Chinese citizen journalist detained after live-streaming on coronavirus from Wuhan
- Zhang Zhan, 37, is being held at a detention centre in Shanghai after reporting from the outbreak epicentre since February
- She wrote a story critical of the government’s response to the crisis, saying it was depriving people of their basic rights
According to friends, Zhang Zhan’s family received official confirmation on Friday that the 37-year-old was being held at a detention centre in Shanghai Pudong New District. She has been accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a vague charge often used to detain dissidents in China.
01:58
Zhang had been in Wuhan – where the first cases of the new coronavirus were reported late last year – since February 1 and live-streamed her experience in the central Chinese city on Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms. Both Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China.
Zhang also wrote a story that was critical of the authorities’ response to the outbreak, saying the government should not undermine human rights.
“The government isolates individuals from the outside world in the name of treatment. In the name of maintaining stability, the number of infections and deaths is covered up. The media is kept under control in the name of ‘positive energy’,” Zhang wrote in the article posted on Twitter on February 16. “[The authorities] are coercively and violently ordering and depriving people of their basic human and property rights.”
