China Slams UN For "Irresponsible" Comments On Jailed Citizen Journalist

 Geneva: China on Saturday harshly criticised the United Nations over remarks stressful the discharge of a citizen journalist jailed for her insurance of the country's COVID-19 reaction.

The Chinese undertaking in Geneva voiced outrage on the "irresponsible" and "erroneous" remarks made via way of means of the United Nations human rights workplace OHCHR on Friday withinside the case of Zhang Zhan.

OHCHR spokeswoman Marta Hurtado on Friday voiced alarm at reviews that the 38-year-old's fitness became deteriorating hastily and that her lifestyles became at severe chance from the starvation strike in detention.

"We name at the Chinese government to don't forget Zhang's on the spot and unconditional release, on the very least, on humanitarian grounds, and to make pressing lifestyles-saving hospital treatment available, respecting each her will and her dignity," Hurtado stated in a statement.

Zhang, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to document at the chaos on the pandemic's epicentre, thinking the government' coping with of the outbreak in her cellphone videos.

She became detained in May 2020 and sentenced in December to 4 years in prison for "choosing quarrels and scary trouble" -- a rate robotically used to suppress dissent.

She has carried out numerous starvation moves to protest towards her conviction, sentencing and imprisonment, and her own circle of relatives these days warned that she had end up seriously underweight and "won't stay for a lot longer".

'Hearsay'

Hurtado stated the UN rights workplace had time and again raised worries over Zhang's case with the Chinese government seeing that her arrest closing year.

It had sought "rationalization at the crook complaints taken towards her due to what seem to had been her valid journalistic activities", she stated.

China has revelled in its achievement in maintaining home Covid infections right all the way down to a trickle of sporadic outbreaks.

But there was little staying power with folks who threaten the legit model via way of means of elevating questions on the government's early coping with of the Wuhan outbreak.

Zhang is amongst a set of 4 citizen journalists -- in conjunction with Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua -- detained after reporting from Wuhan.

In Saturday's statement, Chinese undertaking spokesman Liu Yuyin insisted that "China is a rustic beneathneath the guideline of thumb of law, and every person is identical earlier than the law."

He decried that the UN rights workplace in Zhang's case had turned "a blind eye to statistics supplied via way of means of China thru regular channels," and instead, "primarily based totally on hearsay, selected to intrude in China's judicial sovereignty."

He additionally highlighted China's reaction to COVID-19, insisting that what the country "has done in preventing the pandemic is there for every person to see."

It "isn't always some thing that anybody can distort or write off, nonetheless much less some thing that the OHCHR can throw its weight around."