What role does freedom of speech play in a time like this? We talk to the respected lawyer and professor Katrina Legarda, and to political journalist-cum-author Richard Heydarian.
Mid-December last year, a series of screenshots containing warnings on the emergence of a SARS-like disease in Wuhan caught the attention of the entire world. Many had not thought much of it back then since the Republic of China dismissed it as rumour and the World Health Organization (WHO) has made no official statement yet. Though journalists from around the globe flocked to Wuhan like birds hunting for prey, they had failed to find anything conclusive.
It wasn’t until 31 December 2019 when China informed the WHO on the mysterious pneumonia-ridden patients, over a month after some Wuhan residents started exhibiting symptoms. By then the number of infected patients has ballooned to over 200 individuals. On the following days, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau summoned the eight whistleblowers — all doctors, for spreading “rumours” and had them denounce their statements online.
"The doctor’s insistence on telling the truth turned him into a folk hero in a country that prizes secrecy and crushes dissent. And it was only after the doctor’s death and widespread Chinese fury did the Chinese authorities concede that the doctor and the others who were arrested, should not have been censured," prominent lawyer and women's right advocate Atty. Katrina Legarda says.
Four months later, here we are, battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Had we learned about this sooner, could the world have been more prepared?
“This would not have, and has not, happened in democracies, where there are checks and balances as well as free, independent media,” author and international journalist Richard Heydarian shares. After all, freedom of speech encourages a discourse of ideas, arguments, which at the bottom line, encourages the rise of a polished thought.
"What history teaches us is that freedom is not only desirable as an ideal. It is also essential for economic development and advancement of mankind. Rapid scientific advancement and industrialisation in the West and in large parts of Asia and the developing world, over the centuries, would not have been possible in absence of openness to the spirit of inquiry, skepticism, and rational debate," Heydarian adds.