization until more than six weeks later. And the death count is approaching 200,000.

There is significant under-reporting of deaths in China (to deceive the people and preserve the regime), in third-world countries (through administrative incompetence) and even in Western countries (through embarrassment at failure to act in time: in Britain, for instance, statisticians say the Government death count, now above 16,000, is more like 25,000).

Though some might argue about whether some of those reported as having died of the Chinese virus merely died with it, it is likely that the true death count associated with the pandemic is a great deal higher than the published figures. It is certain that the global death toll will be a great deal higher still before the pandemic is over.

This special supplement asks what, at first blush, may appear to be outlandish questions.

Should the 25-strong Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and its wholly-controlled subsidiary the World Health Organization be haled before the International Criminal Court on multiple counts of conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity?

Should all nations who owe money to China band together to repudiate their debt to it in compensation for the deaths of those of their citizens whom its wilful actions and inactions intentionally killed?

Should the WHO be abolished, all its personnel dismissed, the senior leadership tried for crimes against humanity, and a new body excluding Communist China but including Taiwan established?

Should China be expelled from the United Nations and Taiwan admitted?

Should Taiwan, for its own protection against the ever-growing military aggression of China, which is conducting exercises in the ocean around Taiwan as I write, be admitted to NATO?

Should Western nations stand shoulder to shoulder with the oppressed peoples of China and occupied Tibet, just as we once stood with the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union, to assist them in overthrowing Communism and becoming the world’s largest democracy? And should world leaders lean on China to pull out of Tibet and set it free?

Should universities which openly practice, support and argue for Communism, and are intolerant of any less brutal viewpoint, be defunded, and their degrees derecognized?

Communism, the cruel, bitterly anti-religious politics of concentrated and distilled hatred that now holds sway throughout the universities of the West, in extreme-left political parties from the “Democrats” in the United States to the “Labour” party in Britain and even in the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, has killed at least 100 million people worldwide. Now, through the Chinese virus, the death cult that is Communism is going to kill many millions more.

Communism, throughout its history, has posed a clear and present danger to life, liberty and well-being worldwide. Wherever it goes, piles of bodies follow. It has been viscerally opposed to religion, and especially to the Catholic Church, right from the start. It represents a grave and continuing risk to national and global security. As this history of the Chinese virus will show, Communist regimes such as that in China, can no longer be tolerated. Like viruses, they should be repudiated and rejected.

The history of Communism is written in blood. It is time to make Communism history, not by the argument of force but by force of argument.

China’s control over the World Health Organization

We begin in 2003, when for many months Communist China denied the existence of an epidemic of lethal respiratory disease – SARS, caused by a coronavirus – in several cities. SARS eventually spread to many other countries and was detected as far afield as Canada. The WHO estimated the case fatality rate of SARS as 2%. It was actually closer to 10%.

China’s failure to disclose the epidemic promptly as demanded by the governing statutes of the WHO, which are binding on its member states, led to a tightening of the rules as a result of China’s misconduct. Despite China’s misconduct, three years later Margaret Chan, a Chinese Communist from Hong Kong, was appointed director-general of the WHO, even though a report by the Hong Kong Legislative Council had criticized her failure to control the epidemic properly.

On 18 November 2016, towards the end of Chan’s term as WHO director-general, she visited Peking and said: “In the eyes of the world, China is increasingly seen as a model fro development at many levels … China is extremely fortunate to have a president who has made health the centre of all government policies.”

In 2015, towards the end of Chan’s second term as WHO director-general, she was criticized by a six-man investigative body appointed to review WHO’s flawed handling of an Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The team found that, under her direction, WHO had  lacked the “independent and courageous decision-making” that had been needed during the early stages of the epidemic. The investigators called for changes in the leadership and decision-making processes of the WHO.

In 2017, Chan was replaced. But her replacement was also China’s chosen candidate, this time a Communist trained in the immunology of infectious diseases and in the ideology of Marx and Lenin at the University of London, notorious even by the lamentable standards of today’s academe for opposing free speech on its campus. His name is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Ghebreyesus is – for now, but perhaps not for much longer – director-general of the World Health Organization. He was a member of the nine-strong politburo of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, one of the four race-based Communist parties comprising the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, which ruthlessly ruled Ethiopia from 1991-2019.

According to Lawrence O. Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Ghebreyesus, during his undistinguished tenure as minister of health in Ethiopia’s vicious Communist regime, thrice covered up fatal cholera epidemics in Ethiopia by falsely declaring them to be “acute watery diarrhoea”.

News outlets including the Washington Post and even the Communist Guardian have reported that during earlier outbreaks of cholera Ethiopian officials had lied, and had pressured aid agencies not to use the word “cholera” and not to report how many were infected. However, stool samples tested by outside agencies had revealed the presence of vibrio cholerae bacteria. Furthermore, as soon as severe diarrhoea began appearing in countries bordering Ethiopia, the cause was identified as cholera.

However, China wanted its man as head of the WHO, and, in the current enfeebled state of Western international diplomacy, China gets what China wants, so Ghebreyesus was unduly appointed. Like his predecessor, he is a Communist. Like her, he had previous form in failing to act promptly or properly to contain epidemics. This, then, was the man whom the world was supposed to be able to trust to prevent infections wherever they arose.

During Ghebreyesus’ time as a member of Ethiopia’s ruling politburo, the U.S. State Department and Human Rights Watch had both criticized the ruling Communist front for having displaced thousands of citizens, shot hundreds of protesters and imprisoned and tortured political opponents and journalists.

Ghebreyesus called these crimes the “growing pains” of a “nascent democracy”, and said that those who opposed his appointment had a “typical colonial mind-set aimed at winning at any cost and discrediting a candidate from a developing country”. As we shall see, he has played the race card again after coming under fire for his mishandling of the current pandemic.

Within a year of Ghebreyesus’ appointment to the WHO, he had taken the bizarre decision to recognize Chinese traditional “medicine”, in accordance with the wishes of his fellow-Communists in the Peking politburo but in flagrant contravention of one of the fundamental principles of the organization, which is that all its decisions and interventions must be based on proper scientific evidence.

Now, I cannot tell you whether Chinese traditional medicine is efficacious. And nor can anyone else, because no clinical trials to establish its efficacy have ever been conducted. A proper clinical trial has the following necessary minimum characteristics.

First, the trial must be randomized. There must be two groups, one tested with the remedy under consideration and the other tested with a placebo. The two groups must be randomly selected.

Secondly, the trial must be prospective. The researchers must set out, and obtain independent approval from a competent body for, a written protocol describing the methods to be used and the formal statistical criteria by which the success or failure of the trial will be judged.

Thirdly, the trial must be double-blind. Neither the doctors administering the treatment or placebo nor the patients should be aware of who is receiving the treatment and who is receiving the placebo.

In the absence of clinical trials, it was entirely inappropriate for the WHO to give any recognition whatsoever to Chinese traditional medicine. Worse, that catastrophic decision by the WHO under Ghebreyesus to recognize Chinese traditional medicine indirectly contributed to the emergence of the pandemic.

For Chinese traditional medicine relies heavily on eating a wide variety of animals not eaten anywhere else in the world. If the Chinese virus did not emerge from the Wuhan biolab, and if the Wuhan contact-tracers who originally found that most of the early cases were traceable to the Huanan “wet market” were correct, the virus emerged from one of the numerous species kept alive in tightly-packed cages right next to one another, or slaughtered and laid out on the filthy floor of the market amid the ice-slurry that gives the wet markets their name.

By recognizing Chinese traditional medicine, the WHO was, in effect, recognizing that the sale and consumption of species such as those available in the Huanan wet market was safe and appropriate, even though wet markets have been implicated in some of the many previous epidemics that have originated in China. A genuinely independent WHO director-general would not only have resisted any blandishments from the Communist Party to recognize Chinese traditional medicine: he would also have put the Party under intense international pressure to reform the wet markets. Under the loyal Communist Ghebreyesus, the WHO did none of these things.

In 2013 Peter Humphrey, a British private investigator, was jailed in China, where he was drugged, chained to a chair, locked in a cage and made to read out a statement drafted by the police in front of the cameras. The anchor-man for Chinese state TV who presented that footage, one “James” Chau, is now a “goodwill ambassador” for the WHO.

In 2017, at a meeting between Chinese Communist leaders and their creature Ghebreyesus, the WHO received a large financial contribution from China, which wanted to build an $80 million headquarters for the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The new centre was to be in Ghebreyesus’ home country, Communist Ethiopia. U.S. intelligence services reckon that China intends to use it as a base for spying.

As part of China’s debt-trap diplomacy, by which it allows third-world countries (and some once-first-world countries, such as the UK) to borrow large sums from it and then dictates policy to those borrowers in return for not calling in their loans, half of all Ethiopia’s enormous debt is owned by Peking. Most of the debt was incurred under the Communist administration of which Ghebreyesus was a member, to build the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway, backed by $3.3 billion in loans. The railway has been an economic disaster, crippled by under-use, electricity shortages and disruption by protesters.

Also in 2017, an expose by the Associated Press news agency showed that the WHO was spending more on first-class travel and swank hotels for its 7000 personnel than on HIV. More than $800 million, nearly half of the WHO’s annual $2 billion budget paid for by taxpayers in its 194 member countries, was squandered on premium-rate travel and accommodation.

The WHO has the active support of the Communists who control Google and YouTube. The WHO is tackling what Communist China calls “misinformation” by working with Google to “correct” it. Searchers, therefore, get “facts” from the WHO first when they look for information about the virus.

Worse, YouTube – also directed by Communists and owned by Google – has been actively demonetizing videos critical of Communist China’s role in lying about the pandemic and thus allowing it to spread worldwide. And it has also been “shadow-banning” sites of which Peking disapproves, and furtively unsubscribing the subscribers to such channels.

WHO kow-tows to China over Taiwan, with fatal consequences

One of the most important respects in which the WHO serves as China’s poodle is in the matter of Taiwan’s membership of the WHO. The nationalist Kuomintang government of China, driven out by Mao Tse-Tung’s Communists in 1947, established itself in Taiwan, which has been independent of Communist China ever since. However, now that China is a member of the United Nations, Taiwan has been expelled from that and all related international bodies, including the WHO. As will be seen in the chronology of China’s lies, deceits and corruption that follows, the exclusion of Taiwan has had very serious – indeed, fatal – consequences for the world’s health.

At a WHO meeting in 2019 Luke Brown, Minister of Health for St Vincent and the Grenadines, said: “There is simply no principled basis why Taiwan should not be here. The only reason why it is not here now is because the government in Peking does not like the government in Taipei.”

Because China insists on excluding Taiwan, Taiwan cannot even join the WHO as an observer, let alone as a member state. Natasha Kassam, an expert on Chin/Taiwan relations at the Lowy Institute in Australia, said: “Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO leaves its population vulnerable during this crisis. A lack of direct and timely channels to the WHO has already resulted in inaccurate reporting of cases in Taiwan.”

Taiwan has repeatedly complained that China and the WHO are not sharing information about the pandemic. The same exclusion of Taiwan by the WHO had occurred when SARS had broken out in China in 2003.

In January 2020, a WHO spokesman called Taiwan “China-Taiwan”.

On 4 February, a WHO report referred to Taiwan as “Taiwan, China”. The report, bizarrely relying on data from Peking about cases and deaths in Taiwan rather than on information from the government in Taipei, got the numbers wrong.

By late February, under further pressure from the Chinese Communist regime in Peking, the WHO no longer mentioned Taiwan at all in its situation reports. The 22 February sitrep, for instance, described Taiwan as “Taipei and environs”, listing it among affected cities in Communist China.

The origin of the Chinese virus

Not far from the filthy, unhygienic Huanan “wet market” where China originally said the new pandemic had originated (the Communist Party would later attempt to peddle the nonsensical notion that the U.S. Army had created the virus) stands the largest virology biolaboratory in China. The lab, partly funded by the United States, has for some years been investigating coronaviruses in bats, which are breeding-grounds for infection because they live in colonies sometimes numbering in the billions in humid caves.

It is not clear that bats were on sale at the wet market, but pangolins – a protected species eaten in China despite its protected status – were on sale there, and it is known that viruses are transmitted from bats to pangolins, and from pangolins to humans.

A doctoral student at the Wuhan biolab is said to have been splashed with blood and urine from an infected bat when an inadequately-maintained automated device that should have vaporized the contents of the containment vessel failed to detonate.

It has been suggested that this student researcher was Patient Zero – the first to acquire the infection. However, we shall never know, because, though the researcher’s name still appears on the lab’s website, her photo and curriculum vitae have vanished, as has she.

It is thought that she has died, but we shall never know because the Chinese regime has disappeared her and refuses to answer any questions about her whereabouts.

The timeline of Communist lies and deceits about the Chinese virus

In 2016 and 2017 China had been reporting extremely low numbers of deaths from flu: just 56 and 41 respectively, for the entire year, for the whole of China. In Britain alone, there are 20,000 flu deaths in a typical winter season.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Communist authorities in Wuhan first knew of the existence of the new pathogen as early as 17 November 2019. The governing regulations of the WHO require all member states to report any such new infection to it within 24 hours. However, as with the SARS coronavirus in 2003, so with the latest Chinese virus, the Communist Party did not report the outbreak at once. In fact, it delayed reporting it for more than six crucial weeks.

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission falsely stated on 5 January 2020 that “the earliest onset of the disease was 12 December 2019”.

On 21 December 2019, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control mentioned internally that “a cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause has occurred in Wuhan”.

On 25 December medical staff in two Wuhan hospitals were suspected of contracting the infection and were quarantined. Yet the WHO would not admit to human-to-human transmission until four weeks later.

On 30 December Dr Li Wenliang, a hospital doctor in Wuhan, issued a warning that seven patients from a local seafood market had been diagnosed with a SARS-like illness and had been quarantined in his hospital. He said: “When I saw screenshots of my messages circulating online I realized that the news was out and I would probably be punished.”

On 31 December the Taiwan Central Epidemic Command Centre told the WHO that it had had to place several patients in isolation because of the virus. The WHO, however, does not permit Taiwan to be a member, because China – though Taiwan is independent – claims it as a province of China. Therefore, the WHO responded with the curt word “Received”, and nothing more. Ghebreyesus would later try to deny that Taiwan had provided the WHO with information to the effect that human-to-human transmission was occurring (why else would Taiwan have isolated those infected?). Then, when Taiwan provided the evidence, Ghebreyesus accused Taiwan of “racism”, but was unable to provide any details of the alleged “racism”. It was only that day that the Communist Party in China informed the WHO that yet another fatal infection had emerged from the territory under its rule. However, on the same day the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a ban on all public mentions of the epidemic: “No organization or individual is allowed to release treatment information to the public without authorization.”

Ghebreyesus’ former deputy, one Aylward, when asked by Hong Kong TV why Taiwan was not permitted to be a member of the WHO, pretended not to hear the question and then, when it was repeated, he disconnected his webcam and hung up the call. When the reporter rang back and asked whether WHO was pleased with Taiwan’s response to the pandemic, Aylward said that all provinces of China had handled it well. Taiwan is not and has never been a province of Communist China. The interview was such a catastrophe that the following day Aylward was “unpersoned” – his biography was removed from the section of the website devoted to senior management, and he appears no longer to be Ghebreyesus’ deputy.

On 1 January 2020 the Communist authorities in Wuhan issued the following statement: “The police call upon all citizens using the internet not to fabricate, spread or believe rumours.” Instead, web users should “jointly build a harmonious, clear and bright cyberspace”. That day, Dr Li Wenliang and seven other doctors were arrested, taken to the Wuhan police headquarters and ordered to sign statements acknowledging “misdemeanours” and undertaking not to commit further “unlawful acts”.

From 1-21 January up to 7 million residents of Wuhan travelled all over the world during the Chinese New Year holiday season, carrying the infection with them and ensuring that it became a pandemic, for tens of thousands of them were infected.

On 6 January Dr Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control in the United States, offered to send a team into China, but the Communist Party refused permission for the mission to enter the country.

On 11 January the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission falsely stated that “At present no medical staff infection and no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission have been found.” Professor Gostin has commented: “We were deceived … Myself and other public health experts, based on what the WHO and China were saying, reassured the public that this was not serious, that we could bring this under control.”

On 12 January the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre published the genome of the virus on open platforms, but the Communist Party closed it next day for “rectification”, hindering its research into the pandemic.

On 14 January the Commission again stated that “Existing survey results show that clear human-to-human evidence has not been found, but the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission, though it cannot be ruled out, is low.” That day the WHO, which had at that stage been denied entry to China to investigate, nevertheless issued a statement saying: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

In January, the Czech counter-intelligence agency discovered that the Chinese embassy in Prague had mobilized Chinese interests in the country to buy massive quantities of Czach medical materiel which was immediately sent to China, indicating that the virus was spreading there. At the same time, and through February, the Chinese Communist Party-backed global property corporation the Greenland Group was instructed to halt normal operations and source bulk supplies of essential medical items to ship back to China.

On 19 January 2020 the WHO’s China office said: “Not enough is known to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, the clinical features of the disease, the extent to which it has spread or its source, which remains unknown.”

On 20 January, the Chinese lung specialist Zhong Nanshan, who had discovered SARS in 2003, said: “It is no longer animal-to-human transmission but human-to-human transmission.” For the first time, the Chinese Communist Party admitted that human-to-human transmission was occurring. Thereupon the WHO admitted “at least some human-to-human transmission … Infections among healthcare workers strengthen the evidence for this.” The U.S. Centers for Disease control said: “The key issue we all need to understand is how easily and sustainably  the virus is spread from human to human.”

On 21 January a man in his 30s from Washington State was the first confirmed case of the Chinese virus in the United States. He had contracted the infection while travelling in Wuhan.

On 22 January the vice-minister of the Chinese National Health Commission said: “We will disclose information on the outbreak in a timely, open and transparent manner, objectively reporting the development of the outbreak.” The following day, Ghebreyesus dutifully said: “I would like to thank the Government of the People’s Republic of China for its co-operation and transparency.”

On 23 January the Communist Party shut the stable door after the 7 million birds had flown. It locked down Wuhan and cancelled the New Year celebrations due to take place on 25 January, saying that it would “strictly implement emergency response measures, enter into a state of war and execute wartime measures resolutely to curb the spread of this epidemic”. Ghebreyesus, however, said that, while the epidemic was an emergency in China, “there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China”. Ghebreyesus said: “China has taken measures it believes appropriate to contain the spread of coronavirus in Wuhan and other cities. We hope they will be both effective and short in their duration.”

In late January Ghebreyesus met Xi Jinping in Peking to take orders from him.

On 26 January the Chinese social-media platform WeChat announced that it would enforce the Chinese Communist Party’s Criminal Law Amendment 9: “Those who seriously disrupt the social order shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment, detention or control.”

On 29 January Chen Qiushi, a journalist, and Fang Bin, a salesman in Wuhan, posted several viral videos describing the rapid spread of the infection in Wuhan, and calling for free speech about the outbreak. They disappeared in mid-February and their whereabouts are unknown. That day, Ghebreyesus said: “In Xi Jinping’s words, the measures China has taken are good not only for China but for the rest of the world.”

On 30 January Ghebreyesus said: “I was in China just a few days ago, where I met with President Xi Jinping. I left in absolutely no doubt about China’s commitment to transparency and to protecting the world’s people … We appreciate the seriousness with which China is taking this outbreak, especially the commitment from top leadership and the transparency they have demonstrated. China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response … The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, and beyond words. So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries … WHO continues to have confidence in China’s ability to control the outbreak. … There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade .WHO does not recommend limiting trade and movement.” That day the first case of human-to-human transmission in the United States was confirmed. Ghebreyesus Tweeted: “In many ways, China is actually setting the standard for outbreak response. Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, and which are ill-prepared to deal with it.”

Subsequently, the Chinese state media repeatedly broadcast Ghebreyesus saying: “China took action at the epicentre, at the source of the outbreak. This is heroic. The actions of China have made the world safer.” In the same interview, Ghebreyesus was criticizing other countries, especially the United States, for imposing travel bans to and from China. He is seen saying: “There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with travel and trade. We call on all countries to adopt decisions that are evidence-based.” When China, just weeks later, imposed a ban on all travel from anywhere else in the world, Ghebreyesus said nothing.

That day, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, quoted the WHO as saying: “China is committed to combating the transmission of the virus and has demonstrated co-operation with other countries. Its actions helped to prevent the spread of coronavirus to other countries.”

On 2 February the authorities arrested and interrogated Fang, who disappeared a week later.

On 6 February Hua Chunying, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said: “We have noted some rumours and lies about this epidemic, which are worse than the virus itself. You may have noted that even the WHO director-general has repeatedly called on people not to believe in or spread rumours.”

On 7 February Dr Li Wenliang, who had first gone public with the news of the infection, died of the Chinese virus. Social-media platforms throughout China demanded that the Communist Party should apologize for having silenced him, and should in future permit freedom of speech.

That day the U.S. State Department sent 18 tons of donated medical supplies and $100 million to China to “contain and combat” the outbreak.

On 8 February Ghebreyesus said: “At WHO we’re not just battling the  virus: we’re also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists who push misinformation and undermine the response to the outbreak.”

On 10 February China, having taken elaborate steps to erase all information and samples that would have assisted in detecting the source of the pandemic and in preventing a repetition, finally allowed the WHO to send a mission into Wuhan, more than two weeks after the WHO had made a formal request for such a mission, and six weeks after the WHO had first asked China for more information about the outbreak.

On 11 February Dr Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the United States’ Centers for Disease Control, said: “We absolutely assume that the reported cases are an underestimate.”

On 15 February the Chinese Communist police arrested, took away and detained Xu Xhiyong, a Chinese legal scholar who had criticized the Communist party for its falsehoods, negligence and corruption in handling the outbreak.

The same day, at the Munich Security Conference, one of the last international gatherings before the world lockdown, Mike Ryan, head of emergency operations for the WHO, said:

“Where we are now, certainly we would not be here with the opportunities we have without one of the largest public-health responses in history, on behalf of the Chinese government and their people. And when we use words about populations in China being scared or unsure, in fact my experience there is that they feel protected, that their government has stepped in aggressively and quickly to protect then, and that is the ultimate social contract between any government and its people, and I believe the Government of China is honouring that contract with its people.

“It’s interesting, before this outbreak began Hubei [the province whose capital is Wuhan] had 137 isolation beds. Now there are over 14,000 isolation beds. You tell me any other country in the world that could achieve that, really, so I think we all just need to take a step back and just admire what’s happened,

“There’s 82 different trials underway in China right now, ranging from traditional medicine all the way through to anti-HIV drugs, and that’s done in collaboration with external scientists, with external investigators. That’s an incredible advance in just basic knowledge over the next two to three weeks. For some of these trials we’ll have results in just two to three weeks. We need that knowledge, generating that knowledge, and developing the counter-measures we need.

“So protect the vulnerable, get our health systems ready, support China, not only with its response but also with the scientific work that’s going on there. And people say to me all the time, has China shared the virus, has this country shared the virus? Well, what we should be doing is sharing the viruses with China, because they’re the ones with the expertise, they’re the ones who need to see what’s changing in the virus because they’ve got the best chance of understanding this disease.

“So again some of the rhetoric – and we’re in a security conference – some of the rhetoric for me has not been helpful. Not been helpful at all. China has a strong public health and health system, demonstrated. China has a strong scientific and discovery system. China has the capacity to develop and scale up vaccine product, so we need to work with China. Using words like ‘probe’, ‘investigation’, ‘discovering cases of healthcare workers’, a lot of the language is pejorative and unhelpful.

“So I think we as a global community need to change our narrative if we’re going to work with China and other countries to stop this disease.”

The Chinese foreign minister replied:

“The novel coronavirus outbreak indeed poses a grave challenge to China and the world. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping our whole nation has come together.

“The fatality rate is 2.5% in China. The case count outside China is only 1% of the case count in China [Now, just two months later, not 1% but 97% of reported cases are outside China]. This shows the responsible approach of China for its own people and for people around the world.

“We have rich experience in tackling public health emergencies. China has been acting in an open, transparent and responsible manner. We share timely information with the international community, including the genome sequence of the virus, diagnostics, treatment solutions, and containment measures.

“We have also been working with WHO … WHO will soon send a technical mission to China. We care about the safety of foreign nationals, just as we care about our people.

“In some countries, Chinese nationals are even shunned or stigmatized. China is protecting the safety of people around the world with its own sacrifice. We hope that countries continue to support and understand China’s efforts. Respect WHO’s professional advice and see that normal cooperation and exchanges between countries go unaffected.”

On 19 February Ghebreyesus said: “Outside China we have not yet seen sustained local transmission.” That day, China announced it would expel three Wall Street Journal staff in retaliation for a column in the paper headlined China is the real sick man of Asia.

On 26 February 26 and 10 March, in emails sent to Roger Roth, president of the Wisconsin State Senate, Ms Wu Ting, wife of Zhao Jian, the Chinese consul-general in Chicago, asked Mr Roth “to consider adopting a resolution expressing solidarity with the Chinese people in fighting the coronavirus”. One of these extraordinary emails reads as follows:

“The Consulate General wonders if the Wisconsin State Senate could consider adopting a resolution expressing solidarity with the Chinese people in fighting the coronavirus. Yes, it would be a great moral support to the Chinese people combating the disease. Much appreciated if you could give it a serious consideration. We have drawn up a draft resolution just for your reference.”

The resolution drafted by the Chinese Communist Party read as follows:

“China has been transparent and quick in sharing key information of the virus with the WHO and the international community, thus creating a window of opportunity for other countries to make timely response.”

At first, Senator Roth thought the original email was “obviously a hoax”, for he had never before received any contact from the Chinese. However, when the second email came on 10 March he told his staff to find out whether the request was real. When they found out that it was real, and had been sent from a private account to avoid the red tape involved in using the Chinese Consulate-General’s email system, Mr Roth was furious. He said: “Just the fact that they felt it was OK for them to do something so brazen … for this Communist Party to so desperately crave for and look for legitimacy, wherever they could get it – including in Wisconsin – by passing this sham of a resolution that they wrote tells you just how worried they must be right now about how they’ve reacted to the outbreak here of the coronavirus.”

On 22 February the Global Times reported that “A new study by Chinese researchers indicates the novel coronavirus may have begun human-to-human transmission in late November from a place other than the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan.”

On 24 February Ghebreyesus said: “For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus.”

On 26 February Ghebreyesus said: “Using the word ‘pandemic’ carelessly has no tangible benefit, but it does have significant risk in terms of amplifying unnecessary and unjustified fear and stigma and paralyzing systems. It may also signal that we can no longer contain the virus, which is not true.”

On 28 February Ghebreyesus said: “Our greatest enemy right now is not the virus itself. It’s fear, rumours and stigma. And our greatest assets are facts, reason and solidarity.” That day a report by the WHO said: “General Secretary Xi Jinping personally directed and deployed the prevention and control work.”

On 1 March it was reported that some 21 former cellphone subscribers in China are no longer listed. This is the first time that cellphone ownership has fallen. Though it is possible that economic hardship arising from the Wuhan lockdown may have reduced subscriber numbers, it is also possible that large numbers of former subscribers have died of the Chinese virus but the regime has not reported their deaths.

On 4 March the Communist Party’s Xinhua News Agency said that if China were to impose restrictions on pharmaceutical exports the United States “will be plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus”.

On 5 March Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said: “COVID-19 is our common enemy. I don’t understand why some think anyone should apologize. The WHO has said many times that stigma is more dangerous than the virus itself.”

On 8 March Mr Robert O’Brien, the National Security Advisor to President Trump, gave a talk at the Heritage Foundation in which he said that China had covered up the initial outbreak of the virus, delaying an effective global response by two months. This chronology confirms that analysis.

On 9 March Ghebreyesus said: “Of the four countries with the most cases, China is bringing its epidemic under control.”

On 10 March President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan and declared victory over the Chinese virus. However, a local doctor said that the number of patients in Wuhan had been manipulated in preparation for the dictator’s visit.

On 11 March the WHO, having previously stated that calling the outbreak a pandemic was not helpful, declared it to be a pandemic.

On 12 March Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said: “It might be the U.S. Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent. Make public your data. The U.S. owes us an explanation.”

On 16 March Ghebreyesus said: “You cannot fight a fire blindfolded, and we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected.”

On 17 March the Communist Party expelled journalists from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and demanded revised working practices from Voice of America and Time after President Trump had expelled five Chinesse state-run news organizations.

On 18 March Geng Suang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, boasted of deliveries of medical supplies from China to other countries: “We also support countries’ procurement of medical supplies made in China. Our local governments, enterprises and civil institutions also made donations to other countries.” On the same day, Czech authorities are reported as having seized over 700,000 masks and respirators in a warehouse owned by a member of the Communist “United Front Work Department”. Some of the boxes were labelled as “aid” from China not to the Czech Republic but to Italy. The shell company that owned the masks was trying to sell them to Czech citizens at a premium.

On 19 March Ghebreyesus said: “We have a list of agreed suppliers in China now, and they have permission to export to WHO. We’re now finalizing the arrangements.” The same day Chinese state television said: “With no new cases in Wuhan, the Chinese mainland reduced the increase in domestic transmissions to zero, according to the National Health Commission. The mainland now faces a greater threat of infections imported from overseas.” Dutifully, Ghebreyesus said the same day: “For the first time, China has reported no domestic cases – an amazing achievement.”

On 20 March, a doctor in Wuhan told reporters that his hospital was under pressure from the central government to report no cases and to refuse to admit new patients suffering from the Chinese virus. Meanwhile, Ghebreyesus said: We have now identified some producers in China who have agreed to supply WHO … WHO can only buy or recommend kits that have been evaluated independently, to ensure their quality.”

From 22-27 March, seven funeral homes in Wuhan handed out the cremated remains of about 500 people a day to their families, indicating that far more had died than had ever been reported in the official statistics.

On 23 March, the Health Commission in Wuhan said that infected people with no symptoms were being isolated in quarantine centres but were not being included in the public tally of confirmed cases, even if they had tested positive and were, therefore, confirmed cases.  That day, hospitals in the Czech Republic had to stop using any of the 150,000 rapid test kits the country had bought from China, after finding that they had a failure rate of up to 80%. According to data from 2018, some 131 people die every day in Wuhan. However, on the truck there were more urns delivered in two days than the entire reported death toll from the virus in three months.

Some 2500 urns stacked inside the funeral home in Wuhan (Caixin News)

On 26 March China barred entry to all foreigners. Peter Navarro, a White House trade advisr, said: “The Chinese did not tell us in early to mid-December that there was a crisis of human-to-human transmission with a new novel coronavirus. That has set the world back six weeks.” Laboratories in Spain reported that the rapid test kits bought from China were only 30% sensitive, far below the minimum useful requirement of 80%. That day, the Caixin news agency in China interviewed a truck driver in Wuhan, who said he had loaded up 2500 ash-filled urns and delivered them to a funeral home in Hangko District. He had delivered the same number the previous day.

On 26 March State Senator Roth put forward 2019 Senate Resolution 7, “acknowledging that the Communist Party of China deliberately and intentionally misled the world on the Wuhan Coronavirus and standing in solidarity with the Chinese people to condemn the actions of the Communist Party of China.”

The resolution read as follows –

“Whereas the State of Wisconsin is currently in a state of emergency due to the rising spread of the Coronavirus that originated in the Wuhan Province of China, as the number of infected individuals in Wuhan rose to over 700 and also consisted of 8 deaths as of March 26, 2020; and

“Whereas the Chinese people are a great people, and heirs to one of the greatest civilizations in human history, held hostage by a brutal and oppressive regime these past 70 years; and

“Whereas the Communist Party of China has engaged in a continued pattern of human and natural rights abuses perpetrated by the country’s Communist administration, including the Communist Party’s treatment of Tibet, the internment and “re-education” OF 1.5 million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps, the enactment of a one-child policy responsible for aborting hundreds of millions of children, the majority of them female, a record of organ harvesting and forced sterilization, crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, and restrictions on individual expression and religious practice; and

“Whereas the Communist Party of China has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of interest in respecting international norms, including a history of currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, and restricting Chinese market access, while receiving the condemnation of numerous American Presidents and Legislators from both political parties for these practices; and

“Whereas the Communist Party of China, led by President Xi Jinping, has moved to consolidate power, scrapping term limits to create a de facto life term for the President of China and continually squashing democratic-based initiatives in and outside of mainland China; and

“Whereas the Chinese government has imprisoned its own citizens who dared disseminate accurate information on the Coronavirus, destroyed early samples of the virus, refused to release timely and accurate information on the virus, and continued to allow infected individuals to leave the Wuhan Province after reasonable evidence of person-to-person contamination was present; and

“Whereas reports have indicated that had the Chinese Government acted in a more efficient, transparent and responsible way, cases worldwide of the virus may have been limited by 95%’ and

“Whereas, on February 5, 2020, the first confirmed case of Coronavirus was identified in Wisconsin; and

“Whereas on February 26, 2020, and again on March 10, 2020, the Chinese Consulate reached out to the Wisconsin Senate President requesting that the Senate pass a resolution – written by the Chinese Consulate-General – including propaganda and falsehoods such as –

“China has been transparent and quick in sharing key information of the virus with the WHO and the international community, thus creating a window of opportunity for other countries to make timely response”; and

“Whereas the Wisconsin State Senate deems it necessary and expedient to combat the spread of misinformation propagated by the Communist Party of China and the need to push back on the claims that the virus originated anywhere but China;

“NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE –

“That The Wisconsin Senate acknowledges that the Communist Party of China has deliberately and intentionally misled the world, suppressed vital information on the statistics and spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus both domestically and abroad, allowed millions of individuals to travel outside of the province and country despite clear warnings that the virus could be transmitted person to person, and engaged in active suppression and persecution of individuals looking to truthfully discuss information related to the Coronavirus, which has led to a global pandemic the like of which has not been seen for generations,

“AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED –

“That the Wisconsin Senate hereby stands in solidarity with the Chinese people, condemning the actions of the Communist Party of China in the strongest possible terms, and acknowledges that millions, both in China and around the world, are at rks of illness and death due to the negligence and hostile actions of the Chinese Communist Party.”

On 27 March Turkey announced that it would stop using test kits recently imported from China, after finding they were not accurate.

On 28 March the Dutch Ministry of Health ordered a recall of 600,000 masks out of a shipment of 1.3 million from China, after they failed to meet safety standards. Spain’s government said it had bought hundreds of thousands of test kits from China, but almost 60,000 of the test kits were incapable of determining accurately whether a patient had the virus. Josep Borrell, a senior EU diplomatist, put up a blog posting saying that there was “a geopolitical component including a struggle for influence through spin and the politics of generosity. China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the U.S., it is a responsible and reliable partner. Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.”

On 31 March the Communist Party changed course and said it would begin counting everyone testing positive as a confirmed case in their official numbers, beginning in April. A U.S. intelligence report concluded that China had concealed the extent of the outbreak, the numbers infected and the number of deaths. Deborah Birx, a State Department immunologist advising the White House, said: “The medical community interpreted the Chinese data as ‘This was serious but smaller than anyone expected’, because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data.”

By 1 April, notwithstanding the indications from funeral homes that there had been thousands of excess deaths in Wuhan alone, little more than 3300 deaths from the virus had been reported throughout the whole of China.

On 5 April the Henry Jackson Society, founded in honor of a Democrat who became an effective critic of détente with the Soviet Union, issued a research report that reached the following conclusions:

1. The Chinese Communist regime failed to disclose data that would have revealed evidence of human-to-human transmission for a period of up to three weeks after the regime had become awre of it, in breach of Articles 6 and 7 of the International Health Regulations, by which China as a signatory is bound.
2. The regime provided the WHO with false information about the number of infections between 2 and 11 January 2020, in breach of Articles 6 and 7.
3. The regime failed to ban dealing in and consumption of animal species – such as the protected pangolins – which are known sources of zoonotic (animal-originated) infections, in breach of Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
4. The regime allowed at least 5 million people – five times the population of Birmingham, the UK’s second city – to leave Wuhan before it imposed a lockdown on 23 January 2020.

The report says the minutes of the UK’s scientific advisory group on emergencies record how the lack of information from the Chinese regime delayed the response to the virus. The report particularly highlighted the lack of travel screening. A University of Southampton study had previously found that, if strict quarantine had been introduced three weeks earlier, the transmission of the disease, and the consequent loss of life, would have been reduced by some 95%.

The report’s co-author, Matthew Henderson, said:

“The Chinese Communist Party has learned no lessons from its failure in the SARS epidemic of 2002-3. Its repeated blunders, lies and disinformation, from the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, have already had far more deadly consequences.

“This report apportions no blame to the people of China for what has happened. They are innocent victims, like the rest of us. This is the fault of the Chinese Communist Party.

“How this will translate into practice, time will tell. By computing the cost of damage caused to advanced economies and assembling a series of possible legal processes to which the rules-based order can have recourse, we offer a sense of how the free world might seek recompense for the appalling harm the Chinese Communist Party has done.”

On 15 April the Chinese Communist Party, under intense international pressure, reluctantly admitted to 1300 virus-related deaths that it had previously not reported. On the evidence, this declaration was merely a sop. The true figures are likely to be very much higher than the 4500 deaths reported to date. Evidence of serious new outbreaks in Harbin and Suifenhe in China’s north-easternmost province, with very long queues outside the hospital in Harbin, has come to light. There also appears to have been a major outbreak in Canton. However, these outbreaks have not been officially reported by China.

On 16 April the New York Times reported that senior British officials, having been approached by two Chinese companies – AllTest Biotech and Wondfo Biotech – offering 2 million home test kits said to detect antibodies for the Chinese virus, took the deal. Boris Johnson, the prime minister, said the tests were “as simple as a pregnancy test: it has the potential to be a total game-changer.” However, the tests did not work. Half a million are in storage, and another 1.5 million are also unused. British officials are trying to recover the taxpayers’ money they wasted.

Crimes against humanity: a legal analysis

First, a brief discussion of the facts to which the chronology attests.

Why does it matter that new pathogens should be reported within 24 hours of their first discovery, as the International Health Regulations insist? The reason lies in the elementary mathematics of how infections spread. That branch of mathematics is known as epidemiology. The first, iron rule of epidemiology is that any new pathogen, in the early stages of a pandemic, will spread exponentially.

What does exponential spread mean? It is like compound interest: very rapidly, more and more people will be infected. For instance, in the world outside China and occupied Tibet, in the three weeks from 22 February to 13 March, when President Trump declared the pandemic a national emergency, the number of confirmed cases – those ill enough to have come to the authorities’ attention – had grown at a compound rate of 19% every day. There were only 9 cases on 22 January, but, after just 51 days, by March 13 there were 64,659 cases. By April 18, another 35 days later, there were 2,248,047 cases, implying that the compound daily growth rate was still running at more than 10.5%, implying a doubling every seven days. Even if that growth rate were to fall by two-thirds to 3% daily, by the end of June, another 43 days later, there would be almost 10 million cases worldwide. Since most of these are the more serious cases, which produce frank symptoms, some 20% of these cases would result in death, implying some 2 million deaths by the end of July.

Exponential growth is, literally, a killer. That is why the International Health Regulations, which were tightened after Communist China failed to report the SARS epidemic promptly, require reports of new and fatal infections to be sent to the WHO within 24 hours of first discovery.

The Chinese New Year on January 25 is the biggest of the national holidays. For three or four weeks up to that date, the Chinese travel all over the world to celebrate the New Year. It is thought that up to 7 million residents of Wuhan travelled all over the world during the New Year holiday season, carrying the infection with them and ensuring that it became a pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party’s lies, destruction of evidence, arresting and disappearing dissidents and whistleblowers were directly responsible for the pandemic, which would never have occurred if the Communist Party had not tried to cover up the infection and then, upon admitting it, had not tried to pretend that it was not being transmitted from person to person.

But, though the Chinese Communist Party had not reported the new infection to the WHO by 18 November 2019, as it should have done, surely the WHO, on learning of it on 31 December, could have acted in good time to instruct China not to allow any travel outside Wuhan?

The WHO could indeed have shut down travel outside Wuhan. Even though it had no direct power to compel China to obey, it could at least have urgently alerted the rest of the world to impose travel bans on anyone whose journey had originated in China.

There are two reasons why the WHO did not act. First, even when the Communist Party reported the infection to the WHO, it pretended that the disease could not be transmitted from human to human. Both China and later its Communisst poodles in the WHO maintained this pretence long after both can be proven to have known that person-to-person transmission was possible.

Secondly, as the remarks of China’s foreign minister at the Munich security conference reveal, China’s instructions to the WHO were that it should publicly oppose on travel to and from and trade with China, long after it was clear that such bans should have been introduced. Had such bans been introduced in good time, the crippling infection rate in northern Italy, for instance, would not have occurred.

Very nearly all of the millions of deaths that will arise worldwide from this pandemic could, would and should have been prevented if the Chinese Communist Party, having failed to comply with the International Health Regulations in respect of the SARS epidemic in 2003, had learned its lesson and had reported the new coronavirus infection to the international community on 18 November 2019.

Likewise, very nearly all those millions of deaths could, would and should have been prevented if the World Health Organization had required China and other countries in south-east Asia to shut their wet markets; if it had maintained proper supervision over the ineptly-run biolab in Wuhan; if it had alerted the world to the pandemic as soon as Taiwan had reported that it was having to isolate cases of the new infection; and if it had not bowed to China’s instructions, evident in the foreign minister’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference, to oppose bans on international travel to and from China long after it was obvious that such bans should have been put immediately in place.

Given the Communist background of the WHO’s past and present leadership, and the evidence in the chronology demonstrating that the WHO was doing and saying whatever the Communist Party of China required it to do and say, and without the slightest regard for the health and well-being of the millions who have suffered and died, or will suffer and die, from the Chinese virus, the intent of both the Chinese Communist Party and the leadership of the WHO to conspire together to perpetrate crimes against humanity is established by the facts.

The Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Rome Statute, defines “Crimes against humanity” as, among others, any act or acts of murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape and other grave sexual crimes, persecution, enforced disappearance of persons, apartheid, or other similar inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to mental or physical health” that is or are committed “as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.”

Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

An “attack directed against any civilian population” is defined as “a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack”.

“Extermination” is defined as “the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.

“Enforced disappearance of persons” means the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time.”

On the facts, it is self-evident that both China and the WHO knew exactly what they were doing: each covering for the other as they failed to sound the legally-required warnings in time, knowing that failing to circulate those warnings was bound to lead to widespread disease and death both in and outside China and occupied Tibet. They knew that the virus was passing from human to human, but they denied it. They knew that the virus was fatal, but they persisted in their unlawful extermination of a significant fraction of the world’s populations. The Chinese Communist Party additionally deprived several whistleblowers of their freedom without any public trial, and has since refused to say what has happened to those citizens, so that it is not only guilty of extermination but also of enforced disappearance of persons.

The Rome Statute makes it clear that to establish an offence it is necessary for the prosecution to prove mens rea – the intent on the part of the accused to act in such a fashion as to breach the Statute. As the Statute puts it, “a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge.”

The Statute says a person has intent where he means to engage in the conduct complained of; and where that person means to cause the consequence of his action, or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.

The Chinese Communist Party, which had failed to comply with the International Health Regulations in 2003 when it had failed to notify the international community promptly of the SARS epidemic, knew perfectly well that a second failure to comply, particularly given that the regulations had been strengthened as a result of its first failure, would cause the infection to spread worldwide. It knew this because it had seen the effects of the virus in its own population. It knew full well that it was condemning millions to disease and death. And its maladroit subsequent attempts to cover up its wrongdoing, such as its ludicrous approach to the Wisconsin State Senate, shows full well that it knew it had done wrong and was desperately looking for cover for its wrongdoing.

The WHO likewise knew that its first duty was to prevent the spread of the pandemic, and yet at every stage it acted solely to protect the interest of the Chinese Communist Party, with which its leadership can be proven to have had long-standing and close links.

Therefore, the intent to do wrong, and the knowledge of the terrible consequences of that wrongdoing, were both manifestly present in the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and in the Politburo of the World Health Organization. All members of both these bodies should be individually prosecuted, along with the bodies themselves corporately. Any such prosecution would be bound to succeed.

As the map shows, China and occupied Tibet are not parties to the Rome Statute. However, cases against China can be brought before the Court if any State Party – the United States under Donald Trump, for instance – refers the case to the Court. China and the WHO, even as non-signatories, have the right to defend themselves before the Court, which, if they refuse to defend themselves, can nevertheless try them and find them guilty in absentia.

Other remedies available to the international community

Perhaps the simplest of all remedies available to the international community, faced with the crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese Communist Party in conspiracy with the World Health Organization, is for the large number of countries that China has ensnared by its long-standing policy of debt-trap diplomacy (lending money that creates a costly, long-term obligation on the part of the recipient state, which, in effect, cedes its national sovereignty to China in exchange for cash) simply to repudiate that debt.

For this solution to work, it would be necessary for a sufficiently determined country (once it would have been Britain, but we now are too close to Communism ourselves to find the moral courage to act against it) to coordinate debt repudiations among all the nations whom China has trapped into taking on large debts. There would also need to be a NATO-like organization, which all nations enslaved by debt to China would be invited to join, that would stand in the defence of any nation against which China tried to move by military force.

China should be removed from the United Nations and all its bodies, including the World Health Organization, and should be replaced by Taiwan. If China wishes to reapply to those bodies, she must first undertake solemnly, and upon pain of considerable financial and other penalties for future defalcation, to comply in future with the international treaties to which she puts her name.

China should also be required, as part of the price of readmission to the international community, to withdraw forthwith from Tibet – and not just from the territory that China now describes as the “Tibet Autonomous Region”, but from the whole of Tibet as it was when the Communists unjustifiably invaded that fragrant, holy kingdom by brute force. All Han Chinese would be required to leave Tibet and settle elsewhere, and the property, businesses and undertakings of China would all pass to Tibetan ownership.

This might also be a good moment to require China, under international supervision, to hold a referendum to determine whether the people of China would rather be governed by a democracy than by the Communist Party, and whether the people wish Communism to be made illegal.

It is also necessary to recognize that numerous political parties of the far Left in the West, including the “Democrats” in the United States and the “Labour” party in Britain, are now in essence Communist. In view of the clear and present danger that Communism continues to pose to the peace, security, prosperity and health of the world, the time has come for Communism to be outlawed in precisely the same manner as other forms of murderous terrorism are outlawed.

Communist institutions in the West – notably the universities, which now increasingly act against the right of non-Communists to express their opinions freely on subjects from State control to climate change, should also have their activities circumscribed. One way to deal with academe is to defund those bogus subjects, falling under the general heading of “grievance studies” – for instance, women’s studies, Black studies, gender studies, sociology and the like – that have no sort of academic rigour or respectability, and to defund entirely any university that allows its Communist students and academics to “no-platform” those with whom they disagree, and to derecognize their degrees.

At long last, it is time for the free West to stand up and be counted against the totalitarian system that has killed hundreds of millions and will kill millions more unless the world stands together, looks Communism in the eye and says, firmly, “Enough is enough.”