Status of Chinese citizen journalist who reported on COVID unknown on day of expected prison release

By HUIZHONG WU
Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — The whereabouts of a Chinese citizen journalist who served four years in prison for reporting on the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan and was expected to be released Monday are unknown, raising concern from activists. Zhang Zhan, who had been sentenced to four years in prison on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vaguely defined charge often used in political cases, finished her sentence at Shanghai’s Women Prison on Monday. Zhang was among a handful of citizen journalists who traveled to the central Chinese city of Wuhan after the government put it under total lockdown in February 2020, in the early days of the pandemic.