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(CNN) – An independent Chinese journalist who reported from Wuhan at the height of the initial coronavirus outbreak has been jailed for four years by a Shanghai court, her lawyer said on Monday.
Zhang Zhan, 37, was found guilty of “causing fights and causing trouble,” according to one of her defense attorneys, Zhang Keke, who attended the hearing. The Chinese government often uses the crime to target dissidents and human rights activists.
Zhang, a former lawyer, traveled to the central Chinese city in early February to report on the pandemic and subsequent attempts to contain it, just as authorities began to control Chinese state and private media.
For more than three months, he documented snippets of locked life in Wuhan and the harsh reality faced by its residents, from overflowing hospitals to empty shops. He posted his observations, photos, and videos to Wechat, Twitter, and YouTube, the latter two blocked in China.
Her posts came to an abrupt halt in mid-May, and it was later revealed that the police detained her and brought her back to Shanghai, a city more than 640 kilometers (400 miles) from where she lived.
In her indictment, prosecutors accused her of “posting large amounts of false information” and receiving interviews from foreign media outlets, including Radio Free Asia and The Epoch Times, to “maliciously stir up the Wuhan Covid-19 epidemic situation.”
Zhang is the first citizen journalist known to have been convicted for her role in reporting on the coronavirus pandemic. But it is not his first meeting with the authorities.
According to her indictment, she was detained twice over 10 days in 2019 for “causing fights and causing trouble,” but the document did not specify what had resulted in her arrest.
One of some
Zhang is one of several independent reporters who have been detained or disappeared in China since the beginning of the pandemic, as authorities cracked down on coverage of the virus and propaganda media soared portraying Beijing’s response as effective and timely.
In February, Chen Qiushi, who had broadcast live video from Wuhan during the city shutdown and posted reports on social media, disappeared. In September, it was reported to be under “state supervision.” Two other independent journalists, Li Zehua and Fang Bin, were also detained following their coverage of the Wuhan outbreak.
“Under the pretext of fighting the novel coronavirus, Chinese authorities have stepped up repression online by blocking independent reporting, information sharing and critical comments on government responses,” Chinese said in a previous report. Human Rights Defenders, a group based in Hong Kong. this year.
China is the world’s largest jailer of journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and strictly controls the press at home while blocking most foreign media outlets through the Great Firewall, its vast apparatus of censorship and online surveillance. .
In March, China expelled journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, in an unprecedented move against the foreign press. Beijing said the move, which came amid a wave of critical reports about China’s initial response to the coronavirus, was a response to recent Washington restrictions on how Chinese state media operates in the United States.
While sporadic outbreaks have emerged and been quickly suppressed with closures and quarantines, China has largely controlled the virus, allowing the country to return to relative normalcy.
However, restrictions on the press have not been lifted, and Chinese state media have begun aggressively pushing an alternate origin story for the pandemic, with claims that the coronavirus may have been circulating outside of the country before the initial outbreak in Wuhan.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Chinese journalist who documented Wuhan coronavirus outbreak imprisoned for 4 years.”
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