An international journalist advocacy group has raised alarm over the reportedly renewed detention of a Chinese citizen reporter by authorities in Shanghai, sparking fresh concerns about her well-being and the Chinese regime’s ongoing suppression of freedom of expression. The group urges the international community to mobilize and do everything possible to ensure her safety and help free her.
“We are alarmed by this latest development in the Chinese regime’s relentless targeting of Zhang Zhan, who appears to again be held incommunicado for unclear reasons,”
said Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns for Paris-based nonprofit Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer turned citizen journalist, is reportedly being held at Shanghai Pudong New District Detention Center,
according to U.S.-based rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders. It’s not clear whether she’s under criminal or administrative detention, the rights group said.
Zhang initially gained international attention in early 2020, when she traveled to Wuhan, the initial epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, to report on the unfolding public health crisis. Through videos and social media updates, she highlighted the dire conditions and government mismanagement, which contradicted the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) narrative. She was detained in
May 2020 and, one month later, sentenced to four years in prison on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vague accusation frequently employed by the CCP to silence dissidents and critics.
Zhang went on a prolonged
hunger strike to protest her incarceration and was force-fed during her imprisonment. Her deteriorating health triggered concerns by the U.S. State Department in 2021, which called on the CCP “for her immediate and unconditional release.” She was discharged in May this year after spending four years in prison.
Despite
harassment and intimidation by the local police after her release, Zhang has been speaking up for voiceless Chinese dissidents, the vulnerable, and rights activists on X and commenting on social issues in China since June this year.
She
wrote on X on Aug. 22 that she had traveled to Gansu, a province in northwestern China, to assist a detained Chinese activist and a Christian, asking his mother to sign a power of attorney document. RSF
said that she was taken away by police on Aug. 28 after she went back to her hometown in Shaanxi, a province bordering Gansu to the west, and that since then, she has not answered her phone or updated her social media accounts, despite her followers sending her messages and inquiring about her safety.
The Chinese communist regime has set up internet blockage to prevent Chinese people from accessing uncensored information from outside the country. VPN (virtual private network) software is often used by general public in China to circumvent the regime’s internet firewall.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on June 11 that Zhang’s freedom was restricted by the local authorities even though she was out of prison. Zhang disclosed that local police threatened that they would imprison her again if she dared to “touch the red line,”
according to RFA.
“I don’t want to go in, and I’m not the person who should go in,” Zhang reportedly wrote on a Chinese social media platform.
“After barely surviving four years in prison and living under strict surveillance ever since, it is clear that the Chinese authorities remain intent on continuing to punish Zhang Zhan for her independent journalism. It is more urgent than ever for the international diplomatic community to intervene with Beijing to ensure her safety and secure her full freedom without delay,” Vincent wrote.
China is ranked 172nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s
2024 World Press Freedom Index. The advocacy group reports that China is keeping at least 120 journalists and press freedom defenders behind bars, and calls the communist country “the world’s biggest prison for journalists and press freedom defenders.”
In her most recent post on X using VPN, dated Aug. 28, Zhang wrote, “If school enrollment is tied to buying a house, the right to education loses its fairness and equality. In that case, education becomes corrupted.”
