Top UN court tells Moscow to halt Ukraine invasion

France24 – AFP, 16 March 2022 

Kyiv dragged Moscow to the UN's top court days after Russia's attack
on February 24 Phil nijhuis ANP/AFP

The Hague (AFP) – The UN's top court on Wednesday ordered Russia to suspend its invasion of Ukraine, saying it was "profoundly concerned" by Moscow's use of force. 

"The Russian Federation shall immediately suspend military operations that it commenced on 24 February on the territory of Ukraine," pending the final decision in the case, presiding judge Joan Donoghue told the International Court of Justice. 

"The court is profoundly concerned about the use of force by the Russian Federation which raises very serious issues in international law," Donoghue told a hearing in The Hague. 

Kyiv dragged Moscow to the UN's top court days after Russia's attack on February 24. 

Ukraine accuses Russia of illegally trying to justify its war by falsely alleging genocide in Ukraine's Donetsk and Lugansk regions. 

Kyiv then asked the court to take provisional measures ordering Russia to "immediately suspend the military operations." 

"Russia must be stopped, and the court has a role to play in stopping that," Ukraine's representative Anton Korynevych told the ICJ last week. 

The hearing on Wednesday comes as the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine topped three million and Russian forces step up strikes on residential buildings in Kyiv.

 At the same time, Kyiv said it wanted its security to be guaranteed by international forces, as it rejected proposals pushed by Russia for it to adopt a neutral status comparable to Austria or Sweden. 

'No genocide evidence'

Russia snubbed hearings on March 7 and 8, arguing in a written filing that the ICJ "did not have jurisdiction" because Kyiv's request fell outside of the scope of the 1948 Genocide Convention on which it based its case. 

Moscow also justified its use of force in Ukraine, saying "it was acting in self-defence." 

The ICJ was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between UN member states, based mainly on treaties and conventions. 

Although its rulings are binding, it has no real means to enforce them. 

A full hearing into the content of the case could still take years, they added. 

Judges on Wednesday also ordered Moscow to ensure that military or irregular armed units "take no further steps" in furthering its offensive. 

But "whether Russia will oblige is an entirely different question", said Marieke De Hoon, assistant international criminal and public law professor at the University of Amsterdam. 

The case is also separate from a Ukraine war crimes investigation launched by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate tribunal also based in The Hague.

Russia says quitting Council of Europe

France24 – AFP, 15 March 2022 

The body's parliamentary assembly was Tueaday also expected to pass a resolution
urging the committee of ministers -- the COE's main decision making body -- to start
a procedure to expel Russia. FREDERICK FLORIN AFP

Strasbourg (France) (AFP) – Russia said Tuesday it would pull out of the Council of Europe after pressure mounted for Moscow to be expelled from the pan-European rights body over its invasion of Ukraine. 

Essentially jumping before it was pushed from the Strasbourg-based body, the Russian foreign ministry said it had given notification of its departure to the Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric. 

The decision draws the curtain on Russia's quarter century membership of the Council of Europe (COE) and also opens the way for Moscow to reimpose the death penalty if the authorities decide. 

The so-called "Ruxit" from the Council of Europe means that Russia will no longer be a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and its citizens will no longer be able to file applications to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). 

It is only the second time in the history of the Council of Europe that a member state has announced it has quit the body after Greece walked out temporarily in the late 1960s. 

Russia was suspended from all its rights of representation a day after tens of thousands of troops entered Ukraine on February 24. 

The body's parliamentary assembly was Tuesday also expected to pass a resolution urging the committee of ministers -- the COE's main decision making body -- to start a procedure to expel Russia. 

Buric "received formal notification from the Russian Federation of its withdrawal from the Council of Europe", the body's spokesman Daniel Holtgen confirmed. 

Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal had on Monday demanded that Russia be immediately expelled, saying it had no right to remain a member after sending troops to the pro-Western country. 

Eyes on death penalty

The Russian foreign ministry posted a statement on "launching the procedure to exit the Council of Europe" on its Telegram account, adding it had "no regret" about leaving. 

Russia joined the Council of Europe in 1996. 

The ministry said its exit would "not affect the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens" and that "the implementation of already adopted resolutions of the European Court of Human Rights will continue, if they do not contradict Russia's Constitution". 

It claimed that EU and NATO member states within the Council of Europe had turned the organisation into an "instrument for anti-Russian policies". 

Russia's exit will mark a major change for the ECHR which acts as a court of final instance when all domestic avenues are exhausted. 

Cases brought by Russian citizens have piled up at the ECHR accounting for 24 percent of the current cases, such as those concerning dissident prisoner Alexei Navalny. 

No member state has ever been expelled from the Council of Europe, which was created in 1949 and has 47 member states including Russia. 

Moscow's move has one precedent -- when it was under military rule Greece walked out of the body in 1969 to avoid being expelled. Athens then rejoined in 1974 after the fall of the junta. 

Not using the death penalty is a precondition of COE membership, and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy national security council chief, had evoked bringing back capital punishment if Russia left the body. 

Medvedev had described Russia's suspension as "a good opportunity to restore a number of important measures to prevent especially serious crimes -- such as the death penalty... which is actively used in the US and China". 

Russia has observed a moratorium on the death penalty since 1996 though it has never formally abolished the practice. 

Belarus, the only European country to still use the death penalty and Moscow's ally, is not a member of the organisation. 

A Russian exit will also deprive the COE of nearly seven percent of its annual budget, around 500 million euros ($545 million). 

But Buric told AFP this month she had received "reassuring" signals from several member states, including France and Germany, ready to guarantee the financial sustainability of the organisation.

Danish PM says sorry to Inuits forcibly moved to Denmark

Yahoo – AFP, March 9, 2022 

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said sorry to the Inuits at an
emotional ceremony in Copenhagen (AFP/Liselotte Sabroe) (Liselotte Sabroe)

Denmark's prime minister apologised in person Wednesday to six Greenlandic Inuits removed from their families and taken to Copenhagen more than 70 years ago as part of an experiment to create a Danish-speaking elite. 

"What you were subjected to was terrible. It was inhumane. It was unfair. And it was heartless", Mette Frederiksen told the six at an emotional ceremony in the capital. 

"We can take responsibility and do the only thing that is fair, in my eyes: to say sorry to you for what happened," she said. 

In the summer of 1951, 22 Inuit children between the ages of five and eight were sent to Denmark, which was Greenland's colonial power at the time but has since gained autonomy. 

The parents had been promised their children would have a better life, learn Danish and return to Greenland one day as the future elite, in a deal between authorities in Copenhagen and Nuuk, the Greenland capital. 

In Denmark, the children were not allowed to have any contact with their own families. After two years, 16 of the group were sent home to Greenland, but placed in an orphanage. 

The others were adopted by Danish families. Several of the children never saw their real families again. 

An inquiry into their fate concluded more than half were very negatively affected by the experiment. 

Only six of the 22 are alive today. 

"It was a big surprise for me when I realised that there were only six of them left, because they were not that old," their lawyer Mads Pramming told AFP. 

"They told me that the others had died of sorrow," he added. 

The PM's apology is "a big success for them", he said, two weeks after they each received financial compensation of 250,000 kroner (33,600 euros, $37,200). 

"First they got an apology in writing, and then the compensation for the violation of their human rights, and now they will have a face-to-face," with the prime minister, Pramming said. 

"Nothing had happened until now and it's you, Mette, who took the initiative to set up a commission two years ago", one of the six, Eva Illum, said. 

In December 2020, the prime minister offered the six an official apology.

'Massive' child sex abuse in French Catholic Church, inquiry finds

Yahoo - AFP, Karine PERRET and Joseph SCHMID, October 5, 2021 

The French Catholic Church expressed "shame and horror" over the abuse
and asked for "forgiveness" (AFP/JEFF PACHOUD)

French Catholic clergy sexually abused around 216,000 minors spanning seven decades since 1950, a "massive phenomenon" that was covered up by a "veil of silence," an independent commission said Tuesday. 

The commission's two-and-a-half-year inquiry and 2,500-page report prompted outrage as the Catholic Church in France and around the world faces a growing number of abuse claims and prosecutions. 

Pope Francis expressed "great pain" over the "appalling" findings, a Vatican spokesman said, adding: "His thoughts turn first to the victims, with great sorrow for their wounds and gratitude for their courage in speaking out." 

The report found that the "vast majority" of victims were pre-adolescent boys from a variety of social backgrounds. Their abusers were mainly priests, bishops, deacons and monks. 

When claims against lay members of the Church, such as teachers at Catholic schools are included, the number of child abuse victims climbs to 330,000 since 1950, the report found. 

"These figures are more than worrying, they are damning and in no way can remain without a response," commission chief Jean-Marc Sauve told a press conference that unveiled the nearly 2,500-page report. 

"Until the early 2000s, the Catholic Church showed a profound and even cruel indifference towards the victims." 

Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF), which co-requested the report, expressed his "shame and horror" at the findings. 

"My wish today is to ask forgiveness from each of you," he told the news conference. 

Jean-Marc Sauvre was one of France's highest-ranking civil servants
(AFP/THOMAS COEX)

'Deviant system' 

Sauve denounced the "systemic character" of efforts to shield clergy from sex abuse claims and urged the Church to pay reparations even though most cases are well beyond the statute of limitations for prosecution. 

His commission detailed 45 recommendations to avoid further abuse, not least a requirement that priests inform prosecutors of any child abuse during the sacrament of confession -- under Catholic doctrine priests are usually bound to absolute secrecy. 

"We expect clear and concrete responses by the Church," a collective of six victims' associations said. 

The report, at nearly 2,500 pages, found that the "vast majority" of victims were pre-adolescent boys from a variety of social backgrounds. 

"The Catholic Church is, after the circle of family and friends, the environment that has the highest prevalence of sexual violence," the report said. 

Sauve had already told AFP on Sunday that a "minimum estimate" of 2,900 to 3,200 clergy members had sexually abused children in the French Church since 1950. 

Yet only a handful of cases prompted disciplinary action under canonical law, let alone criminal prosecution. 

The commission began its work after Pope Francis vowed to address abuse by priests in May 2019, ordering people aware of cases to report them to Church officials. 

In France in particular, the case of Philippe Barbarin, an archbishop initially convicted of not telling police of a priest's abuse of boy scouts, drew outrage after he was acquitted in January 2020. 

Francois Devaux, head of a victims' association, condemned a "deviant system" and called for a new "Vatican III" council to chart a way forward. 

Sexual abuse in the French Catholic Chucrh (AFP/Bertille LAGORCE)

'Dumbfounded' 

"You have finally given an institutional recognition to victims of all the Church's responsibilities, something that bishops and the pope have not yet been prepared to do," Devaux said at the news conference. 

"I'm dumbfounded," said Yolande Ormancey, a 63-year-old parishioner praying Tuesday at the Fourviere basilica in Lyon, southeast France. 

"I expect these criminals to be punished, and support offered to victims whose lives have been ruined," she said. 

The victim estimates were largely based on a representative study carried out by France's INSERM health and medical research institute. 

Sauve and his team of 21 specialists, all unaffiliated with the Church, also interviewed hundreds of people who came forward to tell their stories. 

"If the veil of silence covering the acts committed has finally been torn away... we owe it to the courage of these victims," he wrote. 

The commission also had access to police files and Church archives, citing only two cases of refusals by Church institutions to turn over requested documents. 

Overall, it found that 2.5 percent of French clergy since 1950 had sexually abused minors, a ratio below the 4.4 to seven percent uncovered by similar inquiries in other countries. 

While that would imply an unusually high number of victims per assailant, "a sexual predator can in fact have a high number of victims, especially those who attack boys," the report found.

Pope rejects German bishop's offer to quit over abuse

Yahoo – AFP, Alvise ARMELLINI with Hui Min NEO in Berlin, June 10, 2021

Marx condemned the way the Catholic Church had handled child sex abuse scandals

Pope Francis on Thursday rejected an offer by top German bishop Reinhard Marx to resign over the huge child sex abuse scandal rocking the Church, urging the cardinal known for his reforms to stay and help shape change in the institution. 

"Continue as you propose (in your pastoral work) but as Archbishop of Munich and Freising," the pope wrote to Marx, a cardinal and member of his inner circle, referring to the position he was offering to vacate. 

Marx voiced surprise at the swift reply from the pope and said he accepted the "great challenge" put to him. 

"This means that for me and our common work at the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, we'll have to consider which new paths we can take, also in view of the history of the multitudes of failure," Marx said in a statement. 

He added that he will in the next weeks "reflect on how we can contribute even more to the renewal of the Church". 

Marx, who himself was never accused of abuse or of a cover-up, announced earlier this month that he had offered the pope his resignation over the church's "institutional and systemic failure" in handling child sex abuse scandals. 

The stunning decision came after the church in Germany, like in many places elsewhere, was shaken by allegations of wide-ranging abuse by clergymen against minors. 

In his letter, the pope agreed with Marx in condemning the "catastrophe" of clerical sexual abuse scandals and the way the Catholic Church dealt with them "until recently". 

"The entire Church is in crisis because of the abuse issue" and "the Church cannot proceed without tackling this crisis", the pope wrote, adding: "The ostrich policy (of burying one's head in the sand) leads nowhere." 

The pope said the Catholic Church could not "live with the weight of having 'skeletons in the closet', as the saying goes," and said it needed to confess to its sins and "ask for the grace of shame". 

Francis thanked the archbishop for his "Christian courage which does not fear the cross, which does not fear to be overwhelmed by the tremendous reality of sin". 

Pope Francis said the Church was in crisis because of the "abuse issue"

Roland Juchem, a specialist who writes for Catholic German press agency KNA, said that with his letter "the pope hopes... to send a message to the whole Church on how to deal with sexual abuse, taking the example of Cardinal Marx." 

'Shared responsibility' 

Known as a prominent advocate for change, Marx has clashed with both the Vatican and more conservative German clerics, but has also been closely involved in Francis' reforming efforts. 

He is part of a seven-strong Council of Cardinals advising the pope on a general overhaul of the Vatican's administration, and leads the Council of the Economy, which oversees money matters. 

Marx headed the German Bishops' Conference from 2012 to 2020 -- a period when it commissioned a study which revealed widespread sexual abuse by German clergy. 

It found that 1,670 clergymen had committed some type of sexual attack against 3,677 minors, mostly boys, between 1946 and 2014, while saying this was almost certainly an underestimate. 

Another report published in March exposed the scope of abuse by priests in Germany's top diocese in Cologne. 

Cologne bishop Rainer Maria Woelki, an arch-conservative, faced months of public criticism after he refused last year to allow the publication of an initial study. 

He later commissioned the second report, which revealed that 314 minors, mostly boys under the age of 14, were sexually abused between 1975 and 2018 in the western city. 

Last month, the pope sent two envoys to Cologne to investigate "possible mistakes" made by Cardinal Woelki. 

In his resignation letter, dated May 21 and published on June 4, Marx said: "It is important to me to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse by Church officials over the past decades." 

Slamming colleagues who "refuse to believe there is a shared responsibility in this respect", the 67-year-old said the Catholic Church was at "a dead end". 

Marx added that he hoped his resignation would offer a new beginning for the Church.

Related Article:

Canada mourns 215 children after remains found at indigenous school

US targets Belarus with sanctions amid Western outcry over plane

Yahoo – AFP, Anita Chang BEATTIE with Anna SMOLCHENKO, May 28, 2021 

Belarus authorities claimed to have received a bomb threat against the
Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius

The United States on Friday announced punitive measures against Belarus targeting the regime of strongman President Alexander Lukashenko, who met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin amid a global outcry over the forced diversion of a European plane. 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called for "a credible international investigation into the events of May 23," which she called "a direct affront to international norms." 

Belarus scrambled a military jet to divert a Ryanair plane and arrested 26-year-old opposition journalist and activist Roman Protasevich who was onboard, triggering a global outcry. 

The White House announced it was working with the European Union on a list of targeted sanctions against key members of Lukashenko's regime. 

Meanwhile, economic sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises, reimposed by Washington in April following a crackdown on pro-democracy protests, will come into effect on June 3. 

Further US moves on Belarus could target "those that support corruption, the abuse of human rights, and attacks on democracy," Psaki said. 

The White House also issued a "Do Not Travel" warning for Belarus to US citizens, and warned American passenger planes to "exercise extreme caution" if considering flying over Belarusian airspace. 

The European Union has also urged EU-based carriers to avoid Belarusian airspace. 

However President Vladimir Putin celebrated Russia's close ties with Belarus on Friday as he hosted Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. 

With observers closely watching the talks to see how far the Kremlin would go to support the regime, the Russian leader said he was "very glad" to see Lukashenko and agreed with him the Western reaction was an "outburst of emotion". 

During talks in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin warmly greeted Lukashenko

'Rock the boat' 

Lukashenko complained the West was seeking to stir unrest in Belarus. 

"An attempt is underway to rock the boat to reach the level of last August," he said, referring to anti-regime protests following a disputed election. 

"It's clear what these Western friends want from us." 

The Belarus strongman, who arrived with a briefcase, said he wanted to show Putin "some documents" related to the Ryanair incident and thanked him for his support in the latest standoff with the West. 

The talks lasted for more than five hours but their results were not announced. 

Over the past years Lukashenko has had a volatile relationship with Moscow, playing it off against the West and ruling out outright unification with Russia. 

But after the Ryanair plane incident his options appear to be limited. 

Putin and the Belarus leader have met regularly since August, when historic protests broke out against Lukashenko's nearly three-decade rule. 

The 66-year-old waged a ruthless crackdown on his opponents and has leaned increasingly on the Russian president amid condemnation from the West. 

Several people died during the unrest in Belarus, thousands were detained, and hundreds reported torture in prison. 

Sunday's plane diversion was a dramatic escalation, with EU leaders accusing Minsk of essentially hijacking a European flight to arrest Protasevich. 

Alexander Lukashenko

Technical reasons 

The overflight ban has led to several cancellations of air journeys between Russia and Europe, after Russian authorities rejected plans that would have skipped Belarusian airspace. 

Russia insists the cancellations are purely "technical," but they have raised concerns that Moscow could be systematically refusing to let European airlines land if they avoid Belarus. 

The Kremlin criticized the flight ban as politically motivated and dangerous, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova calling it "completely irresponsible". 

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was monitoring whether this was a broader policy from Russia, but Moscow insisted the disruptions were in no way political. 

Belarus authorities claimed to have received a bomb threat against the Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius carrying the dissident. 

Minsk said it demanded the flight land in the Belarus capital based on the message it said was sent from a ProtonMail address by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. 

Protasevich, who helped organize the demonstrations against Lukashenko's rule last year, was arrested along with Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, 23, after the plane landed in the city.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called for 'a credible international
investigation' which she called 'a direct affront to internationals norms'

'Braver' 

Borrell has said proposals are "on the table" to target key sectors of the Belarusian economy including its oil products and potash sectors. 

Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Friday urged the EU to be "braver" and impose more sanctions against the Minsk regime. 

After meeting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague, Tikhanovskaya said measures being discussed by EU countries did not go far enough. 

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Friday warned Lukashenko that "it is time to change course." 

"No amount of repression, brutality or coercion will bring any legitimacy to your authoritarian regime," she said. 

The European Commission president also wrote to the opposition offering a three-billion-euro package to support "a democratic Belarus" if Lukashenko steps down.

Black ballet dancer wins payout in Berlin racism row

Yahoo – AFP, April 22, 2021

Chloe Lopes Gomes, the first black dancer to be hired by the Berlin State
Ballet, began legal action after her contract was not renewed last summer

A black ballet dancer has been awarded 16,000 euros ($19,000) in compensation and the renewal of her contract at the Berlin State Ballet in an out-of-court settlement over allegations of racism. 

Chloe Lopes Gomes, the first black dancer to be hired by the company in 2018, began legal action after her fixed-term contract was not renewed last summer, accusing her bosses of forcing her to wear white make-up, among other things. 

"Lopes Gomes' contract will be renewed for one more season and will be terminated at the end of the 2021/22 season," the company said on Thursday after a settlement was reached in a Berlin court. 

The 29-year-old French dancer said in a video posted on Instagram that she would receive 16,000 euros in compensation. 

"It's a small victory but already a big step for the ballet world and I think this will make a huge change," she said. 

Lopes Gomes, who has also performed with the Opera de Nice in France and Switzerland's Ballet Bejart, told AFP in January she had been subjected to continual "harassment" by the company's ballet mistress. 

In one production, when the ballet mistress was handing around white veils for the dancers to wear, Lopes Gomes said she was was told, "I can't give you one. The veil is white and you're black." 

On another occasion she was asked to wear white make-up, which felt like "denying my identity," she said. 

Christiane Theobald, acting director of the Berlin State Ballet, said the dispute with Lopes Gomes had been "a wake-up call" and the company had a "zero-tolerance policy with regard to racism and any form of discrimination". 

The company has embarked on a "structural transformation", she said, setting up an office where employees can anonymously report experiences of racism or discrimination.

9,000 died in Irish homes for 'illegitimate' infants: report

Yahoo – AFP, Joe STENSON, January 12, 2021 

A shrine inTuam commemorates up to 800 children who were allegedly
buried at the site of a former home for unmarried mothers run by nuns

Some 9,000 children died in Ireland's "mother and baby homes", where unmarried mothers were routinely separated from their infant offspring, according to an official report published Tuesday. 

Ireland's Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (CIMBH) found "disquieting" levels of infant mortality at the institutions, which operated in the historically Catholic nation as recently as 1998. 

Studying such homes over a 76-year period through 1998, the CIMBH determined that 9,000 children died in them, or 15 percent of those who passed through. 

The homes -- run by religious orders and the Irish state -- housed unmarried women who became pregnant, were unsupported by partners and family and faced severe social stigma. 

Children born in the institutions would often be separated from their mothers and put up for adoption, severing all family ties. 

Prime minister Micheal Martin said the CIMBH report "opens a window onto a deeply misogynistic culture in Ireland over several decades". 

"We had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy, and young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction," he added. 

Martin -- who will make an official state apology on the matter in Irish parliament on Wednesday -- said the high infant mortality was "one of the most deeply distressing findings" of the report. 

"One harsh truth in all of this is that all of society was complicit in it," Martin said. 

"We are going to need to confront and come to terms with this as a people." 

'Forced adoption' 

The CIMBH was established in 2015, after an amateur historian uncovered evidence of a potential mass grave of infants at one such home in the west Ireland town of Tuam. 

Irish premier Micheal Martin will make an official state apology over
 "mother and baby" homes

But survivors' group Irish First Mothers said the report "fails to find that mothers were coerced into giving up their children", which it said was the "most grievous injury" inflicted by homes. 

The group said the report "absolved both the Church and state of any systemic responsibility for what it admits is the effective incarceration of pregnant mothers". 

The CIMBH report says 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children passed through the homes examined. 

"By the 1960s most women placed their child for adoption and left a mother and baby home within a few months of giving birth," it said. 

It said "some of this cohort of women are of the opinion that their consent was not full, free and informed." However, it added, "with the exception of a small number of legal cases, there is no evidence that this was their view at the time of the adoption." 

Many of the women received little or no ante-natal care. 

The report gave no single explanation for the deaths, but said "the major identifiable causes... were respiratory infections and gastroenteritis." 

It also highlighted a total of seven unethical vaccine trials on children in the institutions between 1934 and 1973. 

Meanwhile women of the period who gave birth outside marriage were "subject to particularly harsh treatment" at the hands of families and partners, backed by both Church and state. 

Women entered the homes mostly because they had "no alternative" and many suffered "emotional abuse", it said. 

"The atmosphere appears to have been cold and seemingly uncaring," the study said.

Chinese citizen journalist jailed for Wuhan virus reporting

Yahoo – AFP, 28 December 2020 

Authoroties said former Chinese lawyer and citizen journalist
Zhang Zhan had spread "False remarks" online.

A Chinese citizen journalist was jailed for four years Monday for her reporting from Wuhan as the Covid-19 outbreak began, her lawyer said, almost a year after details of an "unknown viral pneumonia" surfaced in the central China city. 

Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer who arrived at court in a wheelchair, was sentenced at a brief hearing in a Shanghai court for allegedly "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" during her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak. 

Her live reports and essays were shared on social media platforms in February, grabbing the attention of authorities, who have punished eight virus whistleblowers so far as they curb criticism of the government's response to the outbreak. 

Beijing has congratulated itself for "extraordinary" success in controlling the virus inside its borders, with an economy on the rebound while much of the rest of the world stutters through painful lockdowns and surging caseloads a year on from the start of the pandemic in Wuhan. 

Controlling the information flow during an unprecedented global health crisis has been pivotal in allowing China's communist authorities to reframe the narrative in their favour, with President Xi Jinping being garlanded for his leadership by the country's ruling party. 

But that has come at a serious cost to anyone who has picked holes in the official storyline. 

The court said Zhang Zhan had spread "false remarks" online, according to one of her lawyers Zhang Keke, but the prosecution did not fully divulge its evidence in court. 

"We had no way of understanding what exactly Zhang Zhan was accused of doing," he added, describing it as "a speedy, rushed hearing." 

In return the defendant "didn't respond [to questions]... She refused to answer when the judge asked her to confirm her identity." 

The defendant's mother sobbed loudly as the verdict was read out, Ren Quanniu, another member of Zhang's defence team, told reporters who were barred from entering the court. 

Concerns are mounting over the health of 37-year-old Zhang, who began a hunger strike in June and has been force-fed via a nasal tube. 

Her legal team said her health was in decline and she suffered from headaches, dizziness and stomach pain, and that she had appeared in court in a wheelchair. 

"She said when I visited her (last week): 'If they give me a heavy sentence then I will refuse food until the very end.'... She thinks she will die in prison," Ren said before the trial. 

"It's an extreme method of protesting against this society and this environment." 

China's communist authorities have a history of putting dissidents on trial in opaque courts between Christmas and New Year in an effort to minimise Western scrutiny. 

Example made

The sentencing comes just weeks before an international team of World Health Organization experts is expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of Covid-19. 

Zhang was critical of the early response in Wuhan, writing in a February essay that the government "didn't give people enough information, then simply locked down the city". 

"This is a great violation of human rights," she wrote. 

Rights groups and embassies have also drawn attention to her case, although diplomats from several countries were denied requests to monitor the hearing. 

"Zhang Zhan's case raises serious concerns about media freedom in China," the British embassy in Beijing said, urging "China to release all those detained for their reporting." 

Authorities "want to use her case as an example to scare off other dissidents from raising questions about the pandemic situation in Wuhan earlier this year", added Leo Lan, research and advocacy consultant at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders NGO. 

A United Nations official following the trial also expressed "deep concern" about the verdict. 

"We raised her case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of the excessive clampdown on freedom of expression linked to #COVID19 & continue to call for her release," the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a tweet. 

Zhang is the first of a group of four citizen journalists detained by authorities after reporting from Wuhan to face trial. 

Previous attempts by AFP to contact the other three -- Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua -- were unsuccessful. 

Related Article:

"Corona 1", Reykjavik, Iceland, Mar, 2020 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - 

(>13.46 Min - Reference to the Global Coronavirus crisis)