A Chinese citizen journalist who documented the coronavirus pandemic as it ravaged Wuhan earlier this year has been sentenced to four years in prison for her work.
Zhang Zhan, 37, refused to plead guilty and was convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” her attorney Zhang Keke told CNN. Zhang was wheelchair-bound at the Monday sentencing hearing because she has become frail and weak while in the custody of Chinese authorities, according to her lawyer.
“Zhang Zhan looked devastated when the sentence was announced,” Ren Quanniu, another one of Zhang’s defense attorneys, told reporters on Monday, according to AFP. Her mother cried as the sentence was read.
Zhang is a former lawyer who embarked upon a trip from Shanghai to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus is thought to have originated, near the start of the health crisis in early February. She spent months documenting the frenzied response to the pandemic, reporting on the city’s strict lockdown, and offering critiques about the government response saying it “didn’t give people enough information, then simply locked down the city.”
“This is a great violation of human rights,” Zhang wrote in a February essay.
Zhang was detained in May and returned to Shanghai. While in custody, she began a hunger strike that reportedly resulted in her being physically restrained. Zhang Keke, one of her lawyers, said that when he visited her on Christmas Day, her hands were shackled, and she had a feeding tube inserted into her mouth, causing pain.
“Restrained 24 hours a day, she needs assistance going to the bathroom,” the lawyer said on social media. “She feels psychologically exhausted, like every day is a torment.”
Her indictment said she was guilty of “publishing large amounts of fake information” and was giving interviews to foreign news outlets to “maliciously stir up the Wuhan COVID-19 epidemic situation.” Her lawyer pushed back on the notion and said no evidence was presented to back up that claim.
Leo Lan, a research and advocacy consultant with the Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said government officials “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.”
Zhang is one of four citizen journalists arrested for their coverage of the situation in Wuhan. Soon after Zhang began her Wuhan reporting, the virus exploded in scale and has since infected nearly 81 million and killed more than 1.7 million people.
While Wuhan was the early epicenter of the pandemic, it has since returned to near normalcy, even promoting tourism to the city of 11 million people with idyllic ads encouraging travelers to visit. It also grabbed headlines over the summer when video was released from a massive party at Wuhan water park featuring maskless revelers. Domestic travel to the city has been growing, with more than 18 million tourists visiting the city in October during China’s Golden Week celebrations.
