Prominent Human Rights Defender and Citizen Journalist Zhang Zhan Receives Liu Xiaobo Human Rights Award in Prison; Writer Yan Geling Accepts Award on Her Behalf

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On July 14, 2026, this outlet learned that prominent human rights defender and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan recently received the Liu Xiaobo Human Rights Award while in prison, with writer Yan Geling accepting the award on her behalf.

The award ceremony was held on July 13, 2026, in the German city of Leipzig. The award was jointly established by “European Voice” and the UK-based “China Studies.” The inaugural Liu Xiaobo Human Rights Award recipients were Roland Kühne, a teacher and pastor at the Rhein-Maas vocational college in Germany, and Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan. Writer Yan Geling accepted the award on Zhang Zhan’s behalf.

Zhang Zhan’s situation in prison: Since Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison on September 19, 2025, her lawyers’ requests to meet with her have repeatedly been rejected, obstructed, and met with threats by the authorities. Zhang Zhan was again arrested and persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party on August 28, 2024, and has now been imprisoned for a full 17 months. She has never compromised and has remained in a state of semi-fasting; she has sometimes been force-fed and is physically weak, with severe stomach problems. Rights Defense Network is extremely concerned that Zhang Zhan has been deprived of her right to appeal and meet with her lawyers, that her illness is not receiving timely treatment while she is cut off from the outside world, and, because she refuses to cooperate with the prison’s “education and reform,” that she is being subjected to abuse, putting her life at risk.

Biography of Zhang Zhan: Female, born on September 2, 1983; from Xianyang, Shaanxi Province; resident of Pudong New Area, Shanghai; formerly an executive at a securities company in Shanghai, a practicing lawyer, citizen journalist, human rights defender, and Chinese political prisoner.

In her early years, she studied finance at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and obtained a master’s degree; beginning in 2010, she left her hometown to seek employment in Shanghai; in pursuit of freedom and her ideals, she willingly gave up a high-paying position at a securities company; she worked as a lawyer but was later retaliated against for publishing articles online that criticized current abuses and was forced to leave the legal profession; dissatisfied with the political situation under the Chinese Communist Party authorities, she published critical comments on online platforms for a long time about “one-party dictatorship,” corruption, and abuse of power, and because of the sharpness and pointed nature of her content, she was repeatedly summoned for talks, interrogated, and threatened by Shanghai police;

Since 2019, because she widely reposted videos and graphic materials concerning Hong Kong’s “anti-extradition” protests on WeChat and other social media applications, and particularly because she held an umbrella on the streets of Shanghai and demanded an end to the socialist system and the resignation of the Communist Party, she was criminally detained by Huangpu District police in Shanghai on September 9, 2019, on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” During this period, she was twice subjected to compulsory “psychiatric evaluations,” and was not released on bail until November 26;

Since the beginning of 2020, amid the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic, she traveled to Wuhan despite the risks to conduct on-site investigations and reporting on the epidemic in order to obtain first-hand data; this action quickly provoked extreme dissatisfaction and swift suppression by the Chinese Communist Party authorities;

On May 14, 2020, she was seized by Wuhan police from a temporarily rented hotel room and, the following day, criminally detained by Pudong New Area police in Shanghai on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”; on June 19, she was formally arrested by the Pudong New Area Procuratorate; on September 18, her case was transferred to the Pudong New Area People’s Court in Shanghai; on December 28, 2020, the court sentenced her at first instance to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” with her sentence running until May 13, 2024; according to reports, her family’s requests to visit her in prison were rejected for a long time; because she had staged a prolonged hunger strike in prison to protest, she was force-fed, leaving her in extremely weak physical condition. Previously, Zhang Zhan was serving her sentence at the Shanghai Women’s Prison.

On August 25, 2024, she went to Gansu to rescue Zhang Pan’cheng, and on August 28 she was again arrested and criminally detained by the authorities. She was formally arrested on November 18, 2024. She was later prosecuted, and her trial was held at the Pudong New Area People’s Court in Shanghai on September 19, 2025. The court announced its verdict that day: she was found guilty of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and sentenced to four years in prison. Sentence expiration date: August 28, 2028. She had previously been detained at the Pudong Detention Center. She has now been transferred to Shanghai Women’s Prison.

This outlet will continue to follow Zhang Zhan’s situation in prison.