China: Journalist Convicted On Baseless Charges, Denied Visits
Chinese journalist and activist Zhang Zhan was reportedly convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and sentenced to four years in jail following her trial on 19 September 2025 at the Pudong New District People’s Court.
Reports following her detention in 2024 indicated that Zhang had gone on hunger strike while in detention, and has shown signs of having been forcibly fed. Her family and lawyer have been subjected to harassment and intimidation by authorities and are unable to share detailed updates about her situation. As a result, very little is known about her current health condition and other aspects of her case.
Zhang Zhan was previously jailed on the same charge 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. Zhang Zhan was released on 13 May 2024 after completing a four-year prison sentence.
However, she was subjected to strict surveillance and continuous harassment by the authorities after her release, and she was detained again less than four months later. Her second arrest (in September 2024) came shortly after she reportedly travelled to the northwestern province of Gansu to show solidarity with other human rights defenders.
Zhang Zhan has spent more than five and a half years deprived of her liberty, solely for exercising her right to freedom of expression. During her previous imprisonment, she went on a hunger strike that led to multiple hospitalizations and her weight dropped drastically to just 37 kilograms — half of what she weighed prior to her deprivation of liberty.
Zhang Zhan was featured in Amnesty International’s 2021 Write for Rights campaign.
Amnesty International has documented numerous cases of independent journalists and activists who were sentenced for reporting on the truth of the pandemic, with Zhang Zhan being a notable example. These repressive measures intensified after the 2022 "White Paper Movement," leading to further restrictions on civil society. More information on the misuse of national security- and public order-related criminal provisions to target human rights activism, covering cases of 64 individuals over the last ten years, is available in our October 2025 report, How could this verdict be ‘legal’?