World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus claimed last week that the people of Taiwan were making racist attacks against him, and that the government was supporting their racism.
During an April 8 briefing, Tedros, as he is known, said seemingly out of the blue:
[S]ince I don’t have any inferiority complex when I am personally affected or attacked by racial slurs, I don’t care because I am a very proud black person or Negro. I don’t care being called even Negro. I am. That’s what came from some quarters and if you want me to be specific, three months ago this attack came from Taiwan. We need to be honest. I will be straight today, from Taiwan and Taiwan the foreign Ministry they know the campaign they didn’t dissociate themselves. They even started criticizing me in the middle of all that insult and slur but I didn’t care.
Tedros is an Ethiopian microbiologist.
During this same press conference, Tedros also called for “global solidarity” and for people to “quarantine politicizing COVID.” He also demanded “honest leadership from the United States and China,” as if the Chinese Communist Party’s lies about the origin and spread of the virus were somehow equal to whatever “lies” he believes the U.S. has told.
Ben Weingarten wrote at The Federalist that this is not the first time Tedros has played the race card in order “to deflect criticism of his organization’s response to the Chinese coronavirus.” Weingarten sent a list of questions to the WHO asking for evidence of these alleged racist attacks Tedros keeps claiming to get:
- Can you provide any specific examples of the “attacks” to which the director-general was referring?
- Can you point to evidence suggesting the attacks came from Taiwan, and clarify whether the director-general was saying that private citizens from Taiwan were engaging in such attacks, or rather that its government was doing so?
- Can you point to evidence regarding the assertion that Taiwan’s foreign ministry was aware of this “campaign,” and “didn’t dissociate” itself?
So far, Weingarten has not heard back.
More from Weingarten:
The remarks came amid a public appearance in which Tedros was responding to criticism from President Donald Trump about WHO’s “China-centric” nature and threats by the Trump administration to cut the United States’ disproportionate WHO funding.
Beijing certainly would have approved of Tedros’ decision to lash out at Taiwan. After all, while democratic Taiwan has handled the coronavirus crisis with as much success as any other place in the world, further strengthening its symbol of what a free and democratic China could look like, the CCP has successfully pressured the WHO not to recognize it.
The WHO, as Weingarten explained, excluded Taiwan from its World Health Assembly for the past three years and barred it from the organization’s emergency coronavirus conference in January.
Radio Free Asia reported that investigators in Taiwan “found a number of fake Twitter accounts linked to China posting fake apologies to World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has accused the democratic island of involvement in a series of personal and racist attacks against him.” The fake accounts were made to look like RFA’s account.