Coronavirus: Chinese woman spent six months behind bars for Covid-19 social media post, court document shows

Zhang Wenfang was found guilty of ‘knowingly spreading false information and causing serious disruption to public order’

Her Weibo post collated stories about people’s suffering, including a 70-year-old man who took his own life because he was unable to continue his dialysis treatment during the lockdown in Wuhan

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A Chinese woman was jailed last year for posting information on social media about people who had been affected by Covid-19. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 5:00pm, 25 Feb 2021Updated: 6:02pm, 25 Feb 2021

A Chinese woman was sentenced to six months in prison last year for posting on social media what the authorities deemed to be misleading information about the Covid-19 outbreak.

Zhang Wenfang, from Hebei province, was detained by police on April 4 after publishing information on the Twitter-like platform Weibo about people who had died or suffered during the health crisis, according to a court document made public by the Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday.

She was held for four months for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a catch-all charge commonly used by China’s authorities to muzzle dissent – and later found guilty in court of “knowingly spreading false information and causing serious disruption to public order” for which she was sentenced to six months in prison. Allowing for time served she was released on October 6.

Zhang is one of at least a dozen people known to have been prosecuted, detained or fined for not following China’s official narrative on the coronavirus outbreak. Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was detained in May for reporting on the outbreak in Wuhan, was sentenced in December to four years in prison, while Cai Wei and Chen Mei, who archived censored news, were detained in April and are still awaiting trial.

Fang Shimin, a Chinese commentator based in the United States who goes by the name Fang Zhouzi, said Zhang Wenfang had been punished for speaking out, describing her case as a “literary inquisition”.

“The author of this post was sentenced to six months jail term for ‘picking quarrels and provoking troubles’, not because she started and spread rumours. But because most of the events she listed were facts and this hurt the officials that wanted high praises for containing the outbreak,” he said on Twitter on Wednesday.

Chen Mei was detained in April for archiving censored news stories about the coronavirus. Photo: Handout

Others criticised the ruling against Zhang on Weibo, pointing to the fact that the post that got her into trouble was made on April 4, which had been set as a day of remembrance for those lost to Covid-19.