A chinese citizen journalist, Zhang Zhan, was sentenced to four years of jail on Monday morning for covering Wuhan’s coronavirus outbreak in February, AFP reported.
She was found guilty of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for her reporting.The 37-year-old former lawyer was detained in May, and has been on hunger strike for several months. Her lawyers say she is in poor health, the BBC reported.
Zhang Zhan, 37, was sentenced after a brief hearing in Shanghai, Ren Quanniu, one of her defence lawyers, told reporters.
Beijing has congratulated itself for “extraordinary” success in controlling the virus inside its borders, with an economy on the rebound while much of the rest of the world stutters through painful lockdowns and surging caseloads a year on from the start of the pandemic in Wuhan.
Controlling the information flow during an unprecedented global health crisis has been pivotal in allowing China’s communist authorities to reframe the narrative in their favour.
But that has come at a serious cost to anyone picking holes in that storyline.
“Zhang Zhan looked devastated when the sentence was announced,” Ren Quanniu, one of Zhang’s defence lawyers, told reporters confirming the four year jail term outside Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court on Monday morning.
Around a dozen supporters and diplomats gathered outside Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court on Monday morning, but police pushed journalists and observers away from the entrance as the defendant and her lawyer arrived.
China’s communist authorities have a history of putting dissidents on trial in opaque courts between Christmas and New Year to minimise Western scrutiny.
The trial comes just weeks before an international team of World Health Organization experts is expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of Covid-19.
