HONG KONG: A Chinese court imposed a four-year prison sentence on a citizen journalist who documented how Covid-19 devastated the city where the coronavirus was first detected, in a case that underscores the duration to the which Beijing has defended its official pandemic narrative.
Zhang Zhan, 37, was convicted of “arguing and causing trouble” after a roughly 2-and-a-half-hour trial in the people’s court in the new Shanghai Pudong area, where prosecutors accused her of spreading falsehoods about the coronavirus pandemic through social media. publications and interviews with overseas media outlets, his lawyers said.
The verdict came more than seven months after authorities arrested Ms. Zhang in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, where she posted more than 120 YouTube videos recounting the city’s conditions and went detailing what he saw as erroneous steps in the government’s initial. pandemic response.
His arrest coincides with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s campaign to refound the coronavirus pandemic in China as a showcase for Communist Party good government, with extensive propaganda and censorship efforts aimed at mitigating public anger and suppressing criticism of the Communist Party. errors in the government’s initial response.
The case against Ms. Zhang is the first known prosecution of a citizen 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 motivated 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 resurfaced briefly in April, their fate is still unclear, rights activists say.
A screengrab extracted Monday from an undated video showing Ms. Zhang while broadcasting via YouTube.
Photo:
brochure / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
The accusation against Ms. Zhang, “catching disputes 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 overthrow the government in a bad light,” said Gwen Lee, China’s defender 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 taken to the courtroom in a wheelchair, probably due to her debilitated condition due to a hunger strike, said Zhang, who was present in the courtroom on Monday.
The lawyer, who is unrelated to the accused, said the severity of Ms. Zhang’s punishment could be due, in part, to her past steps in the law. Shanghai police sent her a warning in 2018 for alleged seditious online activities, before arresting her twice the following year for crimes related to disputes and causing public disorder, according to a load sheet reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The court did not ask Ms. Zhang if she intended to appeal or express any preference before she was escorted, Zhang said. Ms. Zhang could not be reached for comment. Calls to Pudong court and prosecution press officers sounded unanswered.
Zhang, a former lawyer and resident of Shanghai, traveled to Wuhan in early February, after authorities sealed the city in late January to contain the coronavirus. In a video shared by rights activists after his arrest, he said he decided to go there after seeing an online essay describing Wuhan as an “abandoned city.”
In a series of YouTube videos and tweets, Ms. Zhang documented scenes of daily life in mass quarantine in Wuhan, visiting medical centers, strolling through the mostly deserted city streets and talking to local residents. At times, he offered his own commentary on the conditions of the city, ranging from economic impact to government propaganda.
“Party flags and red symbols at many neighborhood entrances indicate that preventing the epidemic is not important,” he wrote in a May 7 tweet with photos of what appeared to be checkpoints at the entrances to Wuhan’s residential complexes. “Protecting the stability of the regime affected by the pandemic is the real goal.”
Spreading rapidly from its epicenter in Wuhan City, a potentially lethal virus has made hundreds sick across China and has reached the U.S., Japan and South Korea. Countries are rushing to contain the outbreak and Wuhan residents are taking their own protective measures. Photo: Agence France-Presse / Getty Images (originally published on January 22, 2020)
Prosecutors accused Ms. Zhang of using social media platforms, including Chinese messaging app WeChat, Twitter and YouTube to “spread large volumes of false information,” according to the upload sheet reviewed by the Newspaper. Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China. They also alleged that Ms. Zhang “abused” the pandemic situation in interviews with the US-funded Radio Free Asia, and the Epoch Media Group, which has links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement founded in China and that has clashed with the Communist Party.
Mr. Zhang, the lawyer, said prosecutors appeared to be in a hurry to file the case, and declined to submit specific examples of posts on social media that allegedly contained falsehoods.
Ms. Zhang’s social media posts seemed to have attracted relatively little attention. Most of his YouTube videos have garnered hundreds of views by the end of December, though some have garnered thousands of views. Her latest video, released just before her arrest on May 14, was the most popular, with about 30,000 views in late December, although Ms. Zhang’s lawyer said many of her videos only they obtained hearing after their arrest.
“Ordinary Chinese can’t see them. What impact could they have had? What exactly is the government afraid of? “Mr. Zhang, the lawyer, said.” The government may not be able to tolerate the way it criticizes. “
Write to Chun Han Wong to [email protected]
Copyright © 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8