By Lt. General P.C. Katoch (Retd) Former Director General of Information Systems, Indian Army

At a time when COVID-19 was ravaging multiple countries with deaths and infections multiplying every second, cities/regions/nations locked down, economies shattered and unemployment going berserk – in effect de-stabilising the world because of China's biological warfare experiment gone horribly wrong, China mounted a world-wide diplomatic offensive for this outbreak not to be termed 'Wuhan Virus' or 'China Virus', latter term having been used by President Donald Trump. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi rang up his Indian counterpart Dr S. Jaishankar conveying the same – that India should not call it China Virus. If China's conscience was clear, it would not have blocked the initial move to discuss COVID-19 at the United Nations Security Council. However, on the occasion of 45th anniversary of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) coming into force and ahead of the ninth Review Conference of the Convention in 2021, India on March 27, 2020 issued a statement saying the impact of COVID-19 has underlined the need for international cooperation, including institutional strengthening of the World Health Organization (WHO). In a manner this indirectly categorizes COVID-19 as a biological weapon, implicating China since the virus originated from Wuhan in China.

China tried to blame the origin of the virus saying it was brought to China by 300 US soldiers participating in the World Military Games at Wuhan during October 2019 but these games saw participation by 140 countries with 9,308 athletes participating. The Indian contingent was about 100 strong. This nails Chinese lies - how come the US participants purportedly infected with virus passed it on only to the Chinese? The Clinical Microbiology Review of October 2007 from the American Society of Microbiology had stated: The Presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China is a time bomb. The possibility of re-emergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored. It may be recalled that in wake of the SARS outbreak in 2003, the then Director General of WHO Harlem Brundtland had asked the international community to investigate animal reservoirs that could be responsible for the SARS outbreak and study the virus transiting from animals to human, specifically identifying China's wet markets as the source. But the international community ignored Brundtland's exhortations. UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon had also said, “The more governments, UN agencies, organisations, businesses and civil society understand risk and vulnerability, the better equipped they will be to mitigate disasters when they strike and save more lives”. What bigger disaster could there be than China's virus attack?

China's wet markets breeding all types of insects, birds and animals in squalid conditions for human consumption can be seen on electronic media. Chinese consume virtually anything that moves – more the weird variety like bats, better for the ego and impressing others. Cockroach farming is profitable business since fried cockroaches are relished with drinks. After COVID-19 there are reports of Hantavirus in China with one already dead from Yunnan Province. Hantavirus is transmitted through rodents and their feces. So you have video clips of Chinese swallowing live baby rats. One demented pervert is seen cooking a live dog. There are reports of some even consuming human embryos. SARS broke out in China in November 2002 but China reported it to the WHO only in February 2003 by which time SARS had spread to 37 countries. Outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan was hidden by China for months till it became no more possible to hide. In July 2019, a group of Chinese scientists were accused in Canada for spying in Canada's National Microbiology Lab (NML) at Winnipeg; allegedly smuggling data/virus to China.

Biological warfare, economic warfare and psychological warfare are part of China's concept of 'Unrestricted Warfare', originally aimed at destroying America but which Beijing employs against all adversaries. China's biological warfare program is believed to be in advanced stage. Dr Francis Boyle, who drafted the Bio Weapons Act, is quite sure that COVID-19 is an offensive biological warfare weapon with DNA-genetic engineering, and this is known to the WHO. The notion that COVID-19 originated outside China has no scientific evidence to support Beijing's theory but the WHO instead of nailing China for the global COVID-19 outbreak caused by its bio-warfare experiment is busy wagging its tail as an obedient puppy – merely calling it a pandemic because China is the second largest donor for the WHO. China recently pledged $20 million to help the WHO fight the COVID-19 outbreak. To top this, declaration of this pandemic by the WHO was at a belated stage and is absolutely pathetic for the WHO to beat the drums about China's transparency for which it has no capability. How rouge and immoral China's communist regime has become is indicative of the defective equipment to fight COVID-19 it has been exporting to countries around the world, the most recent one being 3.5 million dud testing kits exported to the United Kingdom. China has recently sought an explanation from Brazil for a Brazilian Minister calling COVID-19 China's biological weapon, which in effect it is.

A suit has been filed in a Texas District Court in the US seeking damages of over $20 trillion US Dollars against China for the “creation and release, accidental or otherwise” of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) as a biological weapon in violation of China's international obligations. The plaintiffs argue that in effect, the new Coronavirus is a terrorist-related weapon of mass destruction. This is an interesting development but it is difficult to maintain a law suit against a sovereign country, especially China who treats judgments by the Hague-based International Court of Justice like toilet paper. But if this petition is allowed, US can seize China's US Treasury Bonds worth $1.3 trillion US dollars. No doubt in doing so, the US will have to take into consideration the US-China inter-dependency and trade. Stands to reason that all affected countries must stand together not only to fight the scourge but also make China accountable for the outbreak. There is no denying that most of the world is dependent on Chinese products but it would be good for the countries and individuals to shun China and Chinese products till China's communist regime reverses course instead of going more and more rogue. Another important issue facing the world is the demonstrated salability of the UN, which if not corrected will make this organisation wholly redundant.