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Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan has been accused of “causing altercations and trouble” for reporting on the novel coronavirus outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and could face up to five years in prison.
As the human rights organization China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) reported on Tuesday, a Shanghai city court will try Zhang for information posted on social media about the spread of the disease in Wuhan earlier this year. year.
The journalist can be sentenced to between four and five years in prison.
Zhang, 37, was arrested six months ago for “stirring up altercations and creating trouble,” a charge often used against critics and activists in China.
CHRD reported in September that the woman had been arrested in May for broadcasting on social media such as Wechat, Twitter or YouTube that Wuhan citizens received spoiled food during the 11-week confinement in the city, or were forced to pay for it. test for the new coronavirus.
Zhang also reported on the arrests of other journalists or the harassment of relatives of the victims of the pandemic who demanded that the authorities be held responsible for mismanagement in the early stages of the outbreak.
Other citizens who also narrated what happened in Wuhan have disappeared or have been arrested this year, including businessman Fan Bing, lawyer Chen Qiushi and young reporter Li Zehua.
In Wuhan, local authorities delayed releasing information about the outbreak in the early stages because, according to then-Mayor Zhou Xianwang, they needed approval from the central government to do so.
The city of Wuhan, where the first COVID-19 cases were detected late last year, was quarantined on January 23.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,319,561 deaths derived from more than 54.4 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report prepared by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 3,472 people died from 225,672 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
