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Zhang Zhan Judgment Accuses Her of “Picking Quarrels and Provoking Trouble”
HRIC has translated the 2025 judgment and sentencing of Zhang Zhan, lawyer-journalist imprisoned for covering the COVID-19 pandemic
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In September 2025, journalist Zhang Zhan was unjustly sentenced to another four years in prison for her work defending human rights. Her judgment and sentencing document has now been made publicly available for the first time. Human Rights in China has translated the full text into English, below.
Zhang Zhan is an independent journalist, former lawyer, and steadfast defender of human rights. After expressing her support for Hong Kong in 2019, she was detained and sentenced to four years in prison in 2020 after she bravely traveled to Wuhan to report on the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. While in prison, she was tortured and went on hunger strike to protest her arbitrary detention. When she was hospitalized in 2023, she had lost half of her original body weight.
Zhang Zhan was released in May 2024. In August 2024, she was re-detained after she traveled to Gansu to show solidarity with other human rights defenders. Over a year later, in September 2024, she was sentenced to four more years in prison on vague charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
Human Rights in China strongly condemns the arbitrary imprisonment of journalists and human rights defenders for exercising their right to expression. Zhang Zhan must be released immediately and without reservation.
As of November 2025, Zhang Zhan has been transferred to Shanghai Women’s Prison to serve her second four-year sentence, and has been denied access to her family and legal representation.
Read the full indictment below in English and Chinese.
