In a video, during the blockade in Wuhan, she filmed a hospital corridor lined with wheeled beds, patients connected to blue oxygen tanks. In another, she searched a community health center, noting that a man said he was charged for a coronavirus test, although residents believed the tests would be free.
At the time, Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old former lawyer who became a citizen journalist, personified the Chinese people’s hunger for unfiltered information about the epidemic. Now, it has become a symbol of the government’s efforts to deny its initial failures in the crisis and instead promote a winning narrative.
Ms. Zhang abruptly stopped posting in May, after several months of dispatches. The police later revealed that she had been arrested, accused of spreading lies. On Monday, she will go to court, at the first known trial of a coroner of the coronavirus crisis in China.
Ms. Zhang continued to challenge the prison authorities. Shortly after his arrest, Zhang went on a hunger strike, according to his lawyers. She grew thin and exhausted, but refused to eat, lawyers said, arguing that her strike is her form of protest against her unfair detention.
“She said that she refuses to participate in the trial. She says it’s an insult, ”said Ren Quanniu, one of the lawyers, after visiting Zhang in mid-December in Shanghai, where she is being held.
Zhang’s accusation is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign to reshape the way China handled the outbreak as a succession of wise and triumphant government measures. Critics who pointed out the employees’ first missteps were arrested, censored or threatened by the police; three other citizen journalists disappeared from Wuhan before Ms. Zhang, although none of the others were publicly charged.
Prosecutors accused Zhang of “provoking fights and causing problems” – a frequent charge for government critics – and recommended between four and five years in prison.
“She was shocked,” said Ren. “She didn’t think it would be that heavy.”
Zhang was among a wave of journalists, professionals and amateurs, who flocked to Wuhan after the blockade was imposed in late January. The authorities were concerned with trying to manage the chaos of the outbreak and, for a brief period, China’s strict censorship regime was loosened. Reporters took advantage of the window to share raw reports of terror and fury from residents.
In her first weeks, Ms. Zhang visited a crematorium, a crowded hospital corridor and the city’s deserted train station. On March 7, when the chief official of the Wuhan Communist Party said residents should undergo an “education of gratitude” to thank the government for its anti-epidemic efforts, Zhang walked the streets, asking passersby if they felt grateful.
“Is gratitude something you can teach? If you can, it must be a false gratitude, ”she said to the camera later. “We are adults. We don’t need to be taught. “
Zhang’s videos used to be unstable and were not edited, sometimes lasting only a few seconds. They frequently showed the challenges of independent journalism in China under the Party’s increasing control. Many residents ignored Ms. Zhang or told her to leave. If they spoke, they asked her to point the camera at their feet.
While she posted some videos and rehearsals on WeChat, a popular messaging service in China, she said she often encountered censorship on the platform. She has relied heavily on YouTube and Twitter, which are blocked in China, but can be accessed through virtual private networks.
Zhang had never been a citizen journalist before traveling to Shanghai’s Wuhan, where she lived, said Li Dawei, a friend who texted her frequently while she was reporting. But she was stubborn and idealistic, he said, to a point that was sometimes difficult to understand.
Ms. Zhang seemed to know the risks of her actions. In one of her first videos, on February 7, she mentioned that another citizen journalist, Chen Qiushi, had just disappeared and another, Fang Bin, was under surveillance. The reporting doctors have been silenced, she added.
“But as someone who cares about the truth in this country, we have to say that if we just wallow in our sadness and do nothing to change that reality, then our emotions will be cheap,” said Zhang.
Not long after, Mr. Fang disappeared. So did Li Zehua, another citizen journalist who traveled to Wuhan. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, recently ordered authorities to “strengthen public opinion orientation,” and hundreds of state media journalists were sent to the city.
The crackdown also extended to people who tried to document the crisis in less direct ways. In April, three volunteers who had created an online archive of censored news articles about the epidemic disappeared; two were later accused of causing fights and causing problems, although their trials have not yet begun, according to relatives.
Despite scrutiny, Ms. Zhang continued to move through Wuhan for several weeks, potentially in part because she had not attracted many followers. Some of your videos have only been seen a few hundred times on YouTube.
His friend, Mr. Li, warned that the authorities would lose patience in the future, especially as Zhang became increasingly bold. At one point, she went to police stations to ask about missing citizen journalists.
“She believed in me, but she still kept stopping,” recalls Li. “She said, ‘I haven’t finished my job in Wuhan’.”
In mid-May, Zhang suddenly stopped responding, said Li. He later learned that she had been arrested and taken to Shanghai. The charge, reviewed by The New York Times, accused Zhang of “making up lies and spreading false information”. He also noted that she gave interviews to “foreign media”, such as Radio Free Asia and the Epoch Times.
Zhang started refusing food shortly after his arrest, according to his lawyers. When one of them, Zhang Ke Ke, visited her in prison earlier this month, he saw that her hands were tied with restraint, according to a post in her WeChat account. Zhang explained that the guards periodically inserted a feeding tube and tied her hands so that she could not remove it, Zhang wrote. (The two Zhangs are unrelated.)
Zhang said he felt dizzy and had stomach pains, Zhang continued. As a Christian, she would like to have a Bible and quoted to him in 1 Corinthians: “Faithful is God, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you can.”
Both Mr. Zhang and Mr. Ren, who visited separately later, begged Ms. Zhang to eat. But she refused, said Mr. Ren.
“She is much paler than in her videos and photos – pale as death,” said Ren, adding that Zhang appeared to have aged several decades. “It is very difficult to believe that she is the same person you saw online.”
China’s judicial system is notoriously opaque, with delicate cases often heard behind closed doors. In 2019, the Chinese court’s sentencing rate was 99.9%, according to government statistics. Zhang’s lawyers recently requested that Zhang’s trial be broadcast live to ensure transparency, but they have not had a response, said Ren.
Of the other citizen journalists who disappeared, only one, Mr. Li, appeared publicly. In a YouTube video in April, he said he had been quarantined forcibly, but not charged. Another, Mr. Chen, is reportedly with the family, but has not spoken publicly; friends say he is under surveillance. There was no news from Mr. Fang.
In her penultimate video before her own arrest, Ms. Zhang walked down a street in a neighborhood where cases were reported recently. While she was filming the closed stores, a man in a neon vest with the words “on duty” confronted her, asking where she lived and if she was a journalist. When Ms. Zhang rejected him, he shouted, “If you post this online, you will have to take responsibility.”
“I take responsibility for all my actions,” shouted Zhang back. “You must also take responsibility for your actions as a police officer.”