Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan’s search for the truth during the early days of the pandemic was seen as a threat by the authorities
A Chinese citizen journalist who has been in prison for four years after reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wuhan is due to be released on Monday.
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document the Chinese government’s response to what became the start of a global pandemic. She shared her reports on X (then known as Twitter), YouTube and WeChat. She was one of the few independent Chinese reporters on the ground as Wuhan and the rest of China went into lockdown.
In one video, recorded in February 2020, Zhang said: “I can’t find anything to say except that the city is paralysed because everything is under cover. That’s what this country is facing now … They imprison us in the name of pandemic prevention and restrict our freedom. We must not talk to strangers, it’s dangerous. So without the truth, everything is meaningless. If we cannot get to the truth, if we cannot break the monopoly of the truth, the world means nothing to us.”
In another video, she showed a hospital that was overflowing with patients on trolleys in the hallway.
Many posters on Lemmy make clear to me china doesn’t have these types of issues. What gives?
Glad she’s out, hope she is able to leave the country, if she wishes.
Don’t fall for it, there is a lot of Chinese propaganda and damage control on social media.
China has a lot issues and Chinese people are fleeing their country
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/11/soaring-number-risk-death-to-flee-xi-china-for-us/
Nah. You’re on lemmy.world. You won’t find many of them here.
That shouldn’t be made clear to you because it’s false, China has piles of issues of every kind from homelessness to internment camps to wealthy elite.
Even worker and labor protection issues. That’s the entire reason in fact that US companies like to go with Chinese labor. It costs far less because the workers don’t get paid as much and don’t have the labor protections that Western countries do.
Not as true as it was a couple of decades ago, they’ve been shifting to Taiwan lately, but yeah.
I’m being facetious, the overnight ml-lemmygrad-hexbear types chirp that message
It seems she was detained for spreading misinformation about the pandemic when the initial outbreak was at its peak. That may not be illegal in the US. However, plenty of countries have such laws that go into effect during emergency situations.
I think it’s worth discussing the merits of those laws and how effective they are. However, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to use this case as a way to imply that China is silencing journalists when they report on inconvenient truths.
Where’d you get that info from? What misinformation did she spread?
I just clicked through to a guardian link that talked about why she was initially convicted. It’s harder to pin down exactly what misinformation she was accused of spreading though since most western outlets are causally dismissive of the claims.
That said, this guardian article references interviews she did with VoA, an American government outlet, and The Epoch Times, a far right wing outlet run by the Falun Gong cult. The Epoch Times I know in particular has promoted antivax or anti lockdown conspiracies in the US, as well as other stuff like with Qanon and the idea that Trump actually won in 2020. It wouldn’t surprise me to know she was promoting similar anti lockdown conspiracies but just in China.
since most western outlets are causally dismissive of the claims.
It is interesting you didn’t give any western media the benefit of the doubt, while giving CCP plenty.
After a quick google search, it seems like there are several court documents for Zhang’s case circling the internet:
- https://chinachange.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/张展-刑事判决书_-文字及照片.pdf
- https://www.nchrd.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Zhang-Zhan-indictment.pdf
- https://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2021/01/blog-post_49.html?m=1
- https://cppc1989.blogspot.com/2019/12/cppc00831.html?m=1
- https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/ql1-11162020065301.html/ampRFA
There are two different versions, one judgement, one indictment (copy). Their contents seems to match, and they also match the reports of various media articles.
The indictment mentioned neither “the lie” nor “the truth”, which, in my mind, is probably why most media never reported it.
The document only mentioned:
故根据现查明的事实可以证实 张展通过微信、“twitter”(推特)、“YouTube”(油管)等网络媒介发布的相关文章、视频及接 受采访内容均与武汉市实际防控疫情的客观实际情况不符。
according to current known fact, the related article, videos, and interview by Zhang Zhan on wechat, twitter, youtube, differ from the objective truth of situations in Wuhan.
I was not able to find any court document from official source from China/CCP. Since all these articles are either photos or transcribed from photo, I don’t imagine the original documents are easy to find. It seems like the original document can be obtained from (according to the title of the website, and Chinese government owned domain name): https://wenshu.court.gov.cn/ , but they require personally identifiable information (like phone number, which is connected to ID in China) after I typed in 张展 (Zhang Zhan).
But since you clearly know more about China and CCP than I do, so you might want to give it a try.
The mistake you make is that you assume the law works the same in China as in countries that have rule of law. China doesn’t have rule of law, they have ‘rule by law’. The Communist Party isn’t just above the law, the law is a tool for them to use how they see fit. If you are undermining the Communist Party then that is by definition misinformation.
Remember, this is the same country where one day the minister of health aplauded a journalist’s effort to combat pollution with a documentary called under the dome, and the next day it was gone from the internet as if it never existed. Whenever they have internal issues they stir up some hatred for the USA or Japan, only to be forgotten somewhat later.
They took 1984 not as a warning, but as a manual
@lemmy.ml
Not everyone of course but there’s way too many people over there who will justify anything the Chinese government does or just ignore criticism by saying, “what about what the US does?!!?!”
How they cannot understand that the US and China are both dystopian hellscapes is embarrassing.
You know who else was arrested for “spreading misinformation”? The doctor who tried to warn his friends about covid privately, before the government took any action.
Source (in chinese): https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-51371586
The form he filled out at police station, clearly stating his action is against the law:
couple related articles in english:
He was never actually arrested though as far as I can tell. The local police basically gave him a warning against spreading rumors of an SARS outbreak because they were worried it would cause a panic. This was an overstep and the police later apologized and admitted they were in the wrong.
According to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/arrest, “arrest” means
If the police arrest someone, they take them away to ask them about a crime that they might have committed
And in https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arrest
to take or keep in custody by authority of law
Dr. Li was taken to police station because the police has deemed his action is against the law.
He was later released because he signed a consent about “stop spreading misinformation”, which I showed in my response. We wouldn’t know how he will be treated if he refuse to sign such consent. But I might hypothesize that the police wouldn’t simply let him go.
And he has never spread any misinformation, the patient record he sent to his friend clearly indicated the patient has tested positive for SARS; and as we know later, the disease is indeed caused by SARS-cov2.
And don’t forget the tragic ending suffered by the Dr (can’t remember his name) that first brought out the covid issue, and his phone messages were leaked to the public if I am not mistaken. He was left dead with no proper care by the authority.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
I don’t think he isn’t properly treated, at least according to wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang#Illness_and_death
There is a bench in New York central park dedicated to him: https://www.westsiderag.com/2023/02/07/central-park-bench-and-gathering-honor-covid-19-whistleblower . If you are near the central park, you can stop by to pay tribute to him.
By early June 2020, five other doctors had died from COVID-19 in the Wuhan hospital, now called “whistleblower hospital”.
Was there a huge amount of doctors sick or did these guys just get disappeared?
COVID was killing a lot of medical personnel initially because they weren’t using the right PPE and got infected with a large initial viral load.
How quickly people forget how major metro hospitals in the US had rows of refrigerated semi trailers because there were too many bodies
How doctors and nurses were told to wash and reuse their N95s despite it being proven to compromise their effectiveness because supplies were so low
I hope this bird flu shit blows up even worse, maybe then these dumbasses will get the message
They’ll never learn. They told us to bang pots and pans for them, and now a few years later they’re still underpaid and overworked the world over. Same goes for every other ‘essential worker’.
Oh I never washed mine. Just kept it in a plastic bag and wore it till the straps broke.
Edit: downvotes make me laugh. For context, I was a pre vaccine nurse on a COVID unit for the duration of the pandemic. Never did catch it though from the hospital.
Also wore a plastic face shield that I washed every time I left the room with bleach. Thankfully COVID is droplet spread so that’s plenty ppe. I wouldn’t have wanted to wear that N95 in a TB room though.
But the majority of deaths were always old people.
Younger people got damaged lungs but dying was a rarity.
Wikipedia isn’t really a good source for anything ever. If you’re going to cite wikipedia then just grab the wikipedia’s source from the bottom of the page.
A brave woman.
Braver than most western journalists, who regurgitate the corporatocracies narrative and manufacture consent on their behalf.
Hopefully she’s given a good job and granted asylum somewhere in the west ASAP, so she can go on with her life.
EDIT: Gotcha! What kind of smooth brain do you have to be to consider my above statements logically inconsistent, ironic, or hypocritical?
None of the wests failings prevent it from currently enabling a freer and objectively better quality of life for the vast majority. She does not face persecution in the west. In China she has, and will continue to; especially under the social credit system.
Braver than most western journalists, who regurgitate the corporatocracies narrative and manufacture consent on their behalf.
True
Hopefully she’s given a good job and granted asylum somewhere in the west ASAP, so she can go on with her life.
What?
I think the idea is that she could be arbitrarily detained in China whereas that sort of thing is typically seen as less likely in the west.
Just don’t talk shit about Boeing.
If Boeing could have you arbitrarily detained then they wouldn’t need to kill people who testify.
