China slaps citizen journalist with four-year jail sentence for Wuhan lockdown reporting

A Chinese court on December 28 sentenced a former lawyer and citizen journalist to four years in jail for reporting from Wuhan. Zhang Zhan was arrested in May for reporting on COVID-19 handling in the initial days of the outbreak and criticising the authorities for shortcomings. While last month she was charged with alleged dissemination of false information, on Monday she was handed a four-year jail term by Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court for "provoking trouble and picking quarrels". 

The 37-year-old was one of several citizen journalists whose first-hand accounts from when the deadly virus first emerged nearly a year ago painted a more dire picture of the early outbreak than the Chinese government’s official narrative. According to The Guardian, the indictment sheet now claims that Zhang had sent "false information" through text, video, and other social media platforms such as WeChat, Twitter, and YouTube. It added that Zhang also accepted interviews from overseas media and speculated on Wuhan’s epidemic. 

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‘Citizens speech shouldn’t be censored’ 

Earlier, Zhang had denied the charges and said that all her reports about the outbreak response were based on first-hand accounts from locals. Her reports were often critical of the secrecy and censorship. As she was produced in front of the judges on Monday, she said that the "citizens speech should not be censored". She did not say anything else apart from this one sentence, as per reports. 

Zhang’s lawyer, Zhang Keke said that the 37-year-old appeared in court in a wheelchair. She has been restrained 24-hours-a-day and force-fed with a tube after she went on a hunger strike. Keke also informed that Zhang had lost 15 to 20kg and her hair had been cut short. "She feels psychologically exhausted, like every day is a torment," the lawyer added. 

Several people reportedly poured in from all over the country to show solidarity with Zhan. However, they were stopped by the police to enter the court premises and attend the open court hearing. Zhang is not the first individual in China who became a victim of the state-sponsored crackdown in order to stop information flow on the COVID-19 outbreak. Several people since the start of the pandemic have been detained or jailed in China for their efforts to expose the poor handling of the authorities.

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