A Chinese citizen journalist who has been behind bars for four years over her reporting on the initial Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan is due to be released Monday after serving her sentence, according to supporters and a court verdict.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was one of the few independent Chinese journalists reporting in Wuhan after the metropolis of 11 million people went into a complete lockdown, offering a rare, unfiltered glimpse into the reality on the ground as Chinese authorities imposed tight censorship on media coverage.
She was detained in May 2020 and sentenced months later to four years in prison for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" – a charge commonly used by the Chinese government to target dissidents and human rights activists.
Zhang is due to finish her sentence on Monday, according to the court verdict on her case obtained and published by human rights groups.
Supporters and rights groups have called on the Chinese government to free Zhang on schedule.
"So far I have not received any confirmation that Zhang Zhan has left the prison and is home with her family. We are all still waiting," said Jane Wang, a UK-based advocate for the Free Zhang Zhan campaign.
"I understand that her parents and brother have been under enormous pressure and warned severely not to give media interviews. Friends' calls are also left without answers… these are extremely worrying signs," she added.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which awarded Zhang its Press Freedom Award in 2021, called on "the international community to put pressure on the authorities to ensure her unconditional release on Monday," in a post on social platform X Friday.
In early February 2020, just days after Wuhan went into lockdown, Zhang traveled some 400 miles from Shanghai to the central Chinese city to report on the spread of the virus and subsequent attempts to contain it, just as authorities tightened censorship on state-run and private Chinese media.
For more than three months, she documented snippets of life under lockdown in Wuhan and the harsh reality faced by its residents, from overflowing hospitals to empty shops, as the world braced for the spread of the virus. She posted her observations, photos and videos on WeChat, Twitter and YouTube – the latter two of which are blocked in China.
"I can't find anything to say because everything is covered up. This is the problem this country is facing now: any opposing opinions from us might be [dismissed as] 'rumors,'" she said in a video two weeks after arriving in Wuhan, donning a face mask.
Her posts came to an abrupt stop in mid-May, and she was later revealed to have been detained by police and brought back to Shanghai.
The 40-year-old has been on multiple hunger strikes since being detained and her health conditions have sparked concerns from supporters and rights groups. In 2021, Zhang's mother said her daughter was so frail that she could not hold her head up for lack of strength and was in desperate need of medical care.
Read the full story here.
— From CNN's Nectar Gan
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