Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, previously imprisoned for four years for her independent reporting on the Covid 19 outbreak, is missing again and was reportedly recently taken to a detention facility in Shanghai for unclear reasons. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is alarmed by this development, and urges immediate mobilisation of the international diplomatic community to ensure her safety. She must be released and granted full freedom without delay.

On 1 September, independent Chinese news website Weiquanwang revealed that journalist and former lawyer Zhang Zhan is being held in Pudong Detention Center in Shanghai. The journalist was apprehended by police while she was travelling to her hometown in the Shaanxi province in northwest China on 28 August. Since that time she has not answered her phone or updated her social media accounts where she had recently resumed posting.

No official reason has been given for her detention, but in the weeks prior to this incident, Zhang Zhan had been sharing news about the harassment of other activists in China on social media. She had also travelled to the northwestern province of Gansu to persuade the mother of a recently arrested activist to sign a power of attorney.

Zhang Zhan was initially arrested in May 2020, while covering the early stages of the Covid 19 outbreak in Wuhan, in central-eastern China. She had posted more than 100 videos on social media before her arrest on 14 May 2020, and seven months later was sentenced to four years in prison by a Shanghai court on the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

Throughout her imprisonment, RSF campaigned for her release and warned about the ill treatment she was subjected to in prison. During her early months of detention, Zhang Zhan nearly died after going on a total hunger strike to protest her situation. Prison officials forcibly fed her through a nasal tube and sometimes left her handcuffed for days.

China, the world’s biggest prison for journalists and press freedom defenders with at least 120 currently behind bars, is ranked 172nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index.