Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, 40, has been released after serving four years in prison for documenting the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic from Wuhan. “The police released me at 05:00 on May 13 and sent me to my older brother’s house in Shanghai. Thank you all for your help and concern. I wish you the best. “I really don’t know what to say,” Zhang simply said, holding back tears as he uttered those words, in a short video released through an intermediary and to which Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has had access.
Activist Jane Wang, who has led the campaign Free Zhang Zhan (Free Zhang Zhan) from the United Kingdom and is in contact with one of her former lawyers, has confirmed through her X account (formerly Twitter) that the video is not manipulated and that Zhang herself has communicated to her close circle that “he is not very free”, alluding to the fact that, in reality, he does not enjoy total freedom, despite having been released from prison.
Concern about Zhang’s whereabouts had increased since last May 13, the date on which he should have regained freedom, but on which, however, it was impossible to obtain information about his release, according to various activist groups and Zhang. Keke, one of his lawyers.
RSF considers that the publication of Zhang’s video, eight days after being released, is due to “increased international pressure,” and denounces that the journalist remains under “strict surveillance.” “Partial freedom is not freedom at all,” RSF emphasizes in a statement. For its part, Amnesty International (AI) condemns that “China’s imprisonment of Zhang Zhan has been a shameful violation of human rights.” Likewise, AI demands that “neither she nor her family be subject to surveillance or harassment” and that she be guaranteed “full access to medical treatment following her traumatic experience.”
Zhang is a Shanghainese lawyer who became what is known in China and elsewhere as a “citizen journalist”; That is, a person who reports on events without devoting themselves professionally to that work, but rather with a vocation for justice and transparency. On February 1, 2020, she traveled to Wuhan when that city, the original focus of the covid-19 pandemic, was confined and suffering the worst attacks of a then practically unknown virus.
For three months, this citizen journalist filmed more than a hundred videos that contradicted the official government narrative, recorded ghostly streets, visited a crematorium and showed overcrowded hospitals, with patients being treated in the hallways. She also tried to interview residents about the first major lockdown declared on the planet to deal with Covid. Those who agreed to speak asked to do so anonymously, without showing her face, for fear of reprisals. In many of them, security guards are seen threatening her to stop recording. Reports of her that she uploaded to Chinese social media ended up censored, but she also published them diouTubewhich can only be accessed through a VPN connection from the Asian giant.
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In Wuhan, Zhang also covered the arrests of other independent reporters, such as Chen Qiushi (missing between February 2020 and September 2021), Fan Bing (sentenced to three years in prison and released in April 2023), and Li Zehua (detained during two months in 2020), and harassment against families of victims who demanded that someone be held accountable. Zhang was aware of the risk she was exposing herself to, as she herself confessed in an interview with an independent film director, but that did not prevent her from continuing to publish about the confinement and, after its end, in April 2020, about the consequences of confinement. “Maybe I have a rebellious soul,” Zhang expresses with a half smile in the aforementioned interview. “I think: why can’t I record these things? I believe this is the reality and the truth. So why can’t I record the truth? ”She reproaches. “When they tell me I can’t record, they inspire me. “I feel like I have to publish the reality of what is happening in Wuhan on the Internet, so that the outside world knows the truth.”
Held in Shanghai
In May 2020, Zhang was arrested and sent to Shanghai, where she was held until she received the indictment in September. In the first months of detention, she was defiant and began several hunger strikes, as reported at the time by her lawyers, who claimed that the police force-fed her through a tube. In December of that year, she was sentenced to four years in prison, accused of “picking quarrels and making trouble,” a charge often used to silence Chinese dissidents, and “spreading false information.”
His case, which highlighted the lack of freedom of expression in the Asian giant, gained prominence among activists and Western governments. When news broke in 2021 that Zhang was seriously ill, the European External Action Service and the US State Department called for her immediate release. According to RSF, she remained on partial strike until July 2023, when her weight plummeted to 37 kilos, half of what she weighed before her arrest. She also suffered from severe malnutrition, gastrointestinal illnesses and anemia.
In the video released late Tuesday, Zhang speaks from what appears to be the hallway of a residential building. The former lawyer appears to have regained some of her lost weight, but she appears pale and tired, with puffy eyes. Activist Jane Wang explains that “we cannot confirm where the video was recorded or who recorded it.”
“The fact that Zhang was finally able to ‘re-emerge’ after missing for nine days shows that the Chinese government is responding to pressure from international society,” says Wang. “It is a relief to hear from her again.” […] But, like other former political prisoners, she is subject to intrusive surveillance and harassment by the government. She is at high risk of ‘disappearing’ or being detained again,” Wang said. During her confinement in Shanghai Women’s Prison, her family, who were often only able to speak to her by phone, faced police pressure, and her parents They refused to speak to the media.
Zhang had already spent three months in detention in 2019 for her support of the Hong Kong protests. “Every time they gave me a psychiatric evaluation, to put pressure on me, to say that she suffered from some mental disorder,” she came to assure.
The coronavirus remains a sensitive issue for Beijing, which tries to control any information related to its beginnings. RSF has also recently asked the Chinese authorities to stop harassing Fan Bing, the independent journalist who uncovered the first Covid-19 deaths in Wuhan. He himself reported through his networks that they had cut off his water and electricity and then kicked him out of the apartment where he rented. At the end of April, the authorities also closed the Shanghai laboratory where Zhang Yongzheng, the Chinese virologist who first published the sequence of the new coronavirus, was continuing his research on January 5, 2020 and without state approval. His work was crucial in the race to combat the pandemic, helping researchers around the world identify the pathogen and create vaccines. The scientist, who slept several nights outdoors at the doors of the laboratory, has criticized the incident through his social networks and has assured that he will continue working “for science and truth.” China ranks 172 out of 180 in the latest press freedom ranking published by RSF.
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