Zhang Zhan, believed to be the first person in China jailed for documenting the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in the country, is expected to be released on Monday, after serving his sentence 4 years.
But in a sign that the Chinese government remains eager to suppress public discussion of the outbreak, it remains unclear whether Ms. Zhang, 40, will actually be released. The lawyer representing Ms. Zhang in her trial, Zhang Keke (the two are not related), said he could not contact her mother all day. Contacted by phone, officials at the Shanghai prison administration declined to comment.
“Even though she has served her sentence, there are doubts about whether Chinese authorities are willing to release her,” said Reporters Without Borders, an international media watchdog group. Are not”. said in a statement days before his scheduled release. The group awarded Ms. Zhang its press freedom award in 2021, noting that journalists released from prison in China are often subject to surveillance.
Ms. Zhang was an early symbol of the distrust many Chinese harbored over the government’s handling of the start of the pandemic as well as their hunger for unfiltered information. A former lawyer from Shanghai, She traveled in early 2020 to Wuhancity where the virus was first discovered, as a self-proclaimed citizen journalist.
For months, she shot amateur, often shaky videos that contradicted the government’s view of a smooth, triumphant response to the crisis. She visited a crematorium and a crowded hospital where rolling beds lined the hallways. She recorded the city’s empty train stations and tried to interview people about the lockdown, although many refused or asked to remain anonymous, apparently for fear of retaliation.
At the time, friends said she had never done any reporting, but she was motivated by her Christian faith and a sense of outrage at the government’s one-sided narrative.
“If we just wallow in sadness and don’t do something to change this reality, our emotions will become cheap,” Ms. Zhang said in a video.
The government, busy trying to contain the infection and maintain a lockdown in the city of 11 million people, has at times let through a small amount of independent reporting on the outbreak. Some of Ms. Zhang’s videos that she posted to Chinese social media were censored, but she also uploaded them to YouTubewhich is banned in China.
But soon the crackdown on independent reporting began in earnest. Other Citizen journalists began to disappear. Ms. Zhang acknowledged the risks but continued to post — about the lockdown, and then, after it was lifted in April 2020, its consequences. Then, in May of that year, she was arrested and brought back to Shanghai.
However, even in detention, Ms. Zhang remained defiant. According to her lawyers, she began several hunger strikes and became so weak that she had to use a wheelchair to appear at trial. Her lawyers said authorities force-fed her with a feeding tube.
Ms. Truong did was sentenced to four years in prison in December 2020on charges of “causing controversy and causing trouble,” a comprehensive offense the government often uses to silence critics.
Ms. Zhang’s plight quickly became a rallying cry for human rights activists and activists foreign government Criticizing China’s suppression of freedom of speech. When news broke in 2021 that Ms. Zhang was seriously ill, the U.S. Department of State called for her immediate releaseas well as groups like Human Rights Watch.
But many people who tried to defend Ms. Zhang from within China appear to have been targeted. Her brother, who used Twitter, which is banned in China, to share childhood memories and rally international support for her, remained largely silent. Many of his posts were later deleted. One of the lawyers who represented her was banned from practicing law because of his involvement in another human rights case.
When asked about Ms. Zhang’s case at a regular press conference on Monday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said he had no information about her case, but that anyone who violated Chinese law must all be punished.
At Ms. Truong’s house Last video from Wuhanwhere she describes talking to some unemployed immigrant workers, she reflects on the usefulness of what she is doing.
She said: “I honestly don’t know what to say today. “But these people, these things always push me to keep moving forward from despair and fear, to keep paying attention to them and speaking for them a little bit.”
