NEW DELHI, Dec 28: Zhang Zhan, a lawyer and citizen journalist, who was one of those whose live coverage from Wuhan brought the world’s attention to the outbreak of the Corona pandemic in the Chinese district that China allegedly was trying to hide, has been sentenced to four years of imprisonment.
She was sentenced after a brief hearing in a Shanghai court on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak, almost a year after details of an “unknown viral pneumonia” surfaced in the central China city.
Her live reports and essays were widely shared on social media platforms in February, grabbing the attention of authorities, who have punished eight virus whistleblowers so far as they defang criticism of the government’s response to the outbreak.
Only on Saturday, the Politburo of the ruling Chinese Communist Party had congratulated the government for “extraordinary” success in controlling the virus inside its borders, with an economy on the rebound while much of the rest of the world stutters through painful lockdowns and surging caseloads a year on from the start of the pandemic in Wuhan.
Zhang is the first to face a trial of a group of four citizen journalists detained by authorities earlier this year after reporting from Wuhan. The three others, Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin, and Li Zehua, are still awaiting trial.
“Zhang Zhan looked devastated when the sentence was announced,” Ren Quanniu, one of Zhang’s defence lawyers, told the media outside Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court. Her mother sobbed loudly as the verdict was read, Ren added.
Concerns are mounting over the health of 37-year-old Zhang who began a hunger strike in June and has been force-fed via a nasal tube.
“She said when I visited her (last week): ‘If they give me a heavy sentence then I will refuse food until the very end.’… She thinks she will die in prison,” Ren said before the trial.
“It’s an extreme method of protesting against this society and this environment.”
The trial comes just weeks before an international team of World Health Organization experts are expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of covid-19.
Another lawyer said Zhang’s health was in decline and she suffered from headaches, dizziness and stomach pain.
“Restrained 24 hours a day, she needs assistance going to the bathroom,” Zhang Keke, who visited her on Christmas Day, wrote in a note circulated on social media.
“She feels psychologically exhausted, like every day is a torment.”
Zhang was critical of the early response in Wuhan, writing in a February essay that the government “didn’t give people enough information, then simply locked down the city.”
“This is a great violation of human rights,” she wrote. But the court said she had spread “false remarks” online.
Rights groups have also drawn attention to her case. The authorities “want to use her case as an example to scare off other dissidents from raising questions about the pandemic situation in Wuhan earlier this year,” some Chinese defenders of human rights said after the court order.
(Manas Dasgupta)