Chinese authorities are using apps that monitor whether the user has been in regions with a high risk of contamination by Covid-19 or in contact with someone with the disease to restrict travel by government critics, noted an EFE report published this week.
The material contains the testimony of Chinese lawyer Xie Yang, who reported that in early November, when he was traveling from Changsha city to Shanghai, a code in the app on his cell phone changed from green to red, which prevented him from even access the airport.
Xie would travel to meet the mother of Zhang Zhan, a journalist arrested at the start of the pandemic after reporting on the Chinese dictatorship’s handling of the proliferation of Covid-19 cases and who would be “close to death” after months of hunger strike, according to his family.
The lawyer reported that the next day the app’s code color turned green again, but the trip would no longer be possible. Xie told EFE that he asked the Municipal Health Commission for an explanation, where he claimed that he had not been in any areas declared to be of medium or high risk for Covid-19, nor had he been in contact with anyone with symptoms.
The commission itself confirmed to EFE that Changsha, which Xie says he has not left in the previous two weeks, was not declared at that time as a relevant risk area for contagion. However, he did not reply to the lawyer.
Also lawyer Wang Yu reported a similar situation: a Beijing health app forced her to report places visited in the previous 14 days, standard procedure in travel, but the only options available were places with outbreaks of the disease – so if she selected them , would be prevented from entering the capital.
Her husband, Bao Longjun, trying to return to Beijing, had the only option in the Changzhou app, a city with a high risk of contamination by Covid-19, which he has never been to.
“I will not be able to return (to Beijing) if I fill in the form like this. After filing a complaint (over the phone), they removed Changzhou (as the only eligible destination). But now I have a yellow code (which restricts travel and imposes quarantine),” he told EFE.
Amnesty International told EFE that Chinese authorities have long used the name registration system to track human rights defenders or to restrict their travel, but that this was the first time the organization has learned of cases where the Chinese government has used health apps for that purpose.
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