#hunger strike

3个月前

🚨🚨🚨 a coalition of 59 press freedom and human rights NGOs led by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for the release of Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan (张展) on May 14, the 5th anniversary of her first arrest. Her health has severely deteriorated due to her intermittent hunger strikes in protest of her arbitrary detention — she must be immediately released. On May 14, 2020, Zhang Zhan was arrested while covering the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, the city where the pandemic began, as reprisal for her reporting. Despite having already served a four-year prison sentence, the journalist is now being prosecuted a second time for reporting on human rights violations by the 🇨🇳 regime. Zhang will soon be tried but the date of her hearing is still unknown. She remains detained in the Pudong Detention Centre in Shanghai, facing an additional 5 years in prison. In a joint statement, the coalition expressed its concern over Zhang’s health, as she continues to go on intermittent hunger strikes to protest her arbitrary detention. She was hospitalized twice in 2021 due to severe malnutrition. In Jan 2025, Zhang started her hunger strike again in protest of her second arrest. In response, detention centre personnel have subjected her to force-feeding through a gastric tube — a practice considered under international treaties as ill-treatment, and in some cases torture. Zhang was apprehended by the police for the second time on Aug 28, 2024 — just three months after completing her four-year prison sentence — while travelling to her hometown in Shaanxi province. In the weeks leading up to her second arrest, Zhang had returned to her reporting, covering the harassment of activists in China on social media. Before her first arrest, Zhang Zhan posted more than 100 videos on social media documenting the outbreak of COVID-19. Seven months after she was apprehended, the journalist was sentenced to four years in prison by a Shanghai court on the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” RSF has campaigned for her release throughout her imprisonment and repeatedly warned about the ill treatment she has been subjected to in prison.

#Zhang Zhan #COVID-19 Wuhan reporting #hunger strike #arbitrary detention #press freedom