Law Chinese Citizen Journalists Who Reported On The COVID Pandemic In Wuhan Are Being Sent To Prison.

Dr. Li Wenliang: 'Wuhan whistleblower' remembered one year on
Feb 6, 2021

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Tributes have been paid on social media in China commemorating a doctor who raised the alarm about the country's coronavirus outbreak, one year after he died with Covid-19.

Thousands paid tribute to Li Wenliang ahead of the first anniversary of his death on 7 February 2020.

He died after contracting Covid-19 while treating patients in Wuhan.

Dr Li had tried to warn fellow medics of a disease that looked like Sars - another deadly coronavirus.

But he was told by police to "stop making false comments" and was investigated for "spreading rumours".

Dr Li was an eye doctor at a hospital in Wuhan - the central Chinese city where the first case of the coronavirus was detected at the end of 2019.

Dr Li's death prompted a rare wave of grief and public anger over the Chinese government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

As hospitals filled up in Wuhan, the government was accused of downplaying the severity of the virus and concealing the extent of its spread.

Only when anger reached fever pitch was Dr Li exonerated and honoured as a hero by the Chinese government.

Since then, more than 105 million people have been infected with coronavirus and 2.3 million have died with Covid-19 worldwide.

What tributes have been made?

Freedom of speech is limited in China, where the government has promoted an official narrative hinged on its successful handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

China does routinely censor comments on social media.

But Dr Li's personal page on Weibo - the Chinese equivalent of Twitter - has become a rare space for users to express themselves about the trauma of the coronavirus pandemic.

Hundreds of thousands of messages have been left in the comments section of his posts.

Many more appeared on Saturday.

"Dr Li, history and the people will never forget you!," one wrote in the comments of Dr Li's final post.

"I thought everyone would have forgotten you after a year," another wrote. "I was wrong, you live forever in the hearts of the Chinese people."

Citizens in Wuhan have also been paying tribute.

Close to the hospital where Dr Li worked, Li Pan told Reuters: "He was the first to tell us about the virus.

"He must have considered the impact would be huge, but he still raised the alarm. That was really brave."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55963896
 
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IGIT said:
hiya Cubo de Sangre,

yarp.

if you deviate from Xi's decrees, you get ended. that's China. no BLM....but no QAnon either, since they'd both be threats to national security.

- IGIT
Click to expand...

You believe BLM and Q are threats to national security?
 
HAWTRIDDUM said:
China encourages stealing other countries tech but prosecutes their own citizens for reporting accurate news on time.
Click to expand...
You mean, like USA did for Alstom for example?

(subtitles mofo)

And what about Julian Assange?
 
HAWTRIDDUM said:
Justifying it with other countries scumbag behavior doesn't automatically make theirs ok
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hello HAWTRIDDUM, happy new year!

yes, that's true.

*paces and ponders*

its also true that China treats its own citizens in horrific ways. the organ harvesting. the re-education camps. Tibet. Hong Kong. the The Uyghur oppression. its barbaric and awful.

the thing is, the US has a rich history of visiting misery upon other nations, and our track record has limited our ability to take the high ground when wagging our fingers at China.

whether its Xi...or the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia; certain heads of state have no problem jailing (or chopping up into little pieces) journalists.

the US doesn't seem to care much one way or another, my friend (and by that i mean the government and the voters of America). its a non-issue.

as our departing POTUS said last year, the press is "truly the enemy of the people".

- IGIT
 
Fugazy said:
You believe BLM and Q are threats to national security?
Click to expand...

hiya Fugazy,

i'm saying that in China, they would be - and they'd find themselves in a bunk bed somewhere in Xinjiang before you could say, "Happy New Year!".

- IGIT
 
How long until China Joe uses this tactic stateside?
 
Arkain2K said:
WHO in Wuhan is probing Covid's origins as politics hangs over mission
“The objective of the investigation is not to designate a guilty country,” one expert said. “But we also have to be realistic: This is a very politicized world."

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/sci...-origins-politics-hangs-over-mission-n1255148
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WHO will not be allowed to discover the truth. You can bet the house that the CCP has been spending the past years covering up the truth, pressuring and coaching researchers to lie about the virus's origins.
 
MicroBrew said:
WHO will not be allowed to discover the truth. You can bet the house that the CCP has been spending the past years covering up the truth, pressuring and coaching researchers to lie about the virus's origins.
Click to expand...


Makes me wonder what else happened in China
 
ShinkanPo said:
Makes me wonder what else happened in China
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Well as I recall the virus originated about 1/4 mile from a viral lab, and most certainly NOT from within a viral lab, and if you think it came from 1/4 mile from where I say it came from then you're a conspiracy theorist.
 
China Urged to Release 7 Journalists Who Reported on COVID-19
11 February 2021

Hang_Bin.jpg

Missing journalist Hang Bin​

Reporters Without Borders called on the international community to press Chinese authorities to immediately release seven journalists who were arrested for reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan a year ago.

“Informing the public on this unprecedented health crisis is not a crime! These journalists should never have been arrested,” the head of the NGO’s East Asia Bureau, Cédric Alviani, said in a statement on Monday.

Zhang Zhan, a 37-year old reporter sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” disappeared in March after travelling to Wuhan the month before to report on the outbreak.

She reported directly from the epicenter on the detention of other independent reporters and the harassment of families of victims seeking accountability, according to a statement by a Chinese NGO at the time.

Shortly after her sentencing in December, the UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” by the ruling, adding that it has “raised her case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of the excessive clampdown on freedom of expression linked to #COVID19 & continue to call for her release.”

Zhan, who went on a hunger strike shortly after her detention, is one of only two other journalists that have been tried and convicted since their arrest one year ago.

Ren Zhiqiang, a 69-year old political commentator who was detained for reporting on the failures of the regime in their handling of the pandemic, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on “corruption charges” last September.

Zhiqiang’s sentencing, like Zhan’s, was widely condemned, and seen as an attempt to silence dissent.

“The 18-year sentence handed down to a Communist Party member and member of the economic elite shows the grim environment for speech in China,” Human Rights Watch’s China researcher, Yaqiu Wang, said in a statement that called for authorities to “immediately quash” the sentence.

While others arrested on charges of “subversion of state power'' for reposting censored COVID-19 news articles and exposing the chaos in Wuhan’s hospitals await trial, one journalist, Fang Bin, remains missing.

Bin was “forcibly disappeared” last February after reporting on hospital oversaturation in Wuhan, according to a Human Rights Watch statement, which called for his “immediate and unconditional” release along with five other citizen journalists and activists.

To this day, Bin’s whereabouts remain unknown.

The Chinese regime is the “world’s biggest captor of journalists” with at least 119 press freedom defenders detained, many in conditions that pose a threat to their lives, according to RSF, which ranked China 177th out of 180 on its 2020 World Press Freedom Index.
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https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/13845-china-urged-to-release-7-journalists-who-reported-on-covid-19
 
Press Freedom Day: Missing citizen journalists in China
03.05.2021

53194358_509.jpg
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More than a year after they were arrested by the Chinese government for reporting about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, four citizen journalists remain behind bars in China.​

Last year, while the Chinese government tried to contain the coronavirus outbreak in the original epicenter of Wuhan, four citizen journalists were arrested for trying to share information about the situation on the ground with the outside world. A year after their arrests, they are still not free.

Last month, the US State Department highlighted their cases in its annual human rights report.

So far, only Li Zehua has appeared in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel, last April.

The other three haven't been seen by the public.

Among them, Zhang Zhan is the only one who has been formally sentenced to four years in jail. The verdict was delivered in December 2020. Since then, she has reportedly been transferred to the Shanghai Women's Prison.

Authorities have so far not allowed her mother to visit her.

Government's pressure tactics

"After being informed that Zhang was transferred to prison, her mom tried to apply for visitation at the prison, but she was told that she had to make an appointment through a phone call," a source, who asked not to be named due to security concerns, told DW.

"When she called the number on the official document, she couldn't reach the staff at the prison, and when she finally got in touch with them, they told her she could only send money but not clothes to the prison for Zhang."

The government has not only thwarted Zhang's mother's attempts to meet her in prison, but it has also deprived Zhang of her right to write letters to her family, according to the source.

When her lawyer visited her the last time, he found that Zhang was on a hunger strike in prison.

Zhang would, the source said, only meet her body's most basic needs by eating some fruit, solid food or drinking water. However, she remained strong-willed.

"After receiving some postcards written by her supporters, Zhang told her lawyer that if she could make it out of the prison alive, she wanted to go to Wuhan again and relive some of the experiences with her friends," said the source.

"Her lawyer shared some details about his last visit on WeChat, but the article was immediately blocked."

The source pointed out that Zhang's mother will need to put in a lot of effort to try to restore her right to visit her and her right to communicate with Zhang through letters.

"Even if she tries to fight for those rights through a lawyer, it is hard to predict how the court might rule in this case," said the source. "It's even hard to predict whether her lawyer would be allowed to visit her in the prison next time."

Chen remains under tight surveillance

Another citizen journalist, Chen Qiushi, has been out of public sight since he was arrested by police in Wuhan last February.

While Chinese YouTuber Xu Xiaodong revealed in a video that Chen had been sent back to his parents' house in Qingdao last September, the state of his physical and mental health remains unclear.

On March 29, Xu said in another YouTube video that Chen's mental health improved after being taken care of by his parents and he looks very healthy.

Xu also claimed that Chen could access information from the outside world through the internet, television and newspapers, but he wasn't able to have any contact with the outside world.

"I think Qiushi could possibly re-appear in the public's view by September or October, and he will maintain his long-term style, which is not forming any ties with international organizations or having any contact with them," Xu said in the video. "He is patriotic and everything he does is for the country and the people of this country."

Fang's determination may prolong detention

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Compared to Chen, the outside world hasn't had much information about the other citizen journalist Fang Bin. Chinese human rights lawyer Li Dawei told DW that Fang's family hasn't been willing to share information about his case with Fang's friends or anyone who wants to learn more about the details.

"Some of his friends visited Fang's sister, but she wasn't willing to share anything," said Li. "She even turned his friends away. I don't think any lawyer has taken up his case since his arrest last year."

Li worries that Fang's stubborn character may prolong his detention. "If he is willing to soften his stance, he may be released sooner, which is what happened to Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua," Li noted. "However, if he keeps insisting that he is right, then the chance of him being released will be very low."

https://amp.dw.com/en/china-covid-citizen-journalists/a-57409694
 
Hard to know how to feel until lebron weighs in.
 
A reporter risked her life to show the world Covid in Wuhan. Now she may not survive jail.
By Keir Simmons, Jennifer Jett, Amy Perrette and Elizabeth Kuhr | Dec. 18, 2021

​


It was dark as Zhang Zhan walked along the building in Wuhan, China, a constant, dull roar in the background.

“It’s 12:40 a.m. The sound of the funeral home’s crematorium,” she said in the February 2020 video, one of dozens she posted on YouTube. “They work day and night.”

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when the Chinese government was trying to contain the initial outbreak, reporting by citizen journalists like Zhang questioned the scale of the crisis and the government’s response. But they worried their aggressive reporting wouldn’t be tolerated for long in a country where the news media is strictly controlled.

“At the moment it’s OK,” Zhang said of her critical coverage in a May 2020 interview with an independent filmmaker, which was shared with NBC News. “They didn’t arrest me. However, if I continue with this, I don’t know their bottom line.”

Zhang went missing that month. Her lawyer later confirmed to NBC News that she had been convicted the following December of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” by a court in Shanghai where she was jailed for four years.

She is one of at least 10 journalists and commentators who early on tried to force Chinese authorities to be more transparent about the impact of the virus and were silenced by officials struggling to contain news of the pandemic. Though many others have since been released, Zhang is in prison, and her family, friends and supporters fear she could die from the hunger strike she is staging in protest.

“She stands for the truth, and she stands for justice,” Jane Wang, a U.K.-based activist campaigning for Zhang’s release, told NBC News. “And she represents the very best of China.”

Zhang’s brother, Zhang Ju, said on Twitter in October that his sister weighed less than 90 pounds.

“She may not survive the coming cold winter,” he said.

In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Britain said careful attention was paid to the health of prison inmates and that their right to receive medical attention was “fully guaranteed.”

“The rights of Chinese citizens are protected in accordance with the law,” it said. “Everyone is equal before the law, and anyone who breaches the law shall be sanctioned accordingly.”

Zhang, 38, is one of at least 127 professional and citizen journalists detained in China, more than anywhere else in the world, according to a report this month by nonprofit group Reporters Without Borders. A separate report released this month by the Committee to Protect Journalists also singled out China as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists.

The Chinese government has been criticized over its actions early in the pandemic, when eight doctors who tried to warn others about the virus were reprimanded by Wuhan police for “spreading rumors.” The doctors were vindicated by China’s top court shortly before one of them, Dr. Li Wenliang, 34, died of Covid-19.

Beijing is under growing pressure to reveal what it knows about the pandemic’s origins amid renewed questions about whether the virus spread from a laboratory in Wuhan, a theory that Zhang explored in her reporting. China has dismissed the theory as a “conspiracy” and said international experts have “repeatedly praised China’s open and transparent attitude” when it comes to the virus.

Were she to die, Zhang would not be the first Chinese dissident to perish in custody; others include Liu Xiaobo, the pro-democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died of liver cancer in 2017 while serving an 11-year prison term.

Last month, the U.S. State Department expressed concern over Zhang’s deteriorating health and called for her release.

“We have repeatedly expressed our serious concerns about the arbitrary nature of her detention and her mistreatment during it,” spokesperson Ned Price said Nov. 10.

The United Nations has also called for Zhang’s “immediate and unconditional” release. Last month, she was awarded Reporters Without Borders’ Prize for Courage.

Zhang, a former lawyer, was already known to Chinese authorities before her reporting on the coronavirus. In September 2019, as pro-democracy protests roiled the Chinese territory of Hong Kong, she displayed an umbrella in downtown Shanghai that called for an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. Authorities detained her for more than two months, during which time she went on a hunger strike.

She was released in November that year, weeks before the first cases of the coronavirus were detected in Wuhan, a central Chinese city. Seeking to stop further spread of the virus, the Chinese government placed Wuhan and its 11 million residents on lockdown Jan. 23, 2020. The lockdown, the first of its kind in the world, would last 76 days.

Zhang arrived in Wuhan in early February, unsure at first as to her purpose.

“I really didn’t know anything medical,” she said in the May 2020 interview. “I just followed my heart.”

Soon, she was publishing articles and videos online about life under lockdown and the difficulties it created for residents. Zhang said she wanted to speak up for those who were struggling economically or who were not allowed to mourn loved ones lost to Covid-19.

“They are already burdened with death, and now they are oppressed,” she said in one video.

She also made multiple visits to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has come under scrutiny as a possible source of the virus — a claim denied by the institution. Addressing the accusations for the first time in April 2020, Yuan Zhiming, the institute’s vice director, told Chinese state broadcaster CGTN that they were designed to “confuse” people.

But in one video filmed outside the lab, Zhang said: “We can find the truth of the virus’s origin with patience and tenacity.”

In the course of her reporting, Zhang documented confrontations with officials; she told friends she was being followed by police and warned to stop what she was doing.

“We are talking about a female human rights defender who took all the risk, all the risk in the world, to go to the most dangerous place to find the truth for all of us,” Wang said.

She was subsequently imprisoned for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vaguely defined crime that is often used to silence critics of the government.

“Zhang Zhan is a victim of the Chinese government’s zero-tolerance approach to criticism and opposing views,” Gwen Lee, China campaigner at Amnesty International, said in a statement last month.

A second citizen journalist who reported from Wuhan early in the pandemic, Fang Bin, is also still being detained, Reporters Without Borders said.

Zhang began an intermittent hunger strike after her arrest in May 2020. Rights groups say she has been force-fed and kept in restraints. In the summer, she was hospitalized for 11 days, and her family was told she could die.

Wang said Zhang’s mother had last seen her on a video call in late October and “cried for hours and hours” after seeing her daughter “on the verge of death.”

“She couldn’t walk,” Wang said of Zhang’s condition during the call. “She couldn’t even hold her head up herself.”

Zhang’s family has applied for her release on medical parole, but her mother told the South China Morning Post there has been no response. Wang said she believes Zhang is prepared to die in prison unless she is released.

“Zhang Zhan would not tolerate any other way,” she said.

Wang said Zhang had persisted in her hunger strike “because she believes she’s innocent. She believes that she has a right to see the truth and speak the truth.”
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna9212
 
Crazy how this can just be done and nothing can really stop it. All governments do this to some extent and nothing can be done about it.
 
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