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11-05-2023
BEIJING: “One thousand days is a shockingly long time in detention,” says Nick Coyle.
He is speaking about his partner, Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who remains in a Chinese prison. The details of the charges against her are still a secret and she has not been sentenced.
Like Ms Cheng’s other friends and family, Coyle says he still has no idea what she is supposed to have done to warrant this treatment.
“I would call upon the relevant authorities in China to resolve this awful situation as quickly as possible,” he tells media.
Cheng Lei was working as a business reporter at China’s state-run English language television station CGTN when she was suddenly grabbed by state security officers on 13 August 2020, and later accused of “illegally supplying state secrets overseas”.
Her first six months were spent in solitary confinement, being placed in stress positions and, though being interrogated, with no access to a lawyer.
Since then, she has been held with other prisoners.
Her trial took place in March last year behind closed doors. Even Australia’s Ambassador to China Graham Fletcher was denied entry but her sentencing has been postponed again and again.
Calls by a media outlet to the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court, where her trial was held, went unanswered.
Coyle – the former chief executive of the China-Australia Chamber of Commerce – has now left Beijing but continues to work from overseas for her release.
“I took China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, at his word in January when he expressed hope ‘that a solution will come as soon as possible’,” Coyle says. “Five months later we are still waiting”.
Another Australian who’s been imprisoned following state secrets charges, Yang Hengjun, has also had his sentencing repeatedly postponed.
In China, what might be considered a “state secret” is a sweepingly general concept and can essentially be whatever the government wants it to be.
For a country trying to attract international business investment back to its shores after years of extremely strict Covid lockdown measures, the detention of foreigners for extended periods under an opaque, party-controlled legal system is proving to be a challenge. (Int’l News Desk)
