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.
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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.