According to a family member, Fang Bin, a retailer turned citizen journalist who documented the early outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, has been released after more than three years in detention in China.
Fang vanished after uploading recordings of the on-the-ground situation in Wuhan, the initial covid outbreak’s epicentre, as officials worked to suppress information about the true scope of the global calamity.
According to a family member who declined to be identified owing to fears about repercussions from the Chinese government, he was freed on Sunday, April 30 and was in Wuhan.
After three years in Chinese incarceration, a citizen journalist from Wuhan who chronicled the Covid outbreak was released.
A Fang’s health had deteriorated while in jail, with him having difficulty eating and sleeping and losing weight, according to a family.
His social media recordings, which were broadcast in early 2020, exposed the facts of the virus’s lethal spread, contradicting the official story offered by China’s strictly controlled state media.
Authorities sealed off the city of Wuhan on January 23, although there had been a three-week gap between when health officials announced a mysterious ailment and confirmed it was spreading among citizens.
Fang showed hospital corridors crammed with patients and their anxious family in one film. During one segment, Fang counts the body bags piled in a van, images that drew widespread attention in China, where the public was eager to learn what was going on in the epicentre city.
Fang filmed people coming to his door to ask questions in his final films before being arrested, and he said his home was besieged by plainclothes policemen.
In one recording, he appeared emotional, referring to Covid whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang’s death from the virus – who was reprimanded by police for sharing information about early patients – and the silencing of fellow citizen journalist Chen Qiushi, saying the reason he had not been taken away was due to his viewers’ attention.
