New Delhi/Beijing: Under the garb of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and Pakistan Army’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation are allegedly conducting experiments on deadly pathogens to expand potential bio-warfare capabilities.
An Australian investigative media group The Klaxon, in an exclusive report in August this year, revealed that the two countries had been carrying out extensive research operations on deadly ‘animal to human’ pathogens in Pakistan involving more than 7000 Pakistani farmers, herders and others and over 2800 camels and other animals.
Excerpts from the report:
- The Wuhan scientists have been conducting tests in collaboration with Rawalpindi in Pakistan since 2015 and results of at least five studies conducted on some of the world’s deadliest and most contagious pathogens – West Nile Virus, MERS-Coronavirus; Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus, the Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus, and the Chikungunya Virus – have been published in scientific papers between December 2017 and March 9, 2020. Each of these five studies was supported by the ‘International Cooperation on Key Technologies of Biosafety along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’.
- The research also involves experiments and genome sequencing of these deadly viruses. One of the studies thanked Wuhan’s National Virus Resource Centre for providing the virus-infected Vero cells.
- Wuhan Institute of Virology was testing lethal biological agents in Pakistan and providing extensive training on the manipulation of pathogens and bio-informatics to Pakistani scientists, which could enrich a potential offensive biological programme. It had also recently signed a secret three-year deal with Pakistan military’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation to collaborate research in emerging infectious diseases and the biological control of transmitted diseases.
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Both China and Pakistan have denied the claims. However, the Pakistan government has confirmed the existence of a deal between its military and the Wuhan lab.
“There is nothing secret about the Bio-Safety Level-3 (BSL-3) laboratory of Pakistan referred to in the report. Pakistan has been sharing information about the facility with the States parties to the biological and toxins weapons convention (BTWC) in its submission of confidence-building measures,” Pakistan’s foreign office was quoted as saying by The Klaxon in July. Islamabad did not identify the location of the BSL-3 laboratory.
Incidentally, Pakistan’s sharp decline in COVID-19 cases just two months after the mid-June peak of around 6800 cases in a day, has been widely referred to as a mystery.
