China sentences early COVID whistleblower to 4 years in jail for exposing truth about the virus



A Chinese court on Monday handed down a four-year jail sentence to a citizen-journalist who raised alarms about the coronavirus outbreak from its epicenter in Wuhan last year.

What are the details?

Zhang Zhan, 37, was one of several citizen-journalists in the country to offer firsthand accounts of the outbreak, which portrayed crowded hospitals and empty streets and illustrated to the world that the situation in Wuhan was far worse than the communist government was letting on.

Zhang arrived in Wuhan in early February to document the city's fight against the deadly new virus and posted her findings online, some of which were critical of the Chinese government, Reuters reported. Her posts on YouTube reportedly "consist[ed] of interviews with residents, commentary and footage of a crematorium, train stations, hospitals and the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

She was arrested in May on allegations of spreading false information, granting interviews to foreign media, disrupting social order, and criticizing the government, according to NBC News.

Her lawyers claimed in court, according to Reuters, that police "strapped her hands and force-fed her with a tube" and that by December "she was suffering headaches, giddiness, stomach ache, low blood pressure and a throat infection."

On Monday, the Pudong New Area People's Court in Shanghai sentenced her to four years in jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," one of her lawyers confirmed to the news agency, adding, "We will probably appeal."

"I don't understand. All she did was say a few true words, and for that she got four years," Zhang's mother, who was present at the trial with her husband, said.

What else?

Humanitarian critics have sounded the alarm over China's treatment and subsequent punishment of Zhang.

"We are deeply concerned by the 4-year prison sentence imposed on citizen journalist Zhang Zhan," the UN Human Rights office tweeted. "We raised her case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of the excessive clampdown on freedom of expression linked to [COVID-19] & continue to call for her release."

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, blasted the timing of the sentencing, suggesting Chinese authorities waited until the holiday season to avoid attention and scrutiny from the West.

"Beijing's selection of the sleepy period between Christmas and New Year's suggests even it is embarrassed to sentence citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan to four years in prison for having chronicled the uncensored version of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan," he said.

Anything else?

Chinese authorities worked hard to cover up the dangers of the virus during the early days of the outbreak, censuring and detaining a number of doctors and journalists in Wuhan.

A study released in March found that if interventions in China has been "conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively — significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease."

Twitter suspends account of Chinese virologist who claims China manufactured, released COVID-19 to create havoc



Twitter reportedly suspended the account of Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan — just hours after she told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that China intentionally manufactured and released the COVID-19 virus.

What did she say on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'?

During Tuesday night's broadcast of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Yan said she believed that the Chinese government released the virus — which she claimed was man-made — on purpose.

"I work[ed] in the WHO reference lab, which is the top coronavirus lab in the world, in the University of Hong Kong," she told Carlson. "And the thing is, I deeply get into such investigation in secret from the early beginning of this outbreak. I had my intelligence because I also get my own unit network in China, involved [in] the hospital ... also I work with the top corona[virus] virologist in the world."

She also claimed that forthcoming information from an as-yet identified source would corroborate her claims.

"I have evidence to show why they can do it, what they have done, how [they did it]," she alleged.

"So, together with my experience, I can tell you, this is created in the lab," she claimed. "And also, it is spread to the world to make such damage."

What happened with Twitter?

Either late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, Twitter reportedly suspended an account purportedly belonging to Yan for violating Twitter rules and regulations.

The move appears to come just days after Yan published a paper, co-authored with three other Chinese scientists, alleging that the COVID-19 virus was man-made in a China laboratory by using bat coronaviruses as a template.

According to web archive site Wayback Machine, Yan had four active tweets on her page before Twitter suspended the account.

One tweet linked to the recent research. Another tweet sent users to her research credentials. A third tweet alleged that the Zenodo repository — which hosted the research paper — had been hacked. A fourth was a retweet from Trump aide Peter Navarro who spoke about Yan's claim against China, saying it would be "unbelievable if it weren't so believable."

The New York Post reported that Twitter refused to comment on the alleged suspension.

TheBlaze has also reached out to the social media company for comment on the matter and is waiting for a response.

Claims she is a target of the Chinese Communist Party

Yan in July publicly alleged that China attempted to quash the spread of information on its handling of the virus in the early stages of the pandemic. At the time, she impressed the importance of delivering the "message of the truth of COVID," and said that a previous supervisor cautioned her to "keep silent" and "be careful."

"As he warned me before, 'Don't touch the red line,'" Yan said in July. "We will get in trouble and we'll be disappeared."

The scientist fled China in April and, according to Fox, "fears retaliation."

"The scientific world also keeps silent," she said. "[W]orks together with the Chinese Communist Party, they don't want people to know this truth. That's why I get suspended, I get suppressed, I am the target that Chinese Communist Party wants disappeared."