Citizen journalist jailed for four years

[Fambo Number Mive]

A Chinese citizen journalist who covered Wuhan's coronavirus outbreak has been jailed for four years.

Zhang Zhan was found guilty of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble", a frequent charge against activists.

The 37-year-old former lawyer was detained in May, and has been on hunger strike for several months. Her lawyers say she is in poor health.

Ms Zhang is one of several citizen journalists who have run into trouble for reporting on Wuhan...

In protest against her arrest, Ms Zhang has gone on a hunger strike and is said to be in very poor health...

Ms Zhang had previously been detained in 2019 for voicing support for activists in Hong Kong...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55463241

China are playing into the hands of the right in America with this. It makes them look like they are trying to hide something and I can't see how "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" should be a criminal offence, let alone result in four years in prison.

I'm sure some in the government in the UK would love to jail journalists they don't like for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" It's something I can imagine happening here in the next few years. We've already seen "#scummedia" trending on twitter from far right types who also use it in their bios. The UK media is mostly terrible already but I can see it becoming even more openly propaganda.

I feel very sorry for  Zhang Zhan and the other citizen journalists China has jailed.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

China are playing into the hands of the right in America with this.

Wait until you find out about the concentration camps!

[Retinend]

I read this in the New York Times article regarding this story:


_{"China's court system is notoriously opaque, with sensitive cases often heard behind closed doors. In 2019, the conviction rate for Chinese courts was 99.9 percent, according to government statistics. Ms. Zhang's lawyers recently petitioned for Ms. Zhang's trial to be live-streamed, to ensure transparency, but they have not heard back, Mr. Ren said."}[nb]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/world/asia/china-coronavirus-citizen-journalist.html[/nb]


What an amazing statistic.

More on this "99.9%" statistic from the Washington Post (which I googled because I was initially skeptical):


[This statistic] <sub>taps into a wider debate occurring inside China over the future of the nation's judicial branch, which has historically been marred by corruption and political infighting. "It's preferable to release someone wrongfully, than convict someone wrongfully," Shen Deyong, the executive vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, wrote last year in the People's Court Daily. "If a true criminal is released, heaven will not collapse, but if an unlucky citizen is wrongfully convicted, heaven will fall."

Indeed, the report comes amid widespread condemnation of the Chinese judicial system, which rights groups assert is nothing more than a pipeline to conviction. The U.S. State Department says the courts often hand down guilty verdicts without any deliberation, which wildly inflates their conviction rates. Police routinely browbeat defendants into offering confessions that may not be truthful.

According to the U.S. State Department:

"Courts often punished defendants who refused to acknowledge guilt with harsher sentences than those who confessed. The appeals process rarely reversed convictions. Appeals processes failed to provide sufficient avenues for review, and remedies for violations of defendants' rights were inadequate.
Such problems were on full display in 2011 when a Henan Province farmer named Zhao Zuohai was released from prison after serving 11 years because the woman he was convicted of murdering was actually very much alive and living at home."

Still, despite such anecdotes and mounting resistance, the conviction rate in the country has stayed the same. What's more, rights activists say, Chinese courts refused last year to hear one lawsuit involving citizen welfare, such as concerns over air pollution.</sub>[nb]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/11/china-scored-99-9-percent-conviction-rate-last-year/[/nb]

[bgmnts]

The charge sounds like a crime from the 12th century.

Fitting.

[Retinend]

For perspective, our own Crown Court conviction rate is at 80% (wikipedia sources cps.gov.uk)

edit: summarising wikipedia's various sources

Canada:  62%
Israel: 72%
Russia: 99%
New York: 72%
Flordia: 59%(! - so a low rate might not always be "good", bearing Epstein in mind)
Texas: 84%

[jobotic]

The crimes of the West mean this is okay or something.

[Retinend]

The crimes of the West mean this is okay or something.

I think Fambo Number Mive was only saying that the authoritarianism of the Chinese government reflects authoritarianism over here in the west, as regards harsh attitudes towards whistleblowers. I don't think the situation is as grave (or the slope as slippery) as he makes out, but it's a fair point.

[Zetetic]

For perspective, our own Crown Court conviction rate is at 80% (wikipedia sources cps.gov.uk)

Looks like 84% overall, including Magistrates:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/cps-data-summary-quarter-2-2019-2020

(Probably need to consider pre-charge disposals as well, to really understand this? And more widely, how many people are arrested, charged etc. in different places. Easier if you pick a particular type of crime and get to grips with how police etc. and judiciary deal with it? e.g. FPNs etc...)

[pigamus]

The bit about the bloke who did 11 years and the victim wasn't even dead, I'm ashamed to say I laughed

I mean that is *really* taking the piss

[Retinend]

Looks like 84% overall, including Magistrates:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/cps-data-summary-quarter-2-2019-2020

(Probably need to consider pre-charge disposals as well, to really understand this? And more widely, how many people are arrested, charged etc. in different places. Easier if you pick a particular type of crime and get to grips with how police etc. and judiciary deal with it? e.g. FPNs etc...)

What are pre-charge disposals and FPNs?

[jobotic]

I think Fambo Number Mive was only saying that the authoritarianism of the Chinese government reflects authoritarianism over here in the west, as regards harsh reprisals on whistleblowers. I don't think the situation is as grave (or the slope as slippery) as he makes out, but it's a fair point.

Yeah I know. I wasn't having a dig at Fambo.

Although I doubt China gives a shit about how this looks to the West.

[Retinend]

Yeah I know. I wasn't having a dig at Fambo.

Oops. Sorry I presumed.

[Chedney Honks]

Most amazing thing about all this stuff is that if you're a Party official who breaks the law, you get executed.

For corruption, they break into your house when you're asleep, zip tie you, put a bag over your head, beat your joints until they're unidentifiable, drive you to the local football stadium, prop you up against a stool and blow your brains and skull over a patch of dirt.

Seems mad but imagine what would be left of our government 😂😂😂

[Zetetic]

What are pre-charge disposals and FPNs?

Cautions, Fixed Penalty Notices that sort of thing - alternatives to prosecuting someone but where some organ of the state believes a crime has been committed. (Usually there's a way for the person to challenge or refuse and be prosecuted instead?)

[Retinend]

Those kinds of non-conviction punishments are always less severe than "convictions" per se, though, right? I have no idea.

I suppose the current 10k fines for covid-skeptics are comparable in severity to doing hard time, but - not knowing anything - I imagine that magnitude of non-conviction punishment is rare(?)

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I'm sure some in the government in the UK would love to jail journalists they don't like for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" It's something I can imagine happening here in the next few years.

No.

[bgmnts]

No.

You really think so?

[Bazooka]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55463241

China are playing into the hands of the right in America with this.

You what?

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Disclaimer that I am certainly not justifying or personally endorsing anyone being jailed, whether in China or the United States, but this is another story that the Western media is just entirely incapable of covering in an unbiased or truthful manner.

The repeated implication in all of these stories is that she is a "journalist" who was targeted on false charges for making the Chinese government's Covid response look bad (citations needed for any of that).

In reality, whatever her Covid-related grievances, you can easily find online that she was deliberately provoking and interfering with Covid checkpoints and other government measures

https://twitter.com/Mango_Press_/status/1343588803978670081

I won't comment further because I don't speak Mandarin and so can't verify what her stated criticisms were, but pro-CCP accounts online are also claiming that she is a borderline Covid conspiracy theorist, that she is an openly partisan anti-socialist critic of the government, and even that she may be affiliated with Falun Gong.

Whatever the exact truth, it seems unlikely to be as neat as the narrative you'll read in the Western press.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

I read this in the New York Times article regarding this story:


_{"China's court system is notoriously opaque, with sensitive cases often heard behind closed doors. In 2019, the conviction rate for Chinese courts was 99.9 percent, according to government statistics. Ms. Zhang's lawyers recently petitioned for Ms. Zhang's trial to be live-streamed, to ensure transparency, but they have not heard back, Mr. Ren said."}[nb]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/world/asia/china-coronavirus-citizen-journalist.html[/nb]


What an amazing statistic.

More on this "99.9%" statistic from the Washington Post (which I googled because I was initially skeptical):


[This statistic] <sub>taps into a wider debate occurring inside China over the future of the nation's judicial branch, which has historically been marred by corruption and political infighting. "It's preferable to release someone wrongfully, than convict someone wrongfully," Shen Deyong, the executive vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, wrote last year in the People's Court Daily. "If a true criminal is released, heaven will not collapse, but if an unlucky citizen is wrongfully convicted, heaven will fall."

Indeed, the report comes amid widespread condemnation of the Chinese judicial system, which rights groups assert is nothing more than a pipeline to conviction. The U.S. State Department says the courts often hand down guilty verdicts without any deliberation, which wildly inflates their conviction rates. Police routinely browbeat defendants into offering confessions that may not be truthful.

According to the U.S. State Department:

"Courts often punished defendants who refused to acknowledge guilt with harsher sentences than those who confessed. The appeals process rarely reversed convictions. Appeals processes failed to provide sufficient avenues for review, and remedies for violations of defendants' rights were inadequate.
Such problems were on full display in 2011 when a Henan Province farmer named Zhao Zuohai was released from prison after serving 11 years because the woman he was convicted of murdering was actually very much alive and living at home."

Still, despite such anecdotes and mounting resistance, the conviction rate in the country has stayed the same. What's more, rights activists say, Chinese courts refused last year to hear one lawsuit involving citizen welfare, such as concerns over air pollution.</sub>[nb]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/11/china-scored-99-9-percent-conviction-rate-last-year/[/nb]

In the United States, over 98% of criminal defendants are coerced into plea bargains (admissions of guilt) and their cases do not even go to trial. If you demand your right to go to trial, and lose, you are punished with many more years in prison. Most defendants cannot afford defense council, and the public defenders (that the United States only started providing in the 1960s) are comically overworked and therefore relatively ineffective. It's a complete sham. Certainly not something the United States at least can criticize the Chinese government over.

New York: 72%
Flordia: 59%(! - so a low rate might not always be "good", bearing Epstein in mind)
Texas: 84%

Those are presumably conviction rates from the less than 2% of cases that go to trial.

[Menu]

I won't comment further because I don't speak Mandarin and so can't verify what her stated criticisms were, but pro-CCP accounts online are also claiming that she is a borderline Covid conspiracy theorist, that she is an openly partisan anti-socialist critic of the government, and even that she may be affiliated with Falun Gong.

They would say that wouldn't they. Jesus.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

They would say that wouldn't they. Jesus.

You can see her YouTube channel for yourself in the link I provided. Maybe some of the users on here who speak/read Mandarin can confirm, but using rudimentary translation it seems clear that her grievances are that the Wuhan government is treating its citizens as "cattle" by having Covid checkpoints and possibly that the entire virus is a socialist conspiracy.

Doesn't seem like a very diligently chosen propaganda story for The Cause. Back to the drawing board maybe. (Of course in reality it doesn't matter, because as this thread proves most of the population will believe whatever they read in the BBC. Not sure why they even feel confined to real arrests, I guess they need there to be a kernel of truth at least.)

[Menu]

No, you're right. She deserves to be imprisoned for four years.

[Menu]

(Of course in reality it doesn't matter, because as this thread proves most of the population will believe whatever they read in the BBC.

And don't pull this 'sheep' rubbish. You're far more gullible than anyone else in this thread.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

No, you're right. She deserves to be imprisoned for four years.

I personally don't think she does, but physically interfering with Covid checkpoints seems like a much better justification than a marijuana conviction in the United States or (going out on a limb here) myriad things that I bet you support jailing people for. Certainly that the Western media enthusiastically does.

And don't pull this 'sheep' rubbish. You're far more gullible than anyone else in this thread.

I'm not at all gullible, I'm skeptical.

If for whatever reason you have a deep seated need to believe a certain narrative about China, that's not really my concern to fix for you. All I can do is point out the facts as we are capable of knowing them.

[Dog Botherer]

citizen journalists are 95% headbangers anyway. lock em all up, just in case.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I saw a good thing on twitter from a Chinese ex-pat saying how the Western media (in this case Bloomberg) will have Chinese journos work as correspondents or provide expert analysis then if they go to China and get in trouble will shrug and pretend they were just assistants making coffee and refilling the photocopier.

Sadly most of it has been deleted now:
https://twitter.com/xu_xiuzhong/status/1337544240163741698

[Goldentony]

[Urinal Cake]

So what's supposed to happen now? The World puts sanctions on them? We go to the UN?

How about trying to make sure our fucking allies act like responsible and open States? Like the US with another citizen journalist Assange or leakers like Snowden and Reality Winner. Or Saudi Arabian activist Loujain al-Hathloul who was jailed for six years for 'terrorism'.  These are allies who are supposed to be the 'good guys' and able to be reasoned with.

But no let's just talk about China because countries want to blame their Covid-19 response on the failure of China in the first place or some great Chinese conspiracy. Or worse because this is just another thing that keeps the Cold War going and States are scared of a China- led world.

[Buelligan]

Absolutely.  Make our world a better freer place so it's more difficult for authoritarian regimes to gain footholds.  So the people who live in those places aspire to something more free and know it can be achieved.  Making our society the same, with different branding, won't work any more.