Some employees of the consulate were repatriated with signs of brain damage. An attack similar to that of Cuba in 2017 is suspected. The origin and function of this weapon is still unknown.
Washington - (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The US State Department announced yesterday that it had repatriated some employees of the American consulate stationed in the Chinese city of Guangzhou.
Several officials presented symptoms of brain damage following an unidentified sonic sickness. An employee was hospitalized after reporting what he perceived it as a "“subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure". The symptoms are quite similar to those reported by officials of the American and Canadian embassy in Cuba, which in 2017 suffered an attack similar to that in China.
In 2017 in Cuba, 24 US embassy officials and their families were repatriated due to sonic attacks. Symptoms included hearing loss and tinnitus, balance problems, sleep disturbances, difficulty with sight and cognitive problems. The same problems that doctors are seeing in some employees of the Guangzhou consulate.
In Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, comment on the event stating: "The clinical assessment are very similar and coincide with those of Americans who worked in Cuba" and he concluded: "We are working to understand what happened in both Havana and China ".
After the hospitalization of the Guangzhou consulate worker, the State Department has issued a note on how to behave in case of "sonic attack": do not look for the source of the noise but move as soon as possible to an area where the sound is not present.
Meanwhile, the spokesman for the American embassy in Beijing Jinnie Lee said that these events began in late 2017 and continued until last month.
On May 24, the spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, speaking of one of the first cases that emerged on May 16, said he did not know the causes of the sickness. " “China has conducted a very careful investigation and has given preliminary findings to the US, and we haven’t found the reason or clues that led to the situation mentioned by the US,” he said, adding “China has always followed the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations and consular relations to protect the US diplomatic staff and staff from other countries.”