Amnesty International Calls for Release of Citizen Journalist Zhang Zhan outside Chinese Embassy

On Tuesday 15 February 2022, Amnesty International Luxembourg called for the release of jailed Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan in a symbolic action outside the Chinese Embassy in Luxembourg.

The Luxembourg branch of the international non-profit organisation presented the Chinese Embassy with 1,300 letters and signatures collected in the Grand Duchy for a petition calling for the release of Zhang Zhan, a Chinese citizen journalist who covered the first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak and related lockdown in Wuhan in February 2020. She was detained in May before being sentenced in December 2020 to four years in prison on the charges of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".

Members of Amnesty International Luxembourg sent the letters and signatures in the form of paper airplanes over the gates of the embassy.

"We have not received a response from the Chinese Embassy to our request for the formal submission of the petition. To make sure that Luxembourg's 1,300 votes in support of Zhang Zhan are still heard, we have opted for this alternative handover with paper airplanes", explained Olivier Pirot, Director of Amnesty International Luxembourg. "We are determined to spread our message for the immediate and unconditional release of Zhang Zhan. She is in prison solely for peacefully exercising her right to freedom of expression. We want to show Zhang and her family that she is not alone and that there are many people in Luxembourg who are mobilising for her release".

Zhang Zhan was one of the people featured in Amnesty International's "Write for Rights" campaign around Human Rights Day in December 2021. The former lawyer was one of the few citizen journalists to speak publicly about the development of the COVID-19 crisis in February 2020 in Wuhan. According to Amnesty International Luxembourg, the Chinese government has tried to control news about the pandemic from the start, meaning that citizen journalists like Zhang Zhan have been the main, if not the only, source of free and direct information on this issue in the country.

The activist took to social media to report that the government had arrested independent journalists and harassed families of COVID-19 patients. Shortly after publishing this information, she was reported missing, then officially detained and sentenced to four years in prison. In detention, she reportedly suffered torture and other ill treatment. 

Amnesty International concluded: "As the world watches the Olympics in China, China must end censorship of domestic and foreign media, including citizen journalists, and allow everyone full access to all relevant and available information".