In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has cracked down on citizen journalists who dare to reveal the truth about society to the outside world. Recently, the indictment and sentencing recommendation of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was convicted by the authorities for the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles,” was released online. It is reported that Zhang Zhan was detained by the authorities after traveling to Wuhan to report on the new coronavirus epidemic. This incident again raised concerns about the fate of Chinese citizen journalists, including Zhang Zhan.
The prosecutor’s office recommended a heavy sentence for Zhang Zhan.
The Shanghai Pudong New Area Procuratorate issued an indictment and sentencing recommendation against citizen journalist Zhang Zhan on September 15, but Zhang’s mother was unable to learn of its contents from an officially recognized defense attorney, and only on November 13 did a picture of a copy of the indictment appear online, according to Rights Defense Network and other media outlets.
The indictment states that after entering Wuhan on February 3, 2020, Zhang Zhan repeatedly published “false information” through WeChat, Twitter, Youtube and other online media, and gave interviews to foreign media, “maliciously speculating” about the Wuhan New Coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, “with a large audience and bad influence.
The indictment also alleged that Zhang Zhan “fabricated and spread false information” during the period of strict control of the new coronary epidemic, causing “serious public disorder”. The prosecutor’s office believes that Zhang Zhan’s “criminal facts are clear and the evidence is true and sufficient,” and that he should be held criminally responsible for the crime of “provoking and provoking trouble. In addition, the Procuratorate’s sentencing recommendation was to give Zhang Zhan a heavy sentence of four to five years.
According to some analysts, given the fact that the Wuhan authorities concealed and covered up the truth of the epidemic at the beginning of the outbreak, Zhang Zhan, as a citizen journalist, took advantage of his right to freedom of speech and went to the epidemic area to show what he had seen and heard, so that the public could understand the true situation, which would help the outside world to understand the seriousness of the epidemic and the degree of harm, and to protect themselves.
Henan human rights lawyer Ren Quanniu was originally commissioned by Zhang Zhan’s mother to defend Zhang Zhan. Ren Quanniu applied twice in September to read the case file and meet with Zhang Zhan, but both requests were denied or canceled by the authorities for different reasons.
Zhang’s mother was pressured by the National Security Bureau and another lawyer, Dai Peiqing, to withdraw Ren from the case because Dai thought Ren would cause trouble for herself.
Lawyer: Speech cannot be incriminated
Zhang Zhan’s account of the Wuhan epidemic is true and her freedom of speech should be protected, so not only can she not be convicted, but she cannot be sentenced to four to five years in prison, as the prosecutor’s office suggested, Ren Quanniu told VOA on Thursday.
Ren Quanniu said: “I think it’s a typical suppression of speech, speech conviction, she was actually there to report something. She didn’t speculate or spread rumors, did she? It’s all about her being in Wuhan, what she saw and experienced, and saying it again, without exaggerating or making it up herself. As an incrimination, it is inappropriate and against the law in itself. And with your sentence being so severe, it’s even more intentional persecution. How can you be incriminated for speech vs. thought?”
After Ren Quanniu, Guangzhou human rights lawyer Wen Yu, who was appointed by Zhang Zhan, was forced to withdraw from the defense in late October due to pressure from the authorities. On October 29, Wen Yu went to the detention center to meet with Zhang Zhan. When asked about the case, he only said that although he had withdrawn from the case, he was still not allowed to give interviews, speak about or comment on the case because he had been “taken care of” by the authorities.
Zhang Zhan, 37, graduated with a master’s degree in finance from Southwest University of Finance and Economics, and left his hometown in Shaanxi for Shanghai in 2010. Zhang used to be a lawyer, but she was retaliated against for posting critical articles online and could not practice law. She traveled to Wuhan in early February to collect information about the epidemic, which she published as her own media, angering authorities.
Zhang Zhan was arrested on May 14 and transferred to Shanghai Pudong New Area Detention Center, and was transferred to the Shanghai Pudong New Area Court for review and prosecution on August 18 on suspicion of “seeking nuisance. It is reported that Zhang Zhan has refused to plead guilty and has been on a hunger strike for more than five months, which is still ongoing.
According to reports, there is some disagreement about Zhang’s sole defense attorney, Shanghai-based Dai Peiqing, who has been on a hunger strike for more than five months.
Dai Peiqing denied that she is a government-appointed lawyer, saying she is representing Zhang because she knows him. Reporters called Dai Peiqing on Thursday to find out more about her recent meetings with Zhang Zhan, such as whether he is still on hunger strike. She said there are “rumors flying around” but she did not want to “clarify” with reporters.
Several Citizen Journalists Detained or Disappeared
In 2020, Zhang Zhan was not the only citizen journalist detained by the authorities for reporting on the Wuhan neocoronavirus epidemic during the city’s closure. Prior to Zhang’s arrest, citizen journalist Chen Qiushi, a lawyer, Wuhan citizen Fang Bin, and former CCTV program host Li Zehua, all of whom had lost contact with each other after being arrested for sharing the facts of the Wuhan epidemic on social media.
Chen Qiushi, a former orator and lawyer, traveled to Wuhan on January 24 and released a series of videos of on-the-ground reports, including medical, emergency, and funeral overloads at various hospitals, and on February 6, Chen Qiushi’s mother posted a video of him saying that he had gone to the cubicle hospital the day before but had been out of touch during the night. It was later confirmed that he had been forcibly quarantined by authorities.
Chen Qiushi’s friend, fight fanatic Xu Xiaodong, said on September 17 that he had received information that Chen Qiushi was healthy and no longer in Wuhan, but that he was still under residential surveillance. But there has been no definite news about him so far.
On February 9, he posted a video on YouTube in which he displayed a calligraphy banner that read, “All people resist, return power to the people. The same day, he was taken away by the police and has been out of contact ever since.
Li Zehua, a former host of the party media China Central Radio and Television, has been an independent journalist in Wuhan since February 16, using his YouTube channel to record his whereabouts.
On February 26, after being chased on the road, Li Ze-Hua posted a video asking for help while driving. On April 22, he uploaded a video to his YouTube channel, saying that he had been released and revealing how he had been “targeted and isolated” during his absence.
Analysts point out that Zhang Zhan and Fang Bin, Li Zehua, and Chen Qiushi, as citizen journalists, are among the few outspoken members of Chinese society who have gone into Wuhan to report on the realities of the epidemic. In the midst of the party media, the government media, and the voices of praise and glorification, they risked their lives to provide some truth, and the authorities should not persecute them.
In addition to Zhang Zhan and a number of other citizen journalists who were detained and disconnected, authorities this year also focused on arresting three Beijing-based citizen journalists who used websites to collect censored and deleted articles and social media posts about the neo-crown virus epidemic.
The arrest of “Duanduxing” and other citizen journalists who used websites to collect articles and social media posts related to the new coronavirus outbreak.
On April 19, Beijing police reportedly arrested Chen Mei, Cai Wei and Cai Wei’s girlfriend, Xiao Tang, who are volunteers and defenders of information on the website “Duantianxing. Authorities charged Cai and Tang with “provoking and provoking trouble,” and placed them under “residential surveillance. The situation of Chen Mei was first unknown, and then it was confirmed that she was under “residential surveillance”.
Xiao Tang was reportedly released on bail on May 13, but was forcibly returned to his hometown in Anhui. The families of Chen Mei and Cai Wei were notified on June 12 that they had been formally arrested and detained at the Chaoyang Detention Center, and on August 6, an officially appointed lawyer informed the family that the case had been transferred to the Chaoyang District Procuratorate on the same day.
As the family’s self-appointed lawyer was unable to perform his duties as a lawyer and could not meet with his client in accordance with the law, no information about Chen Mei’s and Cai Wei’s case or their physical health while in custody is available to the public.
Terminus2049, which began on April 22, 2018 and is hosted on the open-source platform Github, has gradually become a platform for Internet users to publish and save information from Chinese newspapers, magazines and social media that have been removed by censorship, to fight online censorship and to ensure the lasting validity of article dissemination and reading.
In the early days of the site, the main articles were related to sexual harassment in Chinese universities and Yue Xin of Peking University’s support for workers on strike in Shenzhen, which later expanded to include the case of Tao Chongyuan, a graduate student of Wuhan University of Technology, who committed suicide by jumping from a building after being oppressed by her mentor for a long time, and the mass expulsion of low-end people from Beijing.
After the outbreak of the new coronavirus, the website posted numerous news articles, interviews, and personal records about the epidemic. Following the arrests of the three individuals, the Tuanduxing website has been blocked in China.
Also arrested in 2020 was citizen journalist Ding Lingjie, former editor of the human rights website Minsheng Watch and a citizen journalist on the website. On June 3, 2020, she disappeared after telephoning a friend to ask the Dingzhou Public Security Bureau for her. The family approached the Dingzhou Public Security Bureau for help, but were told that no one else knew about the case. There is no further information about Ding Lingjie’s disappearance.
In September 2017, Ding and others were arrested in connection with a case involving the production of a video satirizing Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, and were sentenced to one year and eight months in prison on December 28, 2018, and released after serving their sentence on May 21, 2019.
Another major case of persecution of citizen journalists in recent years has been that of Lu Yuyu, founder of the civil rights documentation platform Non-News, and his ex-girlfriend Li Tingyu. Prior to their arrest, they tweeted under the screen name “Not News” about more than 70,000 protests in China, and once reported more than 29,000 incidents in a year, opening up a new path for human rights reporting in China.
In 2016, the two were detained for “provoking and provoking trouble,” and the following year, Lu Yuyu was sentenced to four years in prison, while Li Tingyu, who had been assigned to a separate case, was released on bail. After his release from prison on June 16 this year, Lu Yuyu tweeted his verdict and his experience of torture in prison, and was summoned and warned by the Zunyi police.
Historical Cases of Sentenced Citizen Journalists
In 2016, in addition to the arrests of Lu Yuyu and Li Tingyu for “Non-News,” authorities also arrested Liu Feiyue, a prominent citizen journalist and founder of the rights website “Minsheng Watch,” and Liu Feiyue, a multiple International Journalism Award winner. Huang Qi, creator of the Four Days Network. Both of them have received widespread attention from the international community.
Liu Feiyue, who has been a pro-democracy activist since 1996, set up a workshop called “Minsheng Watch” in 2005 and opened a website a year later. Despite years of constant harassment by the authorities, he still had some relative space to engage in civil rights activism.
But on November 18, 2016, as the authorities cracked down on citizen journalists, he was also detained by the Hubei Suizhou Public Security Bureau on charges of “subverting state power. In his case, which opened on August 7, 2018, the prosecution accused him of giving an interview to Radio Free Asia, slandering and defaming the country’s political and judicial systems, attacking state power and the socialist system, as well as running the website Minsheng Watch, colluding with foreign institutions and organizations, and engaging in long-term activities to “incite subversion of state power. On January 29 of the following year, he was sentenced to five years in prison and had his personal assets confiscated for 1.01 million yuan.
In addition, Huang Qi, one of China’s most prominent citizen journalists, opened the “June 4, 1999” website with his ex-wife, publishing human rights information and various articles critical of current affairs.
On June 3, 2000, one day before the 11th anniversary of the June Fourth Incident, Huang Qi was arrested by the Chengdu Public Security Bureau. Nearly three years later, on May 9, he was sentenced to five years in prison for “incitement to subversion. The arrest of Huang Qi caused widespread concern around the world, and the U.S. government and hundreds of international organizations protested against Huang Qi’s persecution, while Chinese citizens strongly believed that the facts and evidence against Huang Qi were unjustified.
In June 2004, the international human rights organization Reporters Without Borders and the Fondation Française awarded Huang Qi the “2nd Internet Freedom Award”. On June 4, 2005, Huang Qi was released after serving his sentence.
After the Wenchuan Earthquake on May 12, 2008, Huang Qi was actively involved in disaster relief, provided assistance to parents of dead students, and wrote an article on the Internet to expose tofu-dreg projects. On November 23, 2009, Huang Qi was sentenced to three years in prison, and was again the target of a crackdown on citizen journalists in 2016.
On November 28, Huang Qi was taken away from his home by police, and was arrested on suspicion of “illegally providing state secrets abroad. On January 14, 2019, Huang Qi was arrested on suspicion of “leaking state secrets” in court. Diplomats from the U.S. and other Western countries traveled to Mianyang to attend the trial, but were blocked.
On July 29, 2019, Huang Qi was sentenced to 12 years in prison and stripped of his political rights for four years, making him one of the longest-serving political prisoners in recent years.
Citizen Journalists No Longer Have Space to Speak
In a recent interview with the Voice of America, Yuyu Lu, founder of the civil rights documentation platform “Not News,” said that at a time when authorities are cracking down on citizen journalists who tell the truth, the situation is becoming increasingly difficult for them, especially with the epidemic, when authorities have taken big data surveillance to the extreme.
You can’t do anything about it, it’s just completely controlled,” he said. Now it’s this big data surveillance where you know what you’re doing from anywhere, and it’s going to know very quickly. It’s not like before when there was still some room for you to do it. It’s very difficult anyway, and basically there is no condition to do this in the country. Because after this epidemic it has a much stronger surveillance capability. Before there was no this epidemic, that may be a lot of things will be implemented later, maybe a year or a few years later, but after there was an epidemic, it now has this technical means to control the society.”
Ren Quanniu, a rights lawyer who has represented a number of sensitive rights cases, including citizen journalists, said that the authorities’ crackdown on citizen journalists in recent years is a purge of another important group in society to achieve social silencing after the 709 arrests of rights lawyers in 2015.
He said: “It’s a purge of these people from different social groups in society, an ideological purge of …… It is to make them consciously or unconsciously consistent with the main theme. What is inconsistent is to use such extreme measures to force change. In recent years, there has been a tightening of control over freedom of speech and freedom of thought and belief. Maybe it’s because social contradictions are now more acute and concentrated, and they are trying to silence those who are more vocal or more active for the sake of so-called stability.”
According to Reporters Without Borders, including Zhang Zhan, China has so far detained at least 118 journalists, publishers, political commentators, or citizen journalists.
In this year’s Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index 2020, China was ranked 177th, fourth from the bottom out of 180 countries and regions.
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