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On December 28, a court in Shanghai, China, sentenced Zhang Zhan, a Chinese journalist who had documented the start of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, the city where in December last year he had been enrolled in Wuhan to 4 years in prison. . first infections. The accusation against him is of “causing disputes and problems”, a very vague wording that the Chinese government often uses to accuse activists and dissidents.
Zhan, a former lawyer, is 37 years old and had gone to Wuhan in early February independently, without being linked to any newspaper, to spread direct testimonies through her social profiles on WeChat. Twitter and YouTube. Their reports recounted much worse handling of the crisis at the epicenter of the pandemic than the official narrative of the Chinese government, which generally during the worst months of the crisis censored testimonies and manipulated public discourse to reduce the perception of danger from the virus.
While state media blamed President Xi Jinping’s leadership for the success in containing the coronavirus, Zhang Zhan documented a crowded hospital with corridors full of beds and entered crematoria to try to quantify the victims. Zhan’s videos, sometimes short and confusing, attest to the difficulties of gathering the opinions of people in China, who often refuse to speak to her or ask that she not be framed in her face.
On WeChat, a very popular social network in China, Zhan was often censored, which is why he used Twitter or YouTube more often, which in China are blocked and accessible only through virtual private networks (VPNs). Zhan had managed to collect complaints from the victims’ families who asked the government for greater responsibility and had also denounced the disappearance of other independent journalists who in Wuhan did work similar to his: Li Zehua, Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin. There has been news of the first two (one is in quarantine, the other is at home under government supervision), of the third nothing is known yet.
However, the crackdown also came to an end against Zhan, who disappeared on May 14 according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a non-governmental organization for the defense of human rights in China. The next day, it appears that she was already detained in Shanghai (640 kilometers from Wuhan), but the official charges were filed only a few months later, in November.
In September, one of her lawyers was able to visit her for the first time. Lawyers said they found her in worrying health condition and that in June, to protest her arrest, Zhan went on a hunger strike. In December, lawyer Zhang Keke discovered that she had been intubated for feeding. Throughout this period, Zhan has rejected accusations of spreading and fabricating false information about the pandemic. Zhan was arrested as early as September 2019, on suspicion of causing unrest with her support for the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, and was later released in November.
After sentencing, one of Zhan’s lawyers, Ren Quanniu, told a Reuters who will likely appeal the sentence, adding that Zhan claims that “she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of expression.” Outside the court where the trial took place there was some protest and the journalists who tried to document the incident were rejected by the police.
Strong security when a Chinese citizen journalist was jailed for 4 years for reporting on the Wuhan virus.
Zhang Zhan’s live reports were widely shared on social media in February https://t.co/wnuAD2P6wc
???? Police try to block journalists out of Shanghai court where Zhang was tried pic.twitter.com/Wmd7aDMA8E
– AFP news agency (@AFP) December 28, 2020
– Read also: How China has censored the pandemic
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