HomeNewsChinese citizen journalist who exposed virus outbreak remains missing a year after...

Chinese citizen journalist who exposed virus outbreak remains missing a year after arrest

Fang Bin was first detained after posting footage from several Wuhan hospitals during early weeks of pandemic

A Chinese citizen journalist remains missing a year after his arrest by police in the central city of Wuhan.

Fang Bin was reporting from the front lines of the new coronavirus pandemic last year when he was arrested and detained by authorities.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) report said Fang was held incommunicado following his detention on March 5, 2020.




The citizen journalist was reportedly detained on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power,” but the charge has been revised to “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”

The charge is frequently used to target critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

The RFA report also said that Fang’s family is under pressure not to speak to anyone about the case.

The journalist’s prolonged “disappearance,” however, has sparked concerns for his health and safety.

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“It has been a year, and there is still no news of Fang Bin, which is worrying,” read a Twitter post by US-based dissident Cai Xia.

“We mustn’t forget about Fang Bin, or stop looking for him,” RFA quoted Xia. “Those who forge the path to freedom shouldn’t be left to the wolves,” she wrote.

The RFA report said many of Fang’s friends have been contacting the authorities in a bid to discover his whereabouts.

Fang was initially detained by police after posting footage from several Wuhan hospitals during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a Feb. 1 video clip recording the removal of five dead bodies from the Wuhan No. 5 Hospital in the course of five minutes.

The journalist criticized the Communist Party’s handling of the early stages of the pandemic, saying they had presided over not just a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster.

He also said that the cruelty wreaked by the coronavirus was nothing compared with the cruelty perpetrated by “tyranny.”

Government censors have been deleting posts about Fang on Chinese social media.

Earlier this year, China’s internet regulator announced a crackdown on citizen journalism around the country, banning anyone from posting news-related information online without a license.

Changes to media regulations three years ago required any organization publishing news or current affairs-related content to hold a license from the country’s media regulator.

The move came months after the authorities detained and jailed a number of people for reporting unofficially on the unfolding of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan in the early months of 2020.

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