‘PICKING QUARRELS’

China Jails Wuhan Journalist Who Tried to Warn World About Coronavirus Outbreak

Foreign reporters were reportedly told by officials that they couldn’t go into the court to witness proceedings “due to the epidemic.”

Zhang Zhan was one of only a handful of citizen journalists who tried to tell the world what was really going on in Wuhan during the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic in China. Now, she’s been sent to prison for four years. Zhang, 37, arrived in Wuhan on Feb. 1 from her home in Shanghai. Over the next few months, she posted clips on YouTube showing the city’s crowded hospitals and deserted streets, giving some of the first indications that the situation was much worse than Beijing officials had admitted. Zhang was arrested in May and sentenced to four years in prison on Monday. According to Reuters news agency, her lawyer, Ren Quanniu, said she was jailed on grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Foreign journalists were reportedly told by officials that they couldn’t go into the court to witness proceedings “due to the epidemic.”