HONG KONG – A Chinese court has sentenced a citizen journalist to four years in prison for documenting how Covid-19 devastated the city where the coronavirus was first detected, in a case that highlights the length of time Beijing has taken. defended the official narrative of the pandemic.
Zhang Zhan, 37, was convicted of “raising quarrels and causing trouble” after a two-and-a-half-hour trial at the Shanghai Pudong People’s Court in the new area, where prosecutors accused her of spreading falsehoods about The coronavirus pandemic through social media posts and interviews with overseas media, her lawyers said.
The verdict came more than seven months after authorities detained Ms. Zhang in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, where she posted more than 120 videos on YouTube chronicling the city’s conditions and detailed what he saw as mistakes in the government’s initials. pandemic response.
Her detention is in line with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s campaign to reform the coronavirus pandemic in China as a showcase for the good governance of the Communist Party, with extensive propaganda and censorship efforts to alleviate public anger and suppress criticism of the government’s initial response. .
The case against Ms. Zhang is the first known indictment of a journalist who covered the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, where government efforts to punish whistleblowers and suppress information about the early outbreak sparked a public backlash and prompted some ordinary citizens. to chronicle the conditions in Wuhan. with first-hand accounts through social media. At least three other Wuhan citizen journalists disappeared in February, and although one of them reappeared briefly in April, their fate remains unclear, rights activists say.
A screengrab taken on Monday from an undated video showing Ms. Zhang while broadcasting on YouTube.
Photo:
file / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
The accusation against Ms. Zhang, “raising quarrels and causing problems,” is vaguely defined and has often been used to prosecute activists and dissidents. “Authorities are sending a warning to anyone who dares to cast a light on the government,” said Gwen Lee, a Chinese activist at Amnesty International, a human rights watchdog.
During Monday’s trial, Ms. Zhang said she considered the proceedings against her illegitimate and refused to answer questions from the prosecution, according to one of her lawyers, Zhang Keke. She was brought to the courtroom in a wheelchair, probably due to her weakened condition resulting from the hunger strike, said Mr. Zhang, who was present at the courtroom on Monday.
The lawyer, who is not related to the defendant, said that the severity of Ms. Zhang’s punishment may be due, in part, to her past before the law. Shanghai police issued a warning to him in 2018 for alleged seditious online activities, before detaining him twice the following year for offenses related to quarreling and causing public disorder, according to an indictment reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The court did not ask Ms. Zhang if she intended to appeal, nor did she express her preference before being escorted, Mr. Zhang said. Ms. Zhang could not be reached for comment. Press calls from Pudong court and prosecutor’s office officials went unanswered.
A former lawyer and resident of Shanghai, Ms. Zhang traveled to Wuhan in early February after authorities closed the city in late January to contain the coronavirus. In a video shared by detention rights activists, she said she decided to go there after seeing an online essay describing Wuhan as an “abandoned city.”
In a series of videos and tweets on YouTube, Ms. Zhang documented scenes of daily life in mass quarantine in Wuhan, visiting medical facilities, walking the city streets mostly deserted and talking. with locals. Sometimes she gave her own comment on the conditions in the city, from the economic impact and government propaganda.
“Party flags and red symbols at many entrances in the neighborhood indicate that preventing the epidemic is not important,” she wrote. a May 7 tweet with photos of what appeared to be checkpoints at entrances to Wuhan residential complexes. “Protecting the stability of the regime that has been affected by the pandemic is the real goal.”
Spreading rapidly from its epicenter in Wuhan, a potentially lethal virus has infected hundreds around China and reached the United States, Japan and South Korea. Countries are in a hurry to remove the outbreak, and Wuhan residents are taking their own protection measures. Photo: Agence France-Presse / Getty Images (Originally published January 22, 2020)
Prosecutors have accused Ms. Zhang of using social media platforms, including China’s messaging app WeChat, Twitter and YouTube, to “spread large volumes of false information,” according to the indictment reviewed by the Journal. Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China. They also claimed that Ms. Zhang “maliciously” posed the situation of the pandemic in interviews with US-funded Radio Free Asia and the Epoch Media Group, which has links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement that was founded in China and he confronted the Communist Party.
Mr. Zhang, the lawyer, said prosecutors appear to be in a hurry to present the case, refusing to provide specific examples of posts on social networks that allegedly contained fakes.
Ms. Zhang’s social media posts appear to have attracted relatively little attention. Most of his YouTube videos received hundreds of views at the end of December, although some garnered thousands of views. Her latest video, posted just before her arrest on May 14, was the most popular, with about 30,000 views at the end of December, although Ms. Zhang’s lawyer said many of her videos gained viewing only after her detention.
“Ordinary Chinese can’t see them. What impact could it have had? What exactly is the government afraid of? Said Mr. Zhang, the lawyer. “Maybe the government can’t tolerate the way it criticizes.”
Write to Chun Han Wong at [email protected]
Copyright © 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8