BREAKING: Chinese Journalist Who Documented Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak Jailed

An independent Chinese journalist who reported from Wuhan at the height of the initial coronavirus outbreak has been jailed for four years by a Shanghai court, her lawyer said Monday.

A former lawyer, Zhang Zhan traveled to the central Chinese city in February to report on the pandemic and subsequent attempts to contain it, just as the authorities began reining in state-run and private Chinese media.

According to Yahoo,she disappeared from Wuhan in May and was later revealed to have been detained by police in Shanghai, a city more than 640 kilometers (400 miles) away, and charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” an offense commonly used to target journalists and human rights activists.

Zhang is the first citizen journalist known to have been sentenced for her role in reporting on the coronavirus pandemic.

Zhang is one of a number of independent reporters who have been detained or disappeared in China since the beginning of the pandemic, as the authorities clamped down on coverage of the virus and propaganda outlets went into overdrive portraying Beijing’s response as effective and timely.

In February, Chen Qiushi, who had live-streamed videos from Wuhan during the city’s lockdown and posted reports on social media, disappeared. In September, he was reported to be under “state supervision.” Two other independent journalists — Li Zehua and Fang Bin — were also detained following their coverage of the Wuhan outbreak.

“Under the guise of fighting the novel coronavirus, authorities in China have escalated suppression online by blocking independent reporting, information sharing, and critical comments on government responses,” Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong-based group, said in a report earlier this year.

China is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and tightly controls the press at home while blocking most foreign media outlets via the Great Firewall, its vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus.