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A Chinese citizen journalist who reported on the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan has been jailed for four years.
A Chinese court sentenced Zhang Zhan, 37, for “provoking disputes and causing trouble,” his lawyer said.
Zhan, the first person known to have been tried on those charges, was among a handful of people in Wuhan whose first-hand accounts of coronavirus pandemic It has gotten them in trouble.
China has been accused of covering up the initial outbreak and delaying the release of crucial information, allowing the virus to spread.
The ruling Communist Party of China strictly controls the media and seeks to block the dissemination of information whose publication it has not approved. In the early days of the outbreak, authorities reprimanded several Wuhan doctors for “spreading rumors” after alerting their friends on social media.
Police try to stop journalists from filming in court
Zhan had uploaded YouTube videos of interviews with residents, comments and footage from a crematorium, train stations, crowded hospitals, empty streets, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
His mother, Shao Wenxia, said at Monday’s trial that she did not understand the sentence.
“All she did was say a few true words, and for that she received four years,” she said, as she stood next to her husband.
State media have attributed the country’s success in controlling the virus to the leadership of President Xi Jinping.
In Shanghai, the police imposed strict security measures outside the court where the trial began seven months after Zhang’s arrest, but the supporters were not intimidated.
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A man in a wheelchair, who said he came from central Henan province to support Zhan as a fellow Christian, wrote his name on a poster before police escorted him.
Foreign journalists were denied entry to the Pudong court “due to the epidemic,” court security officials said.
Zhan’s lawyer, Ren Quanniu, said his team “will probably appeal.”
“Ms. Zhang believes that she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of expression,” she said before the trial.
Zhan, a former lawyer, arrived in Wuhan in February from her home in Shanghai and was arrested in May.
He went on a hunger strike in late June, court documents show.
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Her lawyers told the court that the police tied her hands and force-fed her with a tube.
In December, he was suffering from headaches, dizziness, stomach pain, low blood pressure, and a throat infection.
Requests to the court to release Zhan on bail prior to trial and broadcast it live were ignored, Quanniu said.
Other citizen journalists who disappeared without explanation included Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi, and Li Zehua.
While there has been no word from Fang, Li reappeared in a YouTube video in April to say that he was forcibly quarantined, while Chen, although released, is under surveillance and has not spoken publicly, a friend said.
