China due to free vlogger who filmed Wuhan lockdown

BANGKOK — 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, has finished serving her sentence at Shanghai's Women Prison.

Ren Quanniu, a former lawyer who previously represented Zhang, said he could not reach her father and expressed concern that Zhang would be released only to be put under another form of control by police.

Monday was the last day of her four-year sentence, confirmed Ren and Jane Wang, another overseas activist who launched the Free Zhang Zhan campaign in the U.K.

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. She walked around the city to document public life as fears grew about the then-mysterious coronavirus.

Other citizen journalists have also spent time in jail for documenting the early days of the pandemic, including Fang Bin, who published videos of overcrowded hospitals and bodies during the outbreak.