Detained Chinese human rights activist and civilian journalist Zhang Zhan has been prosecuted for “disturbing the peace” on June 19, reports Taiwan News. She was in custody for more than one month.
Zhang has been reporting in Wuhan in February, sharing articles and street interviews on social media, said the report. Most of her reports dealt with public resentment over lockdown and failure of the government in dealing with the pandemic. Her reports had upset the government and Communist Party leading to her arrest.
According to the report, Zhang went missing on May 14 before the Shanghai police notified her parents that she had been detained on criminal charges. A former lawyer, Zhang has previously been critical of the Communist Party. The Shanghai police have summoned and threatened her several times in the past for expressing her views, the report said.
In 2019, she began disseminating material online in support of the Hong Kong protests. Last September, after she demonstrated publicly by holding an umbrella with the words “Terminate socialism, Replace the CCP,” the police detained her for more than two months, allegedly forcing her to undergo testing for psychopathy twice, according to, a Chinese human rights-related blog.
In an interview with the Epoch Times, Zhang said that while state media insisted the coronavirus outbreak was under control, the crematorium furnaces in the city were running day and night. She also indicated that Wuhan’s official figures for its coronavirus cases were erroneous, as only patients showing severe symptoms could receive tests during the peak of the outbreak, the report said.
Discussion about this post