An area lawmaker is urging Congress to allow states to take legal action against China.
100th District Representative C.D. Davidsmeyer announced this morning that he will introduce two House Resolutions intended to compel the People’s Republic of China to pay the State of Illinois for damages incurred from the coronavirus.
Davidsmeyer says that China’s government needs to be held accountable.
“More and more information keeps coming out about how China handled this pandemic that started in their country. And I think it’s important that people realize that their communist government kept it from the general public. They kept it from the World Health Organization for weeks. They imprisoned doctors and told them they could not talk about it. I think there is a great amount of liability to the world from the Chinese government.”
In his official statement this morning, Davidsmeyer cited a Bloomberg News report from Wednesday, that stated the U. S. intelligence community had concluded in a classified report to the White House, that “China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease.”
Davidsmeyer says once the General Assembly returns to work in Springfield, he will introduce two resolutions needed to pursue restitution.
“The first one encourages Congress to take away China’s sovereign immunity, allowing us to sue them for what they have done to the State of Illinois and our entire country.
The second is a resolution that encourages the Attorney General of the State of Illinois to go after China for what they have done to the people, so the loss of life as well as the economic impact in the State of Illinois.
The communist government of China has tried to hide things and pretend they are something they are not, and I think it’s time that we have to go after them.”
Davidsmeyer says that he knows some work behind the scenes is happening in Springfield to keep the state functioning, but otherwise he and his colleagues do not know when they will be able to return to business at the capitol.
He says that In the meantime he is encouraging the public to continue to take every precaution to prevent the spread of the virus.
“I hope that people are taking this seriously, because it has spread throughout the world, and while the number of people who have died currently is low, it’s going to spread and it’s going to get worse. I think the communist government of China did the entire world a disservice by silencing their people.”
According to Bloomberg News, officials linked to the classified report spoke on condition of anonymity, and although they declined to reveal the full contents of the report, they did say China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete.
Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.