Australian journo Cheng Lei, detained by China for 3 yrs, back home: PM Albanese

NEW DELHI: Australian journalist Cheng Lei, 48, who was detained by China for over three years on charges of spying has returned home in Melbourne after her release by Beijing, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday.

Cheng, a high-profile television anchor for Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, was detained in August 2020.

“I am pleased to confirm that Ms Cheng Lei has arrived safely home in Australia, and has been reunited with her two children and her family. I spoke with her on the phone this afternoon. This is an outcome the Australian government has been seeking for a long time,” Albanese said on X, formerly Twitter.

Australian foreign minister Penny Wong met Cheng, an ethnic Chinese, at the Melbourne airport. “Her return brings an end to a very difficult few years for her family. The government has been seeking this for a long period of time and her return will be warmly welcomed not just by her family and friends but by all Australians,” Albanese said at a press conference, according to a Reuters report.

Cheng’s release comes ahead of Albanese’s visit to China later this year, a sign of smoothening bilateral ties, which faced diplomatic turbulence over several issues including Canberra’s vocal demand for an international investigation into the source of the Covid-19 pandemic. Beijing had promptly responded with trade restrictions against Australian products.

Since then, ties have improved with PM Albanese meeting Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of a regional summit in September. Both leaders pledged to boost exchanges and bilateral ties.

Penny said the matter “was concluded through the legal processes in China”.

Cheng, who was working out of Beijing, disappeared in 2020 sending ripples of worry among the journalistic community and foreign workers based in China. She was formally placed under arrest much later on charges that she illegally supplied state secrets overseas to unknown people.

In 2022, the Chinese foreign ministry said Cheng provided “state secrets to foreign countries”, a charge that usually attracts life imprisonment, even the death penalty in China.

“Australian citizen Cheng Lei is suspected of committing the crime of illegally providing state secrets to foreign countries, and the case involves state secrets, so the court held the trial in a closed session in accordance with the law,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin said at a press conference after a one-day trial in Beijing in March, 2022.

In a moving letter that she wrote from prison in August, Cheng wrote of missing her children, aged 11 and 14, who have been living in Melbourne with their grandmother while she was detained.

“In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year,” she wrote, according to Reuters, in what she called a “love letter to 25 million people”, her first public statement since her arrest.

Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.