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 Chinese court found her guilty on 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 broadcasts, she reported on the situation in the epicenter of the pandemic in early February.
Zhan also uploaded several videos to YouTube with interviews with residents, commentary and images of a crematorium, train stations, crowded hospitals, empty streets and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It should be noted that China's Communist Party strictly controls the media and seeks to block information it has not approved. In the early days of the outbreak, authorities also reprimanded several Wuhan doctors for "spreading rumors" after they alerted their friends on social media.
"Zhang Zhan looked devastated when the sentence was announced," her 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 raised his case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of excessive repression of free speech linked to COVID-19 and continue to call for his release."
Security officials at the Pudong court denied entry to foreign journalists "because of the epidemic." Zhan's lawyer, meanwhile, said his team "will probably appeal."
"Ms. Zhang believes she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of speech," her lawyer said before the trial. Zhan, a former lawyer, arrived in Wuhan in February from her home in Shanghai and was detained in May.
She went on hunger strike in late June, court documents show. Her lawyers told the court that police tied her hands and force-fed her with a tube.
By 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 before trial and to live stream the trial were ignored.
Other citizen journalists who disappeared without explanation include Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua. While there has been no news from Fang, Li reappeared in a YouTube video in April to say he was forcibly quarantined, while Chen, although released, is under surveillance and has not spoken publicly.
