Jan. 4, 2021 - Epoch Times
05:25
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison for reporting from Wuhan earlier this year when the city was under lockdown. | |
| Her case has drawn worldwide attention, causing many rights groups to strongly criticize the Chinese regime. | |
| In February, Zhang began reporting on the ground in Wuhan, the epicenter of the CCP virus pandemic. | |
| She suddenly disappeared in May. | |
| A month later, Chinese authorities announced that she had been arrested. | |
| On December 28, in Shanghai's Pudong District Court, Zhang was sentenced to four years of imprisonment after being convicted of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, one of the common charges the Chinese Communist Party CCP uses to imprison dissidents. | |
| She went into the court on a wheelchair. | |
| I felt so sad for her. | |
| She didn't do anything wrong. | |
| She just reported the pandemic from Wuhan. | |
| They sentenced her to four years in prison. | |
| This is absurd. | |
| She should have freedom of speech. | |
| Zhang's lawyer Zhang Keke told Voice of America that Zhang Zhan had been on a hunger strike for nearly five months and was skinny. | |
| She appeared in court in a wheelchair wearing a mask. | |
| After a nearly three-hour trial, the judge announced that Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison. | |
| Zhang refused to speak, using silence as a form of protest. | |
| When the judge demanded her to provide personal information, she refused to answer. | |
| When the prosecutor asked her some questions, she also refused to answer. | |
| Then the judge said, even if you don't speak, we will continue the trial. | |
| She replied, citizens have the right to freedom of speech. | |
| You have no right to put me on trial. | |
| The indictment accused her of spreading fake information on overseas social media platforms, such as Twitter and YouTube, and accepting interviews from foreign media. | |
| Zhang stated that she did not fabricate any reports and all she shared online was first-hand accounts from Wuhan locals. | |
| According to the defense lawyer, during the trial, the prosecutor accused Zhang of publishing so-called problematic remarks. | |
| Yet the prosecution did not provide any posts or videos as evidence. | |
| This made it impossible for lawyers to refute the accusation. | |
| Zhang's two defense lawyers, Zhang Keke and Ren Tianyu, both insisted that Zhang Zhan was innocent and that she did not cause any harm to society. | |
| The videos Zhang posted on Twitter and YouTube are mostly clips taken when she visited different places in Wuhan, or showed herself talking about her views on the regime's pandemic control measures. | |
| She also commented on how difficult it was for victims' families to defend their rights. | |
| Zhang's tone in these videos was calm, but there were also signs of anxiety and pressure. | |
| I've been fighting every day in fear. | |
| In a moment, when people are wearing a mask, they're afraid of you, and the police are calling you to kill you, and there are friends who say that you have to collect your information, and you need to collect your information. | |
| After Zhang's trial concluded, her mother, Ms. | |
| Xiao, cried tragically. | |
| Xiao said she was heartbroken upon seeing her daughter being so skinny and frail from the hunger strike and that she had to appear in court in a wheelchair. | |
| She criticized the Chinese authorities, saying that their goal is to let Zhang die from hunger strike. | |
| Xiao also said that in the past seven months, she had complied with the state security personnel, refused to work with Zhang's lawyer, and rejected foreign journalists, hoping that by doing so, Zhang's situation would be safer. | |
| Now she has realized that she had been duped by the authorities. | |
| Zhang is 37 years old and had worked as a lawyer before her license was revoked over her remarks critical of the Chinese Communist Party. | |
| Her harsh sentence in the Shanghai court has drawn attention and criticism from the international community. | |
| Many major publications reported on the trial. | |
| At the same time, rights groups criticized the Chinese government's ruthless clampdown of free speech. | |
| Hong Kong Alliance, a pro-democracy group, wrote a letter to Chinese leader Xi Jinping urging for the release of Zhang and 12 Hong Kongers detained in Shenzhen. | |
| The United Nations Human Rights Office said that it is deeply concerned about Zhang and called for her release. | |
| The British Embassy in Beijing also said in an official statement, Ms. | |
| Zhang 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. | |
| We urge China to release all those detained for their reporting. | |
| Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin, two other Chinese citizen journalists who reported from Wuhan, both went missing earlier this year. | |
| Chen was taken away on February 7th and forced to undergo quarantine for some time. | |
| Fang, a Wuhan resident, filmed eight corpses being taken out of a local hospital in five minutes. | |
| His footage quickly attracted worldwide attention. | |
| He had since gone missing after the police arrested him on February 10th. | |
| No one knows of his whereabouts as of today. | |
| Reporters Without Borders called on governments of all countries to further pressure the CCP to demand the immediate release of Zhang and other fighters of free speech. |
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