Chinese Citizen Journalist Who Went Viral For Reporting On Coronavirus Outbreak, Goes Missing

Chen Qiushi, a citizen journalist who had been doing critical reporting from Wuhan, the central Chinese city at the epicentre of the outbreak, has now suddenly disappeared.

Chen, who has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and more than 400,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, had been posting regular updates from Wuhan.?

Twitter

But since the 6th of February,?friends and family Qiushi have been unable to get through to him.?

According to a Guardian report, Chen’s disappearance comes as the Chinese government struggles to contain public anger over its handling of the virus.

“I am Chen Qiushi’s mother. Please, online friends and especially those in Wuhan, please help me and find Chen Qiushi and find out what happened to him,” she said in a?video posted on Chen’s Twitter page.??

Chen, over the past few weeks, gave people a peek into just how dire things have been. Many of those videos have been posted to Twitter and reposted on YouTube.

In his videos, he appeared to only have basic protection of goggles and a face mask, unlike reporters from the state media networks.

In a?video posted on 30th January, Chen described visiting hospitals full of sick patients, most of them on oxygen tanks and many of them laying in the corridor.?

? "I'm scared, I have the virus in front of me and behind me China's law enforcement," Chen said in an emotional video recorded in his hotel room on January 30.??

In that video, Chen also spoke of the eight "rumormongers" who were punished by Wuhan police for spreading false information about the outbreak.?

Chen, who was previously detained for posting videos from the protests in Hong Kong , arrived in Wuhan on January 24, a day after the city was placed under a state-imposed lockdown,

According to CNN, his close friends say Chen had left them his login details to the platform, in case he was taken by the authorities.?

One friend, Xu XiaoDong,?posted a video?claiming Qiushi was taken by force by Chinese officials and the cell phone he used to broadcast his messages was confiscated.?XiaoDong said officials told Quishi’s parents that he was being quarantined because he had been exposed to the virus.