CHINA: RE-DETENTION OF ACTIVIST ZHANG ZHAN HIGHLIGHTS BEIJING’S INTOLERANCE OF DISSENT

Chinese authorities must end their persecution of the citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, Amnesty International said after the activist was re-detained less than four months after being freed from prison.

Zhang Zhan, who is being held at the Pudong New District Detention Center in Shanghai, appears to have been targeted because she has continued to advocate for human rights since her release from jail on 13 May. 

“The depressingly predictable re-detention of Zhang Zhan is the culmination of the government’s ongoing campaign of harassment against her, even after she was ‘freed’ from prison. Since being released, Zhang has been subjected to surveillance that has intensified over the past month,” Amnesty International’s China Director, Sarah Brooks, said.

“This latest detention underscores the Chinese authorities’ intractable intolerance of dissent and of Zhang Zhan herself, who despite being unjustly jailed has continued to raise her voice in solidarity with other human rights activists since being released. She has been re-detained because she refused to be silenced.”

Following her release in May, Zhang Zhan expressed concern that her online speech was being monitored by authorities.

According to information received by Amnesty International, she was regularly and repeatedly taken in for police questioning over the past month, with some interrogations lasting over 10 hours.

In late August, it was reported that she traveled from Shanghai to the northwestern province of Gansu to show solidarity with other human rights defenders. Shortly thereafter, during a visit to her hometown in Shaanxi, she suddenly became unreachable; civil society reported that she had been taken into custody by police from Shanghai, well over 1000km away.

“On 2 September, Zhang Zhan marked her 41st birthday – her first since being released. Yet instead of celebrating this hard-won reunion with her family, she has spent her fifth successive birthday deprived of liberty,” Sarah Brooks said.

“We urge the Chinese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Zhang Zhan and ensure that she is granted full freedom and protection from any form of surveillance or harassment.”

Background

Zhang Zhan is a Chinese citizen journalist was who jailed for reporting on the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan.

A former lawyer, she travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to provide on-the-ground information about what was happening there. She posted on social media about how government officials had detained independent reporters and harassed families of Covid-19 patients.

She went missing in Wuhan in May 2020. It later emerged that she had been taken by the Chinese authorities and detained in Shanghai, where she was convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after a sham trial. On 13 May of this year, after completing a four-year prison sentence, Zhang Zhan was released. However, since her release, she has been subjected to strict surveillance and continuous harassment by the authorities.