Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned the Chinese sentence of a journalist reporting on COVID-19 to four years in prison, saying the Chinese Communist Party will do “whatever it takes” to silence those who question it.
“The United States strongly condemns the false prosecution and conviction of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on December 28. We ask the PRC government to release her immediately and unconditionally,” said Pompeo in a statement.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shown once again that it will do whatever is necessary to silence those who question the Party’s official line, even in relation to crucial public health information.”
“Lying is a feature, not a bug in authoritarian regimes,” added Pompeo.
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Zhang, 37, was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday after reporting on crowded hospitals and conditions in Wuhan earlier this year. Reports say she was convicted of the crime of “provoking fights and causing problems”.
Zhang posted videos on YouTube that showed interviews with residents and images from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
She criticized the response and ended up being detained in May. “The government’s way of running this city has only been intimidation and threats,” she said in a video, according to The New York Times. “This is truly the tragedy of this country.”
Reuters, quoting her lawyer, said there was likely to be an appeal and said her client believed she was “being pursued for exercising her freedom of speech”.
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Pompeo said the world “relied heavily” on the information provided by Zhang and other citizen journalists after the CCP restricted and manipulated information about the coronavirus at the beginning of the outbreak. “His hasty trial, which was denied access to foreign observers, shows how fearful the CCP is of Chinese citizens who speak the truth,” the statement said.
The Trump administration has repeatedly blamed Beijing for the pandemic, accusing the CCP of lying about the transmission of the virus between humans and other vital information from COVID-19, allowing the disease to spread worldwide.
In June, senior Chinese officials released an extensive report on the country’s response and defended Beijing’s actions.
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“The Chinese government did not delay or cover up anything,” said the chairman of the National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei at the time. “Instead, we immediately communicated data about the virus and relevant information about the epidemic to the international community and made an important contribution to the prevention and control of the epidemic worldwide.”
Edmund DeMarche of Fox News contributed to this report.