Three years ago today, on February 7, 2020, Dr. Li Wenliang, of Wuhan, China, died of COVID-19 at the age of 34. Though his name was little known here, in China he was widely mourned as a hero and a martyr.
Dr. Li was a whistleblower, an ophthalmologist who, in December 2019, warned his colleagues on social media about the appearance of a mysterious new virus, urging them to take precautions. He was censured by the Wuhan government and forced to write an apology letter acknowledging that his warning was a “rumor” and a “crime.” Dr. Li contracted the virus in January 2020, while treating a woman with glaucoma, and decided to speak out from his hospital bed. “A healthy society should not have only one voice,” he said in his final interview.
There is only one memorial to Dr. Li in the world, and it is in Central Park, right inside the Central Park West and West 96th Street entrance. It is a quintessential New York City memorial — a plaque on a bench — with the words, “In memorial of Dr. Li Wenliang who sounded the alarm on Covid-19,” followed by the above quote in Chinese. Last Sunday, about 100 people gathered around the bench to remember and honor Dr. Li.
“We refuse to forget,” said Fengsuo Zho, a Chinese human-rights activist, who organized the Central Park gathering. Zho is the incoming executive director of the nonprofit Human Rights in China. He was a student leader in the historic Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. “Dr. Li was a reluctant whistleblower at the onset of...
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