The U.S. State Department has expressed concern for the 11 Chinese citizens detained for providing information relating to the pandemic to the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times. It also demanded that Beijing cease stifling truthful reporting in the country. “The United States calls on the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government to release journalists and their contacts detained for their reporting on COVID-19 restrictions and to cease its efforts to silence those who seek to report the truth,” a State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “We consistently underscore the importance of independent, transparent, and fact-based reporting on COVID-19,” the spokesperson added. The 11 individuals, all adherents of persecuted faith group Falun Gong, have been held in Dongcheng District Detention Center in Beijing for over a year. In an April indictment, they were accused of “taking photos and uploading them to overseas websites between February and …