On hunger strike for months.
(Photo: ddp / Newscom)
Beijing On Monday, journalists’ associations across Germany called on the federal government to campaign for the release of Zhang Zhan. The 38-year-old had traveled from Shanghai to Wuhan in central China at the time of the first corona outbreak in February 2020 to report on the situation on site.
As a so-called citizen journalist – without being employed by a medium – she spoke to local people who were affected by the city’s unprecedented lockdown and uncovered grievances in her video blog.
Zhang disappeared without a trace in May 2020 and reappeared in prison a little later. In December she was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for “seeking arguments and causing unrest,” the court stated. The former lawyer has been on hunger strike for months to protest her conviction. According to media reports, her family fears that they will not survive the winter. With a height of 1.77, she weighs only 40 kilos and is now so weak that she can no longer lift her head herself.
The videos of Zhang and other Chinese citizen journalists were in stark contrast to the images that the Communist Party and the leadership of the People’s Republic were spreading, and are still spreading, that apart from a few initial difficulties, everything went smoothly. The reports by Zhang and others played a vital role in conveying the implications to an international public.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Commitment to the “immediate release”
The human rights organization Amnesty International as well as the journalists and authors associations Reporters Without Borders, the German Association of Journalists, PEN and the German Union of Journalists called in the joint action on Monday on the short message service Twitter – the one in China because of the censorship of the state without special software is unreachable – to advocate Zhang’s “immediate release” vis-à-vis China. In addition, the acting Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and his designated successor Annalena Baerbock as well as the designated Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the designated Chancellery Head Wolfgang Schmidt were made aware of this.
The Foreign Office said that both the EU delegation and the German Embassy in Beijing had already addressed the Chinese Foreign Ministry by verbal note and demanded the “immediate release” of Zhang. The case will continue to be raised in high level with the Chinese authorities.
Last week, the EU’s foreign policy spokeswoman, Nabila Massrali, urged the Chinese government to “release Zhang immediately and unconditionally”. A spokesman for the Chinese representation to the EU had rejected this request. China’s judicial authorities are acting in accordance with the law, the spokesman said, and no one has the right to interfere.
Zhang’s detention is not an isolated incident. Reporting or making public statements contrary to the official line of the Communist Party is particularly dangerous for Chinese citizens. Again and again, critics of the regime disappear and are arrested, often on charges of “causing unrest”, but in some cases also of corruption or other accusations.
More: The allegations against China are increasing: the Olympic Winter Games are threatening to turn into a debacle for Beijing