A former lawyer, Zhang Zhan traveled to the central Chinese city in February to report on the pandemic and subsequent attempts to contain it, as soon as authorities began to control Chinese state and private media.
She disappeared from Wuhan in May and was later revealed to have been detained by the police in Shanghai, a city more than 640 kilometers (400 miles) away, and accused of “fighting and causing problems”, a crime commonly used against journalists and human rights activists.
Zhang is the first citizen journalist known to have been condemned for her role in reporting on the coronavirus pandemic.
Zhang is one of several independent reporters who have been detained or disappeared in China since the beginning of the pandemic, while authorities have restricted the coverage of the virus and the propaganda media has been exacerbating portraying Beijing’s response as effective and timely.
In February, Chen Qiushi, who broadcast live videos of Wuhan during the city blockade and posted reports on social media, disappeared. In September, he would be under “state supervision”. Two other independent journalists – Li Zehua and Fang Bin – were also detained after their coverage of the Wuhan outbreak.
“Under the guise of fighting the new coronavirus, authorities in China have increased online suppression by blocking independent reporting, information sharing and critical comments on government responses,” said Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong group, in an earlier report this year.
China is the world’s largest journalist jailer, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and tightly controls the press at home while blocking most foreign media through the Great Firewall, its vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus .
In March, China expelled journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, in an unprecedented move against foreign media. Beijing said the move – which came amid a wave of critical reporting on China’s initial response to the coronavirus – was a response to Washington’s recent restrictions on how the Chinese state media operates in the U.S.
Although sporadic outbreaks emerged and were quickly suppressed with blockages and quarantines, China has largely controlled the virus, allowing the country to return to relative normality.
Restrictions on the press, however, have not been lifted, and Chinese state media began aggressively pushing an alternative story to the pandemic, claiming that the coronavirus may have circulated outside the country before the initial outbreak in Wuhan.
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