The Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin plans to file a class action lawsuit against China in the coming days over its alleged negligence in treating and containing the coronavirus, N12 reported on Sunday.
The Israeli lawsuit, once filed, will join at least four on-going lawsuits submitted to US courts against Chinese authorities over the pandemic, according to .
Shurat HaDin usually focuses on terror groups, yet according to Aviel Letiner, husband of Shurat Hadin director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, just as states cannot commit acts of terror and claim immunity due to their being sovereign agents, China should not be able to avoid its own alleged failure in containing the virus.
The lawsuit is submitted in the US due to the fact that “most other countries are scared of the implications of China’s economical might” he added. In recent years China made huge investments in Israeli infrastructure, winning billions of dollars of tenders for projects like the Tel Aviv lightrail and Haifa’s new harbor.
How much compensation would China be forced to pay if and when such lawsuits are ruled upon? According to the Daily Examiner, the figure might be as high as six trillion US Dollars.
The lawsuit adds to the ongoing speculation among media pundits, world leaders, and medical research teams about what exactly caused the virus in the first place, whether the Chinese did all they could to contain it, and if international bodies like the WHO were informed on time.
In Wuhan, where the virus first broke out, there is a lab which conducted research into coronavirus, the Hill reported. Chinese authorities claim that the virus came not from the lab but from the food market in the same city and have pushed back on claims that the virus was man-made, or worse, man spread, as anti-Chinese conspiracy theories suggest. Yet it is possible that a natural virus was able to spread via one of the bats used in the lab, as British intelligence suggested in the same report.
Another issue is if China cost other countries precious weeks, as well as human lives, by attempting to silence medical professionals who tried to warn of the outbreak. According to the BBC, this is what happened to the late Dr. Li Wenliang who died from the virus at age 34.