Beijing considers UN request to release Chinese journalist “irresponsible”

China judged severely on Saturday the request of the United Nations (UN) to free a Chinese citizen journalist imprisoned for filming the beginning of the pandemic in coronavirus COVID-19 in Wuhan (center).

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The Chinese mission in Geneva expressed outrage at the “irresponsible” and “wrong” comments made on Friday by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) about journalist Zhang Zhan.

OHCHR spokesperson Marta Hurtado was alarmed on Friday by reports that the 38-year-old detained woman’s health status was deteriorating rapidly as her hunger strike appears to be seriously threatening her life.

“We call on the Chinese authorities to consider the immediate release of Zhang, if only for humanitarian reasons, and to make emergency medical aid available to him, respecting his will and dignity,” Hurtado said, quoted in a statement.

In February 2020, the ex-Shanghai lawyer traveled to Wuhan, central China, to report on the situation days after a quarantine was decreed in the metropolis of 11 million people. His images of patients housed in an overloaded hospital corridor highlighted the sanitary conditions in the city, hit by the coronavirus.

Zhang Zhan was arrested in May 2020 and sentenced in December to four years in prison for “provoking disputes and riots,” a charge commonly used to suppress dissent.

Now she is seriously weakened and “runs the risk of not living much longer,” her brother, Zhang Ju, warned a few weeks ago on Twitter. “It may not make it through winter,” he added.

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Deshawn