Four years in prison for a journalist who reported on …

Chinese justice has sentenced to four years in prison a former lawyer who carried out journalistic coverage of the early stages of the coronavirus epidemic in the city of Wuhan. Shanghai Pudong New Area People’s Court issued harsh judgment against Zhang zhan who was found guilty of disseminating false information. Foreign journalists and diplomats were unable to enter the court where the 37-year-old woman was tried, and some activists were attacked by police as the trial opened.

Zhang, from Shanghai, traveled to the city of Wuhan, the birthplace of the coronavirus, in February and decided to post various reports and critical information about the situation in his hospitals on social media. In the articles, the Chinese journalist denounced a “serious violation of human rights”.

In May, she was arrested for “causing unrest, giving interviews to foreign media and maliciously manipulating” information about the epidemic. Three other journalists, Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin y Li Zehua, they were also arrested have covered these events.

Zhang went on a hunger strike in June to protest his detention., but was force-fed nasally. “When I saw her last week she said: ‘If they give me a strong sentence, I will refuse all food until the end. She thinks she will die in prisonZhang Keke, one of his lawyers, explained.

Zhang “looked very dejected when the decision was announced,” said another lawyer, Ren Quanniu., who this Monday was “very shocked” by his psychological state. The process against Zhang took place shortly before a World Health Organization (WHO) mission arrived in China to investigate the origins of the pandemic.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet said she was “deeply concerned” by Zhang Zhan’s conviction. “We brought the case to the authorities throughout 2020 to illustrate the excessive crackdown on press freedom linked to covid-19 and we keep asking for their release“, Said the institution on its Twitter account.

For its part, the Organization of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) stressed that their reports also included the arrests of other journalists and harassment suffered by families of some victims of the coronavirus demanding accountability. “Chinese government holds mock trial again over Christmas as authorities want to reduce attention to ‘sensitive’ cases while diplomats and journalists are on vacation “, he explained Leo Lan, CHRD researcher.

For her part, the activist of Amnesty International, Gwen Lee, assured in a statement that “Citizen journalists like Zhang Zhan were the main, if not the only, source of uncensored first-hand information during the early days of COVID-19.“and demanded that the Chinese government” stop persecuting journalists and other citizens just for reporting the truth. ”

According to the official death toll in Wuhan, a metropolis of 11 million people, there were around four thousand deaths from covid-19, almost all of the 4,634 deaths recorded across China between January and May. China’s initial response to the pandemic has been criticized, because Beijing only quarantined Wuhan and its region on January 23, despite cases since early December 2019.