Transferred and isolated: More prison restrictions or Zhang Zhan

The blogger who reported on the Wuhan pandemic - sentenced two months ago to another four years in prison - has been taken to a new detention centre for ‘education’ sessions. Meanwhile, the former abbot of Shaolin Temple, who fell from grace in July for being too ‘independent’, has now been sent to prison on charges of corruption.

Milan (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Two months after her new sentence of four more years in prison, Zhang Zhan - the blogger and Christian human rights activist who first reported on the pandemic in Wuhan - has been moved without warning to a new detention facility with no possibility of contact with her family.

This was discovered by her lawyer, who went to visit her at the Pudong Detention Centre in Shanghai and was told that it was impossible because she had been transferred. Only after Reporters Without Borders – which awarded her the Press Freedom Award in 2021 and has been following her case for some time – made the news public did the local authorities announce that she is now in the Women's Prison, also in Shanghai but in the Songjiang district.

According to what Zhang Zhan's mother was told, she was sent to this new location for a month of “education” and visits are not allowed.

After already serving four years in prison, on 19 September, in a closed-door trial in a Shanghai court , Zhang Zhan was again convicted on charges of disturbing social order and provoking quarrels for travelling to Gansu province to meet human rights activist Zhang Pancheng, who was arrested for participating in protests in defence of workers who had been treated unfairly.

‘We are deeply concerned about her situation,’ said Antoine Bernal of Reporters Without Borders. ‘The international community must not remain silent. It must call for an end to this shameful persecution of this heroine of journalism.’

Meanwhile, in China, another case that has been the subject of much discussion in recent months has taken a new judicial turn: on Sunday 16 November, Shi Yongxin, the former Buddhist abbot of the Shaolin Temple, who was removed from his post in July for “extremely” inappropriate behaviour, was finally arrested.

The authorities in the central province of Henan, where the religious site famous throughout the world as the cradle of kung fu is located, approved Shi's arrest on charges of ‘embezzlement, misuse of funds and acceptance of bribes as a non-state employee,’ the Xinxiang Procuratorate said in a statement.

At the head of a veritable empire, as we explained in this article, monk Shi, abbot since 1999, had already escaped unscathed from other accusations of the same nature. Many have attributed the real reason for his fall from grace (and now his arrest) to the excessive “independence” he showed towards the Party, even in the movement's international relations, which had also taken him to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis last January.