User:John Cummings/Archive/Zhang Zhan

Zhang Zhan is a Chinese journalist and former lawyer who was tortured and sentenced to four years in prison for her reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic. She is the first journalist to be sentenced for reporting the pandemic in China.

Journalism
Zhan is an independent journalist who travelled from Shanghai to Wuhan to cover the COVID-19 pandemic there. She documented overflowing hospitals to empty shops in livestreams and essays including the detention of other independent journalists and harassment of families of victims of the pandemic seeking accountability.

Citizen journalists have been one of the only sources of unfiltered information about the pandemic in China, however there are very few due to lack of accreditation for them in China.

Arrest
The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a Chinese human rights group recorded that Zhang went missing on the 14th of May 2020, later it was revealed she was detained by police and transported back to Shanghai. She was imprisoned without charge until November. Zhan is one of several journalists including Li Zehua, Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin who went missing at the same time.

Torture
Zhang was tortured for three months before sentencing, kept in handcuffs 24 hours a day for the entire time. Zhan has been on hunger strike since September 2020 and is being force fed through a feeding tube, her hands are tied to prevent her from removing it.

Impact of torture
She has been descibed by her lawyer Ren Quanniu as very weak. “In addition to headache, dizziness and stomach pain, there was also pain in her mouth and throat. She said this may be inflammation due to the insertion of a gastric tube.”

Trial and sentencing
She was charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble, a charge the Chinese government often uses to imprison opponents and sentenced to four years in prison. Supporters and a British diplomat were blocked from entering the courtroom during the trial which lasted less that three hours in total. She has been sentenced by a Shanghai court to four years imprisonment making her the first journalist to be sentenced for reporting the pandemic in China.. She is represented by several lawyers including Ren Quanniu and Zhang Keke.

Reactions
The British Embassy in Beijing said her case "raises serious concerns about media freedom in China" and that she "is one of at least 47 journalists currently in detention in China. The whereabouts of other citizen journalists -- including Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin -- is unknown." .