China: RSF raises international alarm over retargeting of journalist Zhang Zhan
rsf.org
Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, previously imprisoned for four years for her independent reporting on  the Covid 19 outbreak, is missing again and was reportedly recently taken to a detention facility in Shanghai for unclear reasons. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is alarmed by this development, and urges immediate mobilisation of the international diplomatic community to ensure her safety. She must be released and granted full freedom without delay.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2541440

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On 1 September, independent Chinese news website ‘Weiquanwang’ revealed that journalist and former lawyer Zhang Zhan is being held in Pudong Detention Center in Shanghai, the NGO Reporters Without Borders reports.

The journalist was apprehended by police while she was travelling to her hometown in the Shaanxi province in northwest China on 28 August. Since that time she has not answered her phone or updated her social media accounts where she had recently resumed posting.

No official reason has been given for her detention, but in the weeks prior to this incident, Zhang Zhan had been sharing news about the harassment of other activists in China on social media. She had also travelled to the northwestern province of Gansu to persuade the mother of a recently arrested activist to sign a power of attorney.

Zhang Zhan was initially arrested in May 2020, while covering the early stages of the Covid 19 outbreak in Wuhan, in central-eastern China. She had posted more than 100 videos on social media before her arrest on 14 May 2020, and seven months later was sentenced to four years in prison by a Shanghai court on the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

[…] During her early months of detention, Zhang Zhan nearly died after going on a total hunger strike to protest her situation. Prison officials forcibly fed her through a nasal tube and sometimes left her handcuffed for days.

China, the world’s biggest prison for journalists and press freedom defenders with at least 120 currently behind bars, is ranked 172nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index.

  • cygnus@lemmy.caEnglish
    244·
    2 months ago

    Equating this to the USA is way off the mark. If an American isn’t happy with their government they have any number of recourses, like voting for someone else, protesting, or running for office (or all of the above, and more). At the very least, they know they won’t be thrown in prison for publicly disagreeing with their government. None of those is an option in China — it’s a one-party police state where protesting is illegal and the political apparatus is so incestuous that it’s essentially impossible for a “nobody” to break in. The weight and omnipresence of “the state” is hard to describe until you feel it in person. It’s soul-crushing.

    Edit: tankies, don’t come at me with “ackshually there are lots of parties in China”. I know how their congress works.

    • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      39·
      2 months ago

      Every law and right is written in blood in the US. They might need to bleed more to have the same.

      • cygnus@lemmy.caEnglish
        122·
        2 months ago

        That really undersells the work and sacrifice that happened during the Enlightenment in Europe. The US inherited that — they didn’t create it.