A Chinese court sentenced a citizen journalist, who reported on conditions inside Wuhan, where the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 first emerged, to four years in prison for “picking quarrels” with the Communist government.
“Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old citizen journalist who reported on crowded hospitals and the conditions in Wuhan earlier this year, was sentenced Monday to four years over the offense of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’” Fox News reported Monday.
Although Zhan was one of several people who gave accounts of deteriorating conditions inside the pandemic-ravaged city as the disease spread, the Chinese government appears to be making an example of Zhan, sending a message to anyone who might question China’s official narrative on how it handled the coronavirus.
China, of course, claims that it did everything it could to stop the virus from spreading, when it admits that the virus exists at all. It also claims, now, that the pandemic has been brought to a halt inside its borders, and that Wuhan has had no cases of COVID-19 for some months, even as the world battles a second wave of the virus.
Zhan braved censors and a lack of social media access to post videos that directly contradicted the prevailing narrative, Fox News notes, citing a Reuters report.
“The Reuters report said that Zhang posted videos on YouTube that showed interviews with residents and images of the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the outlet said.
Zhan was openly critical of Chinese pandemic management.
“The government’s way of managing this city has just been intimidation and threats,” she reportedly said in one video. “This is truly the tragedy of this country.”
Zhan’s lawyers say they will appeal on free speech grounds, but it’s not clear that China will make much effort to overturn the sentence.
President Donald Trump and others have often blamed China not just for the novel coronavirus’s release, but for hiding the pandemic from the global health community until after it had escaped China, leaving the world vulnerable to the disease.
The World Health Organization, most notably, took cues on its coronavirus management strategy from China and, accordingly, admitted the virus could be transmitted between people only in February, months after the virus began killing residents of Wuhan, and weeks after Chinese scientists had already isolated the virus and were passing vital information to American scientists working on a vaccine — also in violation of Chinese government orders.
The Chinese government insists that its response to the pandemic was flawless and that Zhan was inciting subversion.
”The Chinese government did not delay or cover up anything,” China’s National Health Commission Chairman told media, per Reuters. “Instead, we have immediately reported virus data and relevant information about the epidemic to the international community and made an important contribution to the prevention and control of the epidemic around the world.”