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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/nbcnews on 2024-05-13 10:31:55+00:00.
Chinese woman jailed over Covid reporting in Wuhan is set to be freed
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
HONG KONG — A Chinese citizen journalist who was jailed over her reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic was due to be released Monday after four years in prison, supporters said.
Information was tightly controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party and reporting by citizen journalists like Zhang, now 40, drew widespread attention as the world braced for the virus to spread.
During Zhang’s time in prison, her family, friends and supporters had feared she could die from period hunger strikes she staged in protest of her conviction and treatment, reporting in 2021 that she weighed less than 90 pounds.
“The Chinese government’s jailing of Zhang Zhan has been a shameful assault on her human rights, and her release must mark a new beginning,” Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China director, said in a statement.
Zhang had previously challenged Chinese authorities including in September 2019, when she displayed an umbrella in downtown Shanghai calling for an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.
Zhang arrived in Wuhan soon after the government put the city’s 11 million residents on lockdown on Jan. 23, 2020, sharing images of empty stores and crowded hospitals on YouTube, Chinese social media platform WeChat and what was then known as Twitter.
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