"At around 12 pm [04:00 GMT] on Monday, Shanghai Pudong New District Court issued a verdict for Zhang Zhan's case: she was sentenced to four years in prison over the crime of picking a quarrel and causing troubles," Zhang Keke wrote on Twitter, adding that the woman attended the hearing in a wheelchair.
— 张科科 Zhang Keke (@wuhanzhangkeke) December 28, 2020
Zhang has been held at a detention center in Shanghai's Pudong district since mid-May. In June, she started to refuse to take any food to protest her arrest.
According to various media reports, Zhang was among the first journalists to cover the early COVID-19 cases in Wuhan during the lockdown.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic started in China in December of last year. Initial reports indicated that the start of the COVID-19 epidemic in China was linked to a seafood market in the city of Wuhan in the Hubei Province.
