Zhang Zhan, believed to be the first person to be jailed in China for documenting the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in China, is expected to be released from prison on Monday after serving a four-year sentence.
But it was unclear late Monday whether Zhang, 40, had actually been released, a sign that the Chinese government remains keen to suppress public discussion of the epidemic. Zhang Keke, Zhang Keke (no relation), the lawyer who represented Ms. Zhang during the trial, said he had been unable to contact her mother all day. Officials from the Shanghai Prison Administration Bureau were contacted by phone, but they declined to comment.
“Although she will complete her sentence, there are doubts about the Chinese regime’s willingness to let her regain her freedom,” international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a statement days before her expected release. The organization awarded Ms. Zhang a press freedom award in 2021, noting that journalists released in China are often subject to surveillance.
Ms Zhang was an early symbol of many Chinese’s distrust of the government’s handling of the outbreak and their desire for unfiltered information. A former lawyer in Shanghai, she traveled as a citizen journalist in early 2020 to Wuhan, the city where the virus was first detected.
For months, she shot amateurish, often shaky videos that contradicted the government’s narrative of a smooth, successful response to the crisis. She visited crematoriums and crowded hospitals, where corridors were lined with trundle cots. She documented the city’s empty train stations and tried to interview residents about the lockdown, but many refused her or asked to remain anonymous, seemingly out of fear of reprisal.
Friends said at the time that she had never done any reporting before but was motivated by her Christian faith and anger at the government’s one-sided narrative.
“If we just wallow in sadness and don’t do anything to change this reality, then our emotions will become cheap,” Ms. Zhang said in a video.
The government, scrambling to control infections and maintain a lockdown in the city of 11 million, briefly missed a handful of independent reports on the outbreak. Some of the videos Zhang posted on Chinese social media were censored, but she also uploaded them to YouTube, which is banned in China.
But soon after, the crackdown on independent reporting began in earnest. Other citizen journalists began to disappear. Ms Zhang acknowledged the risks but continued to post information about the lockdown and its consequences when it was lifted in April 2020. Then, in May of that year, she was arrested and taken back to Shanghai.
Still, even in detention, Ms. Zhang remained defiant. She began several lengthy hunger strikes and became so weak that she appeared in court in a wheelchair, according to her lawyer. Her lawyer said authorities force-fed her through a feeding tube.
Ms. Zhang was sentenced to four years in prison in December 2020 for “seeking magic to cause trouble,” a catch-all term the government often uses to silence critics.
Ms. Zhang’s plight quickly became a rallying cry for human rights activists and foreign governments who criticize China’s suppression of free speech. In 2021, when news broke that Ms. Zhang was seriously ill, the U.S. State Department called for her immediate release, as did organizations such as Human Rights Watch.
But many who have tried to speak out for Ms. Zhang inside China appear to have become targets themselves. Her brother has used Twitter, which is banned in China, to share childhood memories and drum up international support for her, but he has remained largely silent. Many of his posts have since been deleted. One of the lawyers representing her was barred from practicing law because of his involvement in another human rights case.
Asked about Ms. Zhang’s case at a regular news conference on Monday, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said he had no information about Ms. Zhang’s case but that anyone who violated Chinese laws should be punished.
In one of the last videos Zhang posted in Wuhan, she described a chat with some unemployed migrant workers as she pondered the usefulness of what she was doing.
“Actually, I’m very unsure of what to say today,” she said. “But these people, these things always push me to move forward from my despair and fear, to continue paying attention to them and speaking out for them.”
