She faces life imprisonment. Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist, appeared in court on Thursday for “disclosing state secrets abroad”, an unexpected fate for a former Beijing television presenter.
After 18 months of detention, including the first seven incommunicado, the fate of this mother of two children is combined with the evolution of relations between Beijing and Canberra, which have fallen to their lowest level in recent years.
His trial for “criminal activities endangering national security” was due to begin in the morning before the People’s Intermediate Court Number Two in Beijing.
At the door of the court, the Australian ambassador, Graham Fletcher, denounced in front of the journalists a trial “held in secret”.
“We were refused access to the hearing. It is deeply worrying, unsatisfactory and very regrettable,” he said. “There can be no confidence in the validity of a judicial process held in secret.”
Mr. Fletcher explained that the authorities had invoked “national security” to deny him access to the court. “But our consular agreements stipulate that we must be able to attend any type of trial,” he protested.
He said he had no information about the charges against Ms. Cheng.
“This is partly at the origin of our concern: nothing allows us to understand why she is in detention”, underlined the ambassador.
“Obey to orders”
Born in China in 1975, Cheng Lei emigrated to Australia as a child before returning to her country of birth and being hired by Chinese state television in 2012.
Her outspokenness could have worked against her, in a country where the ruling Communist Party does not tolerate protest.
“The strong point of Australian education (…) is that it does not just teach you to obey orders,” she said in a portrait broadcast by her channel, where she officiated. in English.
This biography and its broadcasts have, since his arrest, disappeared from the site of the CGTN channel, which broadcasts Beijing’s point of view abroad.
A well-known face on the air, Ms. Cheng notably conducted interviews with business leaders from around the world.
The detention of the journalist had marked a new stage in the deterioration of relations between China and Australia, seen by Beijing as a pawn of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.
The ties were particularly tense when Canberra called for an international investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, detected for the first time in China at the end of 2019.
The arrest of Cheng Lei had caused the hasty and incredible departure from China of two Australian journalists fearing in their turn to be arrested.
Bill Birtles, then correspondent in Beijing for the Australian television channel ABC, and Michael Smith, ex-correspondent in Shanghai for the Australian Financial Review (AFR), had taken refuge for several days in diplomatic premises before leaving China accompanied by diplomats from their country.
A few months later, a Chinese employee of the financial agency Bloomberg, Haze Fan, was in turn placed in detention, suspected of “threat to national security”. She was not released and her employer has no information on her fate.