Zhang Zhan, thought to be the first person in China imprisoned for documenting the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in the country, was expected to be released on Monday, after serving a four-year sentence.
张展被认为是中国第一个因记录新冠病毒大流行早期情况而入狱的人，在服刑四年后预计于周一出狱。
But in a sign of how eager the Chinese government remains to suppress public discussion of the outbreak, it was unclear on Monday evening whether Ms. Zhang, 40, had actually been set free. The lawyer who represented Ms. Zhang during her trial, Zhang Keke (the two are not related), said he could not reach her mother all day. Reached by phone, officials at the Shanghai prison administration declined to comment.
但在周一晚间，40岁的张展是否真的出狱尚无确切消息，这表明中国政府仍然急于压制公众对疫情的讨论。在审讯期间代表张展的律师张科科表示，他一整天都无法与张展的母亲取得联系。记者电话联系了上海监狱管理部门的官员，但他们拒绝置评。
“Even though she will have served her sentence, there are doubts regarding the Chinese regime’s willingness to give her back her freedom,” Reporters Without Borders, the international media watchdog group, said in a statement several days before her expected release. The group, which gave Ms. Zhang a press freedom award in 2021, noted that journalists released from imprisonment in China are often kept under surveillance.
国际媒体监督组织无国界记者在张展预计出狱前几天发表声明，表示“即便服满了刑期，人们对中国政府是否愿意让她重获自由仍存在疑虑”。这个曾在2021年向张展颁发新闻自由奖的组织指出，中国的被捕记者刑满出狱后仍常受到持续的监视。
Ms. Zhang was an early symbol of the mistrust that many Chinese harbored toward the government’s handling of the outset of the pandemic, and the hunger they had for unfiltered information. A former lawyer from Shanghai, she traveled in early 2020 to Wuhan, the city where the virus was first detected, as a self-styled citizen journalist.
对于许多中国人来说，张展象征着他们在初期疫情暴发时政府处理方式的不信任，以及对未经过滤的信息的渴望。作为一名来自上海的前律师，她在2020年初以公民记者的身份前往武汉，也就是最早发现病毒的城市。
For months, she filmed amateur, often shaky videos that contradicted the government’s narrative of a smooth, triumphant response to the crisis. She visited a crematory and a crowded hospital, where rolling beds lined the hallway. She recorded the city’s empty train station and tried to interview residents about the lockdown, though many brushed her off or requested anonymity, seemingly out of fear of reprisals.
在几个月的时间里，她拍摄了许多业余水平、画面摇晃的视频，它们与政府所谓面对危机做出了平稳、成功回应的叙述相矛盾。她前往一座火葬场和一家拥挤的医院，医院的走廊上放满了病床。她记录了这座城市空荡荡的火车站，并试图就封锁问题采访当地民众，但许多人对她不予理睬，或者要求匿名，似乎害怕遭到报复。
She had never done any reporting before, friends said at the time, but she was motivated by her Christian faith and a sense of outrage at the government’s one-sided narrative.
朋友们当时说，她以前从未做过任何报道，这么做纯粹是出于她的基督教信仰和对政府一面之辞的愤怒。
“If we just wallow in our sadness and don’t do something to change this reality, then our emotions are cheap,” Ms. Zhang said in one video.
张展在一段视频中说：“如果我们仅就停留于那种悲伤之情，而不去做点什么去改变这个现实的话，那我们的情绪就是廉价的。”
The government, busy trying to contain infections and maintain the lockdown of the city of 11 million, for a time let a small measure of independent reporting on the outbreak slip through. Some of Ms. Zhang’s videos that she posted to Chinese social media were censored, but she also uploaded them to YouTube, which is banned in China.
政府当时忙着遏制病毒的传播，忙着对拥有1100万人口的武汉封城，一度让一小部分关于疫情的独立报道成为漏网之鱼。张展在中国的社交媒体上发布的一些视频遭到删除，但她也把视频上传到了在中国被禁的YouTube上。
But before long, the crackdown on independent reporting began in earnest. Other citizen journalists started disappearing. Ms. Zhang acknowledged the risks but kept posting — about the lockdown, and then, after it was lifted in April 2020, its aftermath. Then, that May, she was arrested and brought back to Shanghai.
但不久之后，对独立报道的严厉打击开始了。其他公民记者也开始陆续消失。张展承认存在风险，但一直在发帖——关于封锁，以及在2020年4月武汉解封后的景象。之后，在那年5月，她被捕并被带回上海。
Still, even in detention, Ms. Zhang remained defiant. She began several prolonged hunger strikes, according to her lawyers, and grew so weak that used a wheelchair to appear at her trial. The authorities force-fed her through a feeding tube, her lawyers said.
尽管身陷囹圄，张展仍然保持反抗。据她的律师称，她进行了数次长时间的绝食抗议，身体变得非常虚弱，以至于在出庭时需要坐轮椅。她的律师说，当局通过鼻饲方式强行给她喂食。
Ms. Zhang was sentenced in December 2020 to four years in prison, on the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a catchall offense the government frequently uses to silence critics.
2020年12月，张展被判处四年有期徒刑，罪名是“寻衅滋事”，这是政府经常用来压制批评者的口袋罪。
Ms. Zhang’s plight quickly became a rallying cry for human rights activists and foreign governments critical of China’s suppression of free speech. When news emerged in 2021 that Ms. Zhang was severely ill, the U.S. State Department called for her immediate release, as did groups such as Human Rights Watch.
张展的遭遇很快引起人权活动人士和批评中国镇压言论自由的外国政府的关注。2021年传出张展病重的消息时，美国国务院呼吁立即释放她，人权观察等组织也也发出了同样的呼吁。
But many who tried to advocate for Ms. Zhang from within China seemed to become targets themselves. Her brother, who had used Twitter, which is banned in China, to share childhood memories and rally international support for her, largely went silent. Many of his posts were later deleted. One of the lawyers who represented her has been barred from practicing law for his involvement in a different human rights case.
但许多试图在中国国内为张展发声的人似乎也成了目标。她的哥哥曾在中国被禁的推特上分享童年记忆，争取国际社会对她的支持，但后来也基本上保持了沉默。他的许多帖子后来都被删除。代表她的一名律师因另一起人权案件而被注销了律师执业证。
Asked about Ms. Zhang’s case at a regularly scheduled news briefing on Monday, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said that he did not have information about her case, but that anyone who violated Chinese law should be punished.
在外交部周一的例行新闻发布会上，当被问及张展一案时，发言人表示他没有案件的相关信息，但任何违反中国法律的人都应该受到惩罚。
In Ms. Zhang’s last video from Wuhan, where she described chatting with some out-of-work migrant workers, she pondered the usefulness of what she was doing.
张展在武汉发布的最后一条视频中描述了与一些失业的农民工的聊天，她思考着自己所做的事情是否有意义。
“Actually, today I was very unsure what to say,” she said. “But these people, these things always push me to keep moving forward from hopelessness and fear, to keep paying attention to them and speaking for them just a little.”
“其实今天我很纠结，不知道该说什么，”她说。“但是这些人、这些事情，总可以推动我从一种绝望和恐惧之中往前再进一步，或者说是去关注他们，为他们再说一点点话。”