China Jails Journalist over Wuhan Covid-19 Spreading Report

A Chinese court issued a four-year jail term on Monday to journalist Zhang Zhan for her reporting from Wuhan during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. China sentenced  Zhan in prison after a brief hearing in Shanghai, her lawyer told reporters.

Zhan widely shared video livestreams and essays detailed overcrowded crematoriums and hospitals as Chinese authorities struggled to contain the virus. Also, she criticized Chinese government's initial handling of the outbreak in Wuhan, writing that authorities "didn't give people enough information, then simply locked down the city."

Meanwhile, China aims to crack down and put dissidents on trial during the holiday period surrounding Christmas. This is what they did in the cases of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and veteran dissident Chen Xi, according to Journalism Post.

On other hand, the Chinese government detained seven whistleblowers and journalists who reported on the coronavirus in China during the early months of the viral spread, with the most high-profile case being that of Li Wenliang, the Chinese ophthalmologist at a hospital in Wuhan who was reprimanded for spreading rumors about the coronavirus before it was officially recognized.

Noteworthy, the total number of global Covid-19 cases surpassed the 80 million, according to a latest tally from Johns Hopkins University. Also, coronavirus cases in the U.S. has surpassed 19 million.

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