A journalist faces five years in jail in China for her coverage in Wuhan

Journalist Zhang Zhan in a YouTube image.

Former Chinese lawyer and now journalist Zhang Zhan, arrested in May following her coverage of the covid pandemic in Wuhan, is facing a five-year jail term.

Zhang, 37, is accused of "picking a fight and creating trouble" - a charge frequently used against dissidents in this country - and of spreading false information.

Zhang Zhan is what is known in China as a citizen journalist, who reports on events without dedicating himself professionally to that work, but rather with a vocation for justice and transparency.

Zhang, who is being held in Shanghai, was formally charged in September, but the statement of charges against her was released on Monday.

The document accuses him of distributing "false information through texts, videos and other means through social networks on the Internet such as WeChat (the Chinese WhatsApp), Twitter or YouTube."

It also considers it a crime to have "accepted interviews from the foreign media Radio Free Asia (supported by the US Government) and the

newspaper

(controlled by the Falun Gong sect)."

Prosecutors are asking for a sentence of four to five years in prison.

According to the human rights organization Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), Zhang, who practiced so-called citizen journalism, had traveled to Wuhan in early February, when that city, the original focus of the pandemic, was suffering the worst weeks of the disease. .

There he covered, through his social media accounts, the "arrests of other independent reporters and the harassment of families of victims who demanded that someone be held accountable."

According to CHRD, Zhang went on a hunger strike on September 2, but the authorities at the detention center where she is held force-fed her.

The lawyers who have been able to see her indicate that she is very weak;

one of her lawyers has not been authorized to represent her.

The former lawyer had already been arrested in 2019 for her support of the protests in Hong Kong.

During the three months that her arrest lasted, she was twice forced to undergo psychiatric examinations, says the human rights organization.

In addition to Zhang, other individuals who practiced citizen journalism and who traveled to Wuhan to cover the situation at the beginning of the pandemic have also been detained this year.

Former lawyer Chen Qiushi was arrested in January and is in police custody, while former businessman Fan Bing, a Wuhan resident, disappeared several days later without being seen again.

Another reporter, Li Zehua, was arrested in February and released in April.

All of them documented in videos the chaos, deaths and complicated circumstances in which health professionals responded to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan.