Wittman, Stefanik propose sanctions until China allows investigations into Wuhan lab

Congressman Rob Wittman (R-VA-01) has introduced The World Deserves to Know Act alongside House Republican Conference Chair Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY-21).

The legislation:

• Directs the Intelligence Community to identify individuals connected to the silencing of doctors, citizen journalists and others to suppress information relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a possible origin point for COVID-19.
• Imposes Global Magnitsky sanctions upon these individuals and other sanctions on the top two Chinese health officials with early ties to the COVID-19 outbreak who obfuscated actionable information, until they allow an independent, unimpeded investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a potential origin for the COVID-19 virus.
• Prohibits U.S. colleges and universities from entering into any new contracts with any element of the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, any of their subsidiaries, or any Chinese-based institutes or universities affiliated with the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China.
• Prohibits the National Academy of Sciences from using federal monies to be used to enter into any new contracts with any element of the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, any of their subsidiaries, or any Chinese-based institutes or universities affiliated with the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China.
• Initiates a full and public review of National Institute of Health funding which has either directly or indirectly gone to the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, their affiliates, and Gain of Function research.
• Establishes a sense of Congress that — given Taiwan’s early alerting to the global health community on the dangers of COVID-19 while senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party downplayed COVID-19’s dangers — Taiwan should be granted observer status in the World Health Assembly.

“We cannot allow China to impede a free and fair investigation into the origins of COVID-19,” Wittman said. “Nor can we tolerate China’s suppression of information which could prove critically important to preventing future pandemics. The sanctions imposed by the World Deserves to Know Act pave the way to uncover the truth about COVID-19’s origins.”

“As the leader of the free world, the United States must hold Chinese Communist Party officials accountable for their unconscionable actions,” Stefanik said. “In addition to intellectual property theft, the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in the genocide of their own minority Uyghur population, the ongoing repression in Hong Kong, and blatant coverup of the origin of COVID-19 – which has led to an economic crisis and loss of human life across the globe, including the loss of nearly 600,000 Americans.

“A thorough, unimpeded investigation is necessary to determine the extent of their actions and prevent the Chinese Communist Party from financially benefitting, in any form, especially at the expense of the American people,” Stefanik said.