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WRIC Weekly Exhibition (8rd): Remembering the contributions of Zhang Zhan and giving them a voice.
By WRIC Zhou Mei 12-13-2025
1) In Support of Zhang Zhan
Today, we are here to speak out for Zhang Zhan, a Chinese citizen journalist who has risked her life to uphold the truth.
Zhang Zhan, born in 1983 in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, holds a Master’s degree in Finance, is a former lawyer, and a Christian. In 2010, she came to Shanghai as part of a talent recruitment program, where she could have lived a stable and respectable life. However, she chose to witness the darkness, focus on the vulnerable, and speak out for the persecuted. Because of this conscience, she has been repeatedly arrested, detained, and suppressed by the police. Yet, no intimidation can stop her from acting in justice and showing mercy. At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, the Chinese government blocked information and prohibited independent reporting. Zhang Zhan, however, went to Wuhan alone. With a mobile phone, she documented the long lines outside hospitals, the fear and reality under the lockdown, and exposed how the Chinese government detained independent journalists and harassed patients’ families.
Photo taken by Zhang Yan on 12-13- 025, outside the Flushing Library in New York. (WRIC)
Photo taken by Zhou Mei on December 13, 2025, outside the Flushing Library in New York. (WRIC)
Qiu Yueyun has reading the stories of these heroines’ struggle. Photo by ZhangYan outside the Flushing Library, New York, 12-13- 2025. (WRIC)
Because she dared to speak the truth, she was arrested across provincial borders in May and sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” In the Shanghai Detention Center and Women’s Prison, she protested the injustice with a hunger strike, enduring torture including forced feeding, intubation, leg irons, and restraints. In court, she questioned the judge: “Don’t you think your conscience tells you it’s wrong to put me in the dock?” This was not only her cry for justice, but also a profound indictment of an era.
On May 13, 2024, Zhang Zhan was released from prison, but freedom did not return. She continued to be closely monitored, harassed, and followed. Just three months later, she was arrested again for traveling to Gansu to support human rights defenders. In September 2025, she was sentenced to four years in prison again on the same charge. Two four-year sentences—this is how the authorities punish those who speak the truth. But Zhang Zhan had already given her answer: She said, “Freedom is never free. The problem in this country is the system. I cannot stop because the evil has not stopped.” “If speaking out for one’s own survival is a crime, then I have no way to stop.” This is Zhang Zhan—a woman who refuses to remain silent, a citizen who values truth more than life itself, a soul willing to bear the shackles for freedom but unwilling to yield.
Today, we stand here for her to tell the world: Zhang Zhan is not a criminal. She is one of China’s bravest witnesses. Speaking the truth is not a crime, pursuing the truth is not a crime, conscience is not a crime. We also want to tell the persecutors: You can imprison her body, but you cannot imprison her beliefs; you can judge her, but you cannot judge freedom; you can silence her for a time, but you cannot make the world forget her. The Chinese Women’s Rights Movement solemnly calls on the Chinese government: Release Zhang Zhan! Stop persecuting citizen journalists! Restore dignity to press freedom! Let speaking the truth no longer be a crime!
Photo taken by Zhang Yan on December 13, 2025, outside the Flushing Library in New York. (WRIC)
Photo taken by Zhou Mei on December 13, 2025, outside the Flushing Library in New York. (WRIC)
2）In Support of He Fangmei
Today, we stand here to speak out for a mother, a courageous human rights defender—for He Fangmei, a Chinese woman who has suffered brutal persecution simply for protecting her child and seeking basic justice.
He Fangmei was born in Xinxiang, Henan Province in 1985. She is not a politician, not a social celebrity; she is just one of millions of ordinary mothers. However, her fate was completely changed on the day her daughter, just over one year old, suddenly became paralyzed after receiving the DPT vaccine. Faced with this sudden life-threatening disaster, she chose what all mothers would do—seek help from the government, seek treatment, and seek an explanation. But what she received was not assistance, but evasion; not the truth, but intimidation; not compensation, but repeated knocks on her door by the police. When she discovered countless families across the country suffering the same misfortune, she stood up and organized the “Vaccine Babies Home,” hoping to provide more treatment for victimized children and break the cycle of silence for more families. However, such good deeds became “crimes” under totalitarianism. She was detained, criminally detained, prosecuted, forcibly disappeared, and ultimately convicted.
Zhang Yan (right) loudly recounts the story of He Fangmei (second from right on the banner; third from right are her three minor children who were once detained in a mental hospital) through a microphone. Photographed by Zhou Mei outside the Flushing Library, New York, December 13, 2025. (WRIC)
Banner image created by WRIC.
He Fangmei was placed under residential surveillance in a designated location for 18 months, giving birth to her infant daughter in a cold, confined environment. Shortly after giving birth, she was sentenced to a gruesome 5-year and 6-month prison term. Meanwhile, her torn family endured excruciating pain. Her husband was sentenced to five years in prison for supporting his wife’s activism; her two young daughters were hospitalized and then secretly moved, unable to be visited by relatives; her eldest son was placed in foster care elsewhere. A once complete and warm family was brutally crushed by the state apparatus. A mother seeking justice for her child has to pay the price of her entire family’s destruction? A citizen exercising their most basic rights has been met with imprisonment and nightmares?
We speak out here not only for He Fangmei, but also to tell the world: Under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, if you dare to seek justice for children—you may be silenced; if you uphold the most basic human rights—you may be imprisoned, hunted down, and disappear.
Chinese women’s rights advocates strongly urge the Chinese government to: immediately release He Fangmei; guarantee the basic personal safety and visitation rights of her husband and children; stop persecuting vaccine victims’ families under criminal charges; allow lawyers to meet with them according to law and allow families to obtain information; and ensure that children harmed by vaccines receive genuine treatment, instead of becoming victims of political black boxes.
We stand with conscience, speak out for freedom, in the name of mothers, and in the name of humanity. For He Fangmei, for her children, for all those persecuted for their courage—we will not back down, nor will we remain silent. Our cries will not cease until He Fangmei is free.
Photo taken by Zhang Yan on December 13, 2025, outside the Flushing Library in New York. (WRIC)
3） In support of Gulshan Abbas
Today, we stand here for a most basic, yet deprived right—to let the world hear the name of Gulshan Abbas. Gulshan Abbas, Uyghur, retired doctor. She was not a politician, not an activist; she was simply an ordinary woman who spent her life practicing medicine, caring for patients, and protecting her community.
However—in September 2018, she was forcibly taken from her home. No reason, no notification, no legal process. From that day on, her life was silently erased, disappearing behind the high walls and iron curtain of Xinjiang. Her family searched desperately for two years without any news. It wasn’t until the end of 2020 that they were forced to learn the truth—Gulixian Abbas had been secretly sentenced to twenty years in prison.
The banner in the picture shows a Uyghur doctor Gulixian on the far left. Photographed by Zhang Yan on December 13, 2025, outside the Flushing Library in New York. (WRIC)
The banner image created by WRIC.
Twenty years—for a woman who had never committed a crime, never used violence, and was simply a retired doctor, this is not justice, this is punishment; not a verdict, but the destruction of her life.
What’s even more infuriating is that her arrest occurred exactly six days after her sister, Uyghur-American human rights activist Rushan Abbas, publicly revealed the truth about Xinjiang. This is not a coincidence. It is a warning, retaliation, and blatant political intimidation using a relative as a hostage.
Her sister once said, “I raised the microphone, and they took my sister away.” This is what Gulixian Abbas experienced. More than seven years have passed—where is she? Is she healthy? Is she still alive? No one knows.
When a country can imprison a retired doctor in the dark for twenty years, it can imprison anyone. When a regime uses relatives as hostages, it attempts to silence the voice of an entire ethnic group. We must face the truth—what the Uyghurs are suffering is a blatant genocide. Mass detention, forced labor, forced sterilization and abortion, forced marriage—systematically labeling an entire religious community as “criminal.” All of this is happening.
We solemnly appeal to the Chinese government: Immediately release Gulixian Abbas! Reveal her whereabouts! Allow her family and lawyers to visit her! Immediately cease the collective persecution of innocent Uyghurs under the guise of “counter-terrorism”! Gulixian cannot speak today, but we can. She cannot stand up today, but we can. Her freedom has not been restored, and our voices will not cease. As long as Gulixian is not free, we will not remain silent. Persecution of church pastors, denial of freedom of belief—the Chinese government’s trampling on the constitution is shameless!
(Photo: WRIC Zhang Yan)
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