Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has been imprisoned for four years.
Carry off:
A Chinese citizen journalist was jailed for four years on Monday for her reporting from Wuhan when the Covid-19 outbreak broke out, her lawyer said, nearly a year after details of an “unknown viral pneumonia” emerged in the central city of China.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was sentenced in a brief hearing in a Shanghai court for allegedly “provoking disputes and causing trouble” during her reporting on the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak.
Their reports and live essays were shared on social media platforms in February, drawing the attention of authorities, who have punished eight virus whistleblowers so far they deny criticism of the government’s response to the outbreak.
Beijing has congratulated itself on “extraordinary” success in controlling the virus within its borders, with a recovering economy, while much of the rest of the world stutters through painful shutdowns and the increase in the number of cases a year after the start of the pandemic in Wuhan.
Controlling the flow of information during an unprecedented global health crisis has been instrumental in allowing China’s communist authorities to reshape the narrative in their favor, and the country’s ruling party has honored President Xi Jinping for his leadership.
But that has come at a serious cost to anyone who has blown holes in official history.
The court said that Zhang Zhan had spread “false comments” online, according to one of his lawyers, Zhang Keke, but the prosecution did not fully disclose his evidence in court.
“We had no way of understanding what exactly Zhang Zhan was being accused of,” he added, describing it as “a swift and rushed hearing.”
In return, the defendant “did not respond [to questions]… She refused to respond when the judge asked her to confirm her identity. “
The defendant’s mother sobbed loudly when the verdict was read, Ren Quanniu, another member of Zhang’s defense team, told reporters who were prohibited from entering the court.
Concerns are growing for the health of Zhang, 37, who went on a hunger strike in June and has been force-fed through a nasal tube.
His legal team said that his health was in decline and that he suffered from headaches, dizziness and stomach pain, and that he had appeared in court in a wheelchair.
“She said when I visited her (last week): ‘If they give me a severe sentence, I will refuse the food until the end’ … She believes that she will die in prison,” Ren said before the trial.
“It is an extreme method of protesting against this society and this environment.”
China’s communist authorities have a history of prosecuting dissidents in opaque courts between Christmas and New Years in an effort to minimize Western scrutiny.
Example done
The ruling comes just weeks before an international team of experts from the World Health Organization is expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of Covid-19.
Zhang criticized the initial response in Wuhan, writing in a February essay that the government “did not give people enough information and then simply closed the city.”
“This is a gross violation of human rights,” he wrote.
Human rights groups and embassies have also drawn attention to her case, although diplomats from several countries were denied requests to monitor the hearing.
“The case of Zhang Zhan raises serious concerns about press freedom in China,” the British embassy in Beijing said, urging “China to release all those detained for its reports.”
The authorities “want to use his case as an example to scare other dissidents from raising questions about the pandemic situation in Wuhan earlier this year,” added Leo Lan, research and advocacy consultant at the Chinese NGO Human Rights Defenders.
Zhang is the first of a group of four citizen journalists detained by authorities after reporting from Wuhan to face trial.
Previous attempts by AFP to contact the other three, Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua, were unsuccessful.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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