Switzerland asks Chinese media to pull ‘fake’ citizen quotes

Geneva: Switzerland’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the websites of several Chinese newspapers have removed comments about the coronavirus pandemic that were falsely presented as coming from Swiss biologists.

Press and social media comments attributed to a biologist identified as Wilson Edwards targeted alleged US pressure on researchers amid the pandemic. Chinese officials and state media outlets have led an aggressive pushback against criticism abroad for China’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Swiss embassy in Beijing on Tuesday vented its doubts about the cited scientist with a Twitter post “looking for alleged (Swiss) biologist Wilson Edwards, cited in the press and social media in China over the past several days.” “If you’re there, we’d love to see you!” The embassy tweeted.

The post was accompanied by a message, written in English and Chinese, stating that no Swiss citizen named Wilson Edwards appeared on registries or academic articles from the biology field. It said the Facebook account to which Wilson was attributed was opened on July 24.

The embassy said that while it appreciated Switzerland’s attention, it should “unfortunately inform the Chinese public that this news is false.”

The embassy’s post said, “While we believe this story was circulated in good faith by the media and netizens, we kindly ask that anyone publishing this story take it down and a corrigendum.” be published.”

Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Pierre-Alain Elschinger said the comments were “misrepresented as coming from Swiss biologists.” “Many Chinese newspapers have retracted those comments,” he said in an e-mail, without specifying.

A certified Facebook account of the People’s Daily, China newspaper still contained an English-language reference to an article by CGTN, the international arm of the Chinese state broadcaster, quoting Wilson.

In the CGTN article, Wilson was quoted as saying that he and his fellow researchers were under pressure from the United States and some media outlets to support findings in a joint study by China and the Geneva-based World Health Organization on the origins of COVID-19. and faced threats. 19.

The study, released publicly in March, offered several hypotheses about how the pandemic began but did not yield any firm conclusions.

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