BANGKOK — A court docket in Beijing on Friday sentenced a outstanding Chinese language journalist to seven in years in jail for espionage, his household mentioned.
Dong Yuyu, a commentator and editor, was taken away by police whereas assembly a Japanese diplomat at a restaurant in February 2022. He has been in police custody since then.
The Beijing Quantity 2 Intermediate Folks’s Courtroom learn the decision however didn’t share a replica with Dong’s attorneys or household. No announcement was out there on the court docket’s web site or its Weibo account.
The decision named then-Japanese ambassador Hideo Tarumi and Shanghai-based chief diplomat Masaru Okada as brokers belonging to an espionage group, in accordance the household’s assertion.
Dong had served because the deputy head of the editorial division at Guangming Every day, one of many 5 main state-owned papers in China. The paper was as soon as thought-about extra liberal than different state-backed papers. Dong additionally contributed to the Chinese language version of the New York Occasions.
In his printed writings, together with essays in addition to opinion articles, Dong had voiced his help for constitutional democracy and political reform, which later have been thought-about to be in opposition to the stance of the Communist Occasion.
He had contacts with international diplomats, students and different journalists as a part of his decades-long profession and counted Tarumi, the ambassador, as a buddy.
Nonetheless, his household mentioned he knew he was at all times watched by state safety, and due to this fact sought to be as open as potential whereas assembly his Japanese or American contacts.
“With Yuyu’s conviction, each Chinese language citizen, when coping with the Japanese embassy — or maybe every other international embassy and diplomat — will likely be anticipated to know that the Chinese language authorities could think about these embassies to be ‘espionage organizations,’” mentioned the household in a press release. “Each wise Chinese language citizen needs to be appalled by this reasoning.”
The U.S. Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, condemned Dong’s conviction. “Punishing Dong for exercising his freedom of speech and the press, assured by the PRC’s structure for all its residents, is unjust.”
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