Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, who reported on the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan province, was sentenced to four years in prison after a court there found her guilty Monday of "provoking disputes and trouble".
Such charges are usually used against government critics. In her essays and reports, as well as in her video transmissions, the journalist reported on the situation in the epicenter of the pandemic in early February.
Zhan also uploaded several videos to YouTube with interviews with residents, comments and images of a crematorium, train stations, crowded hospitals, empty streets and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It should be noted that the Communist Party of China strictly controls the media and seeks to block information that it has not approved. In the early days of the outbreak, authorities also reprimanded several doctors in Wuhan for "spreading rumors" after they alerted their friends on social networks.
"Zhang Zhan seemed devastated when the sentence was announced," his lawyer Ren Quanniu told reporters, at the conclusion of the hearing at the Shanghai Pudong New District People's Court.
For its part, the UN Human Rights Office posted on its Twitter account: "We are deeply concerned about the four-year prison sentence imposed on citizen journalist Zhang Zhan".
"We raise his case with the authorities throughout 2020, as an example of the excessive repression of freedom of expression linked to COVID-19, and we continue to call for his release.
Security officials at the Pudong courthouse denied entry to foreign journalists "because of the epidemic. Meanwhile, Zhan's lawyer said his team "will probably appeal.
"Ms. Zhang believes she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of expression," her lawyer 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 at the end of June, according to court documents. Her lawyers told the court that the police tied her hands and force-fed her with a tube.
By December, I was suffering from headaches, dizziness, stomach pain, low blood pressure and a throat infection. Requests to the court to release Zhan on bail before the trial and to broadcast the trial live were ignored.
Other citizen journalists who disappeared without explanation include Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua. While there has been no news of Fang, Li reappeared on a YouTube video in April to say he was forcibly quarantined, while Chen, although released, is under surveillance and has not spoken publicly.
