Vietnamese-Americans are joining “thousands of plaintiffs” in suing the Chinese government for spreading the Coronavirus and “claiming billions of dollars in compensation” for physical and financial damages.
According to a record filed by the Berman Law Firm in Florida, the first lawsuit is aimed at China and its government agencies for “their role in the failure to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The lawsuit states that “instead of providing accurate information to other countries in the world, China actively conceals threats, distorts important information and silences physicians who speak out about the seriousness of this virus, therefore, the virus has caused havoc in the rest of the world.”
Berman Law Firm also filed a second lawsuit “on behalf of all health-care workers who are on the front line against the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The content of the complaint said that “when these heroes rushed to the front lines to save people, the Communist Party of China and its directly harmed their health and safety by speculating protective clothing market” and “directly banning factories in China, including those owned by US corporations, exporting protective gear to the US.”
According to VOA Vietnam, until April 16, China did not have any reaction to two lawsuits announced by Berman Law Firm on March 12 and April 8 respectively.
However, at a press conference on April 15, Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson Zhao Lian Kien declared that “with openness, transparency and accountability, China has updated the World Health Organization (WHO), countries and regions concerned about the disease outbreak.”
“Those who accuse China of lack of transparency are unfair and an insult to the great sacrifices of the Chinese people,” Mr. Zhao said at a recent press conference.
Mr. Vinh Vuong, spokesman for two lawsuits of Berman Law Firm, “confirmed” with VOA Vietnamese Language that there are also Vietnamese-Americans involved in this legal step against China, adding that the first “lawsuit” has more than 5,000 plaintiffs, while the second has hundreds of nurses and doctors involved.
Vietnamese VOA correspondent could not independently verify the number of “more than 5 thousand plaintiffs” mentioned by Mr. Vinh.
Mr. Vinh said the two lawsuits were aimed at forcing the Chinese communist government to “publish more than 20 important documents and data they are holding, that governments and medical leaders are in need to understand better knowledge of the Coronavirus” and must “pay compensation for their wrongdoings to victims in the US.”
According to the case file, Berman Law Firm uses the Foreign Sovereignty Immunities Act (FSIA), which allows US courts to hear and adjudicate US lawsuits against foreign governments in the US to use legal action to sue the Chinese government.
Responding to VOA in English, Professor Chimene Keitner from the Hastings School of Law at the University of California in San Francisco said that from cases involving personal injury under FSIA, “the conduct of a Chinese official needs to happen in the United States in order “to apply” this law. She added that “we cannot sue other countries for their decisions.”
A group in the US recently filed a lawsuit against Chinese authorities of up to 20 trillion dollars related to the outbreak of the Coronavirus. They accuse this as a biological weapon.
Specifically, American lawyer Larry Klayman and a group of defense lawyers named Freedom Watch along with Buzz Photos (in Texas, USA) filed a lawsuit against the Chinese government, the Chinese military, and the Wuhan Virological Institute, its Director Thach Chinh Le and Major General Tran Vi of the Chinese military.
The plaintiffs claim $20 trillion, greater than China’s GDP, and claim the corona virus is the result of a biological weapon prepared by the Chinese government.
The group accused China of helping lead to the death, providing material support for terrorists, conspiracy to cause injuries and deaths for American citizens, an irresponsible attitude of indifference, causing unreasonable deaths, attacks and violence.
The team believes the virus has been released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The plaintiffs claimed that the Chinese influenza virus was “created” by China to destroy people on a large scale. Biological weapons were banned in 1925 and therefore are weapons of mass destruction linked to terrorism, according to the complaint.
A group in the US recently filed a lawsuit against Chinese authorities of up to $20 trillion related to the outbreak of the Covid-19 outbreak. They consider this as a biological weapon.
The American team has cited media reports saying that only one microbiological laboratory in China deals with viruses like the Coronavirus in Wuhan. The Chinese government has resorted to national security to cover up the truth in the statements about the Covid-19.
Klayman and the plaintiffs also allege that the Chinese government has “silenced” the country’s doctors and researchers who have spoken out about the Coronavirus and “sounded a warning bell to the world. The group added that in desperation to save themselves, Major General Tran Vi injected himself and simultaneously injected 6 members of his group with a potentially untested vaccine.
They also allege that all defendants are working together to maintain “international terrorism” activities.
According to the lawsuit, while the Coronavirus is active and spreading slowly, it is difficult to use against a country’s military, but “it was created targeting the people of one or more countries to which China considers enemies, like the US.”
American plaintiffs also demanded a jury trial against Chinese defendants.
US Senator Tom Cotton confirmed that Chinese leaders “pay the price” if the world can verify corona virus originated from Wuhan laboratory.
In an interview with Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton said that American officials increasingly believed that the Covid-19 came from a laboratory in China. Although it is not a biological weapon, it is an attempt by the Chinese government to compete with the US.
“Since January, I have said that there is a surprising coincidence that the corona outbreak site is only a few kilometers from the Wuhan laboratory, where the Communist Party of China studies corona virus,” Cotton said.
Mr. Tom Cotton is a member of the US Army Senate Military and Intelligence Committee. In early January this year, Mr. Cotton commented that Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, Wuhan City, Hubei Province (China) could be the source of the dangerous virus.
In an interview on April 15, Mr. Tom Cotton continued to comment: “Today’s Fox News article shows that the Communist Party of China is responsible for every death, for every job lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Xi Jinping and Communist Party of China’s officials pay the price if the virus comes from Wuhan laboratory.”
Fox News reported on June 15 that the Coronavirus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and “Patient No. 0” was a laboratory employee who had been infected before spreading the virus in the community.
According to Fox News, the Wuhan laboratory has studied corona virus “not as a biological weapon, but as part of China’s effort to demonstrate its ability to identify and fight“ with the virus being equal or better than the ability of the US.” So spreading the virus to outside is an accident from the lab.
Sen. Tom Cotton said he wanted to open trials for US citizens suing Chinese leaders.
The Senator also predicts that US companies will “massively” withdraw their factories from China, and that it will be “a disaster for the Chinese economy.”
“Imagine, not only the US, but the whole world will require the Communist Party of China and President Xi to be responsible for the consequences of the pandemic if this pandemic were to occur due to the carelessness and concealment of surname.”
The Fox News article also said that China “100%” suppressed and changed virus data through the destruction of patient samples, scrubbing contaminated areas and tightening censorship of articles scholarly relation to the origin of the Coronavirus. There are doctors and journalists who warn of the possibility of a person-to-person virus transmission – have dissappeared.
Wuhan Institute of Virology is located in Wuhan City, China, which specializes in studying the most dangerous pathogens, it is home to more than 1,500 deadly virus strains.
On early April, a right-wing British research organization, The Henry Jackson Society, launched an initiative to sue China for “violating international medical principles” in dealing with the Coronavirus.
The organization’s campaign was introduced by a number of British and leftist newspapers around the world, talking about suing China for compensation of $4 trillion.
Only in this amount of money, the UK “must get a compensation for damage” $449 billion, according to henryjacksonsociety.org.
However, some opinions in the Western jurisprudence argue that suing the Chinese government is impossible because legal governments are exempted from prosecution under international law.
Before the UK had the aforementioned “campaign against China,” there were many different voices in the West demanding or suing China in some way.
Stephen Carter wrote in the Opinion section of Bloomberg News in the US on March 24 that it is impossible to sue the Chinese government in person, but if Chinese companies are proven to be “not part of the government to enjoy immunity from prosecution, they may be subject to class action lawsuits under US law.”
In “Can I sue China for the Covid-19?” This author writes:
“The Chinese government is in fact betting that they will not receive any punishment, because politics will be a shield to protect them. But one might question whether that would still be true. The whole world is losing trillions of dollars because of the reckless Chinese regime. The economic collision with China will last long, very long. Maybe international leaders will have to take some action. ”
In early April, newspapers in the Middle East reported that Mohamed Talaat, a lawyer in Cairo, said he sued Chinese President Xi Jinping and demanded compensation of $10 billion to Egypt because China “manufactured and spread the Coronavirus.”
This week, an Italian advocate for human rights and religious freedom, Massimo Introvigne, wrote, “Beware of the Communist Party of China, lawyers are about to call.”
Introvigne, former president of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, the World Religious Freedom watchdog sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said it was necessary to sue the Communist Party of China and its government for “violating human rights” and violating the “international epidemiological regulations” through the Covid-19 pandemic.
In an article in late March, Massimo Introvigne reported that a US lawyer sued the Chinese central government and Hubei provincial government in court in South Florida.
Facing the increasing world lawsuits against China, where Coronavirus originated, killing nearly 150,000 people and causing over 2 million people to suffer from this dangerous disease, the Party and The Vietnamese government should also consider the possibility of filing a lawsuit in international courts, claiming damages that the Beijing authorities have caused to Vietnamese people and businesses.
Recently, through unilateral actions of submerging fishing vessels of Vietnamese fishermen, China has become increasingly violent, the protection of territorial sovereignty in the East Sea (South China Sea), economic and social interests, and children. People in a country with more than 90 million people need to apply international law.
But is it important that the authorities in Hanoi have the courage to face Beijing? We will continue to observe and look forward to it.
Hai Yen from Hanoi – Thoibao.de (Translated)
