Whistleblowing citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has been re-detained, three months after her release following a four-year jail term for reporting from the front lines of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, her brother told RFA Mandarin.
“All I know is that she’s in the detention center right now,” Zhang’s brother Zhang Ju said. “I don’t know many other details; nobody contacted me when she went in.”
“They may have contacted my father or mother, but they didn’t tell me; I don’t know why she’s been taken there on this occasion,” he said.
Repeated calls to Zhang’s parents rang unanswered on Sept. 5. U.K.-based rights activist Wang Jianhong, who heads the Zhang Zhan Concern Group, said the family is under pressure from the authorities not to speak to anyone about their daughter’s case.
“There haven’t been any updates in the past few days because it’s inconvenient for the family to speak out – their situation is very difficult,” Wang said. “The news that she is in the detention center has been confirmed and made public.”
“There has been no official notification that she has been criminally detained, but given that she’s being held in a regular detention center for eight days, it’s probably criminal rather than administrative detention,” Wang said, calling on Washington to raise Zhang’s detention with the Chinese authorities “through diplomatic channels.”
Shanghai-based rights lawyer Peng Yonghe said there was nobody at the address where Zhang had been living following her release from Shanghai Women’s Prison on May 13.
“I went to where she used to live but didn’t find anyone there,” Peng said. “I also tried to reach out to her mother on WeChat, but she didn’t reply, for whatever reason.”
‘A violent system’
The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China said via its X account on Sept. 3 that it had received reports of Zhang’s detention in connection with attempts to help a fellow activist in the western province of Gansu.
“Citizen-journalist #ZhangZhan, formerly jailed for her reporting on #COVID19 transmission in Wuhan, was reportedly detained by Shanghai police because she sought to aid a jailed activist in Gansu,” the Commission said. “Chairs urge @USA_China_Talk to monitor this case and inquire about her safety.”
Zhang made a statement via her YouTube account on July 25 highlighting the case of Gansu activist Zhang Pancheng, who remains under house arrest following his release from prison in March, along with those of two other people.
“I want to ask the police why they are using illegal methods to strip these people of their right to go about their lives,” Zhang said. “This is an attack on justice and an attack on the vulnerable.”
“You are part of a violent system,” she said.
Calls to Zhang’s local Xuanqiao police station and the Shanghai Pudong New Area Detention Center resulted in calls being transferred to different departments, but no concrete information.
The Chinese embassy in Washington hadn’t responded to a written request for comment by the time of publication on Sept. 5.
European Union foreign affairs spokesperson Nabila Massrali also commented via X: “The EU is concerned about reports that Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has been detained again and held at Shanghai Pudong Detention Center.”
“We call for her immediate and unconditional release and reiterate our earlier concerns about her wellbeing & health,” Massrali said.
Supporter also detained
Meanwhile, authorities in the central city of Changsha hauled in a woman, named as Duan Taoyuan, for holding up a sign in support of Zhang.
Duan is being held under a 10-day administrative sentence, an officer from her local Dongjing police station appeared to confirm social media reports as saying.
Asked when the notification of her detention would be sent to family members, the officer replied: “It won’t be that quick, because it’s the weekend. Maybe in the next few days.”
The Weiquanwang rights website reported on Monday that Duan is currently being held in the Changsha Detention Center, where she is serving a 10-day administrative sentence.
A person familiar with the case who declined to be named for fear of reprisals confirmed the report in an interview with RFA Mandarin.
Zhang, 40, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by Shanghai’s Pudong District People’s Court on Dec. 28, 2020, convicted of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
She was hospitalized last year for digestive diseases linked to malnutrition following several months of hunger strikes.
At her trial, Zhang was accused of “fabricating” two items in her reporting from Wuhan.
The first was that citizens were forced to pay a fee to get nucleic acid tests for COVID-19, and the second was that residents confined to their homes under a city-wide lockdown had been sent rotten vegetables by neighborhood committees.
Zhang said she admitted to all of the material facts of the case, but refused to plead guilty to the charge, saying that the information she posted wasn’t false.
