Image Credit: screenshot/YouTube 
A court in Communist China sentenced a citizen journalist to four years in prison Monday for reporting on the initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan nearly a year ago.
37-year-old Zhang Zhan began reporting from Wuhan shortly after the Communist government locked down the city on January 23 in tandem with a total media blackout from the region as the coronavirus outbreak began.
Zhang, a former lawyer, was detained for seven months after being charged in May for “provoking trouble” and sharing “fake information” on social media related to the unfolding events in Wuhan.
“Ms. Zhang’s lawyers had expressed concerns over her health, as she has been on a hunger strike while in detention since this summer. She had been force-fed through feeding tubes and her hands had been restrained so she could not stop the feeding, lawyers said,” The Hindu reported.
“Zhang Zhan looked devastated when the sentence was announced,” her lawyer Ren Quanniu told the press outside the Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court.
Police were quick to contain the foreign press outside the Shanghai court where Zhang was on trial.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Heavy security as Chinese citizen journalist jailed for 4 years for reporting on Wuhan virus.<br><br>Zhang Zhan's live reports were widely shared on social media in February<a href="https://t.co/wnuAD2P6wc">https://t.co/wnuAD2P6wc</a><br><br>📹 Police try to block journalists outside the Shanghai court where Zhang was on trial <a href="https://t.co/Wmd7aDMA8E">pic.twitter.com/Wmd7aDMA8E</a></p>— AFP News Agency (@AFP) <a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1343465654079242241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Zhang said Chinese National Security Officers warned her to stop photographing patients in Wuhan.
“I’m just filming the truth,” Zhang said earlier this year. “Why can’t I show the truth?”
The answer is because Zhang challenged China’s official narrative that they had the coronavirus outbreak under control.
“This is all about controlling the narrative, controlling the story about the outbreak of the pandemic which has been so damaging to the global economy, but also to China’s reputation,” said Deutsche Welle reporter Clifford Coonan on Monday.
“And she challenged the government’s position, which was they handled it well, that they reported things early, and that everything was done in a transparent manner.”
The United Nations Human Rights Council said it was “deeply concerned” by Zhang’s four-year prison sentence because she was simply conducting journalism.
“We raised her case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of the excessive clampdown on freedom of expression linked to COVID-19 and continue to call for her release,” the office tweeted.
U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed earlier this year that Wuhan officials had indeed been hiding key information about the coronavirus outbreak from the West for weeks.
China also allowed 5 million people to travel abroad from Wuhan just before locking down the city.
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