Government officials and media worldwide have criticized a report by the U.S. intelligence community on the origins of COVID-19, opposing the attempt to politicize scientific efforts to study the origins of the coronavirus.
Released on August 27 after a 90-day investigation ordered by U.S. President Joe Biden, the report was unable to reach a conclusive assessment about the virus origins, including a conspiracy theory that the virus came from a laboratory in the city of Wuhan.
China has firmly rejected investigation into the so-called "lab-leak theory" and dismissed it as a politically motivated smear campaign.
International reactions
The politicization of COVID-19 origins tracing undermines global efforts to fight the pandemic, said Cambodian government chief spokesman Phay Siphan on Saturday.
"The virus origins tracing is a serious scientific issue. One must not politicize it, or it will hamper global efforts to put an end to the pandemic," Siphan said, adding that for global transparency, other countries where the early cases of COVID-19 had been found, including the U.S., should open their doors to the WHO experts to trace the virus origins.
WHO scientist Peter Ben Embarek speaks during a press conference following a visit by an international team of experts in the city of Wuhan to trace the origins of COVID-19, Wuhan, China, February 9, 2021. /CFP
On Monday, Syria's Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said in a statement to Syria Arab News Agency that the Syrian Arab Republic reiterates its support for "the right and just stance of the People's Republic of China in the face of the policy of pressure and blackmail practiced by the United States of America under the pretext of conducting an intelligence investigation whose results are already known about Covid 19 origin-tracing."
The statement added that the best solution to know the origin of this virus lies in conducting scientific research by specialized scientists from different countries of the world.
The blame-shifting and politicizing of the pandemic is hardly new in the U.S. As the Boston Herald pointed out in an August 13 editorial, the issue was political from the get-go.
The paper noted that from the early days of the pandemic, calling the disease the "Chinese virus" by then-President Donald Trump has led to racial and national stigma and continued attacks against people of Asian ethnicity in the country.
In an op-ed published Monday by Iran's Tasnim News Agency, China's Ambassador to Iran Chang Hua wrote that politicizing origins tracing of the COVID-19 epidemic will lead nowhere, and Washington should return to a science-based, cooperation-driven global response.
Chang said the aim is to use origins tracing to shift blame onto China and spread the political virus, calling the U.S. report "completely mendacious."
"The U.S. hypes up the 'lab-leak theory' while shying away from tracing the origin at home," he added.
Addressing the media virtually, the Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Chen Xiaodong said the U.S. government is on a slanderous campaign.
"What the U.S. has done is a witch-hunt that only looks for excuses in favor of their verdict, and that presumes China to be guilty," Chen said.
Dilip Barua, general secretary of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist), has dismissed the report as "fabricated, false and out of its political motive."
Barua said that the international community has widely rejected the political manipulation of origins tracing by the United States.
(Cover photo by CFP)