The WSWS continues to receive statements in defence of Dr David Berger and opposing the censorship of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) Twitter page. @SEP_Australia was locked out on July 21 over a video in defence of Dr Berger and free speech.

Dr David Berger, a respected Australian physician and dedicated zero-COVID advocate who is being threatened with deregistration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) over his social media condemnations of the government’s “let it rip” coronavirus policies.

The campaign to restore the SEP_Australia’s Twitter account was a success and after nearly a week of being locked out, the account was restored late last night. While Twitter admits the video did not violate any rules, it fails to explain why it censored the SEP or why it took so long to restore the account.

Twitter’s blatant political censorship of the SEP in Australia is another demonstration of the high-level efforts being used to silence courageous people like Dr Berger and those who defend them. These attacks must be opposed by the broadest layers of workers, young people and professionals.

Since the publication of our first article on July 8, which calls on scientists, health workers and other sections of workers to come to Dr Berger’s defence, the WSWS has published twelve articles compiling statements of support.

Statements of support can be emailed here. Please indicate in the email how you would like to be identified in our next article, and if you want to include a photo, please attach one to the email.

Youp, a university science student from New South Wales:

I am in support of Dr David Berger. He is a reliable source; you can see that from what he has published and his collaboration with many other doctors. I think that his censorship is unjust. Dr Berger fights against misinformation. His advised response to COVID is the correct one and there are many other epidemiologists and medical professionals that agree with that. Either you let it rip, like most of the world is doing now, or you stop it once and for all, avoiding future deaths and sickness.

I can speak from personal experience about the lack of measures against COVID in universities: masks are not mandatory, less than half of the people there wear them, and they are mostly ineffective surgical masks. There is no information available on the number of cases at the university, although emails are still sent out about positive cases. I received one recently about a lecture I was in, albeit without any information to determine if I was a close contact and at high risk.

I think the locking of the SEP Twitter account—clearly in response to the current campaigning for the freeing of Assange and support for Dr Berger—is also unjust.

Mitch Kelly, a National Disability Insurance Agency contractor in regional Victoria:

I’m shocked after having read and heard about Doctor David Berger’s persecution. It’s just like Julian Assange. How can it be that our free speech and our right to have access to expert opinion is denied to us?

Since the government ended all restriction and controls on the COVID pandemic, my vulnerable clients and their elderly parents are living in fear of getting sick, not only from COVID, but from other diseases. They are aware that there are not enough hospital beds in regional Victoria and fear that they will have to go to Melbourne for treatment.

They know that they are not going to be isolated and will be exposed to the COVID in Melbourne’s hospitals, if they haven’t got it already. Before the pandemic, there wasn’t enough specialist treatment available in the countryside; we needed a new hospital and better services then. Now there is no chance of treatment near home.

My clients know and face COVID every day. There were difficulties before in accessing healthcare, but now they are frightened to complain about getting sick or not getting any treatment.

Dr Berger is being persecuted for exposing the failure of the government to provide access to modern healthcare. We have a right to know that we are being denied an effective public health response to the pandemic. Dr Berger is being disciplined in public for exercising his right to free speech, for exposing the government’s murderous pandemic policies. Like Julian Assange, he is being used as a warning of what will happen to anyone else who dares to speak up.

It should send a shiver down the spine of any worker, protester or writer. The attack on the SEP’s Australian Twitter account is a demonstration of what is going to happen to the government’s opponents.

The massive increase in COVID-19 infections and deaths is having an impact. Nearly every one of my friends and colleagues have had COVID. They have lost work, and some have been very sick. They are now beginning to recognise that everything the government has been telling us about COVID is a lie. The pandemic is getting worse, there will be no getting over the hump, instead it’s going to go on, and many more are going to die. This is what the government wants to desperately cover up. We must fight to defend our right to free speech and to know the truth.

Carolyn Zaremba, an actor, singer and voice artist from San Francisco:

I am opposed to the attempts to not only silence Dr. Berger, but to send him to the equivalent of a “re-education camp” for those guilty of “wrong think.”  This is nothing but the latest of the increasingly hysterical efforts to deny the seriousness of the SARS-CoV-2, a virus that continues to spread and mutate as time goes on.

The complete irresponsibility of governments has reached levels of irrationality. They do the bidding of the banks and corporations, which continue to reap profits at the expense of the health of billions of people. This is the same irrationality that is behind the decision to spend trillions of dollars on weapons and war, while there is “no money” for health care or the wages of health workers.

Most of all, the capitalist elites want to minimize the example of China, a country that is doing the right thing regarding the pandemic. In fact, all the capitalist countries are attacking China for its sane policies regarding this plague.

Dr. Berger is a voice of sanity and science. He must be supported. The attacks and threats against him must cease.