China: Journalist sentenced to seven years in prison for espionage

A Beijing court on Friday sentenced a Chinese journalist, who worked for a state media outlet while maintaining a certain freedom of tone, to seven years in prison for espionage, his family said in a statement.

Dong Yuyu, 62, wrote editorials for the newspaper Clarity Daily (Guangming Ribao), owned by the ruling Communist Party.

He was arrested in February 2022 while having lunch in Beijing with a Japanese diplomat. The latter was released after a few hours of interrogation. But the journalist remained in detention.

A “spy organization”

“Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court convicted Yuyu of espionage, a crime that requires the prosecution to prove that the defendant knowingly acted on behalf of spy organizations and their agents,” the court said. family in a press release sent to AFP.

According to the ruling, the Japanese diplomats Dong Yuyu met with, including then-ambassador Hideo Tarumi and current Shanghai-based Japanese diplomatic official Masaru Okada, were designated as agents of a “dissemination organization.” “espionage”, adds the press release.

“We are shocked that Chinese authorities openly consider a foreign embassy to be a spy organization and accuse the former Japanese ambassador and his fellow diplomats of being spies,” the text underlines.

“The right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press”

Asked Friday during a regular press briefing about the conviction of Dong Yuyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, assured that China was “a state of law”.

“Chinese judicial organs handle cases in strict accordance with the law. Those who violate the law and commit crimes or offenses are subject to prosecution,” she stressed.

The Japanese embassy said it would not comment on the matter. “In any case, the diplomatic activities of Japanese diplomatic missions abroad are carried out in a legitimate manner,” an embassy spokesperson told AFP in an email.

The US State Department strongly criticized the conviction, ruling that China “is failing to uphold its commitments under international law and the constitutional guarantees it provides to all its citizens, including the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

An “unjust verdict”

Washington demanded his “immediate and unconditional release”. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) denounced an “unjust verdict” and also demanded the immediate release of Dong Yuyu.

“Contacts with diplomats are part of the work of a journalist,” Beh Lih Yi, coordinator of the NGO’s Asia program, told AFP, adding that “this conviction confirms that China remains the leading country in the world for the incarceration of journalists.

A person convicted of espionage in China can be sentenced to three to 10 years in prison in less serious cases, or even life in prison in more serious cases.

Articles by Dong Yuyu had also been published in the Chinese editions of the American daily New York Times and the British Financial Times.

44 journalists or citizen journalists behind bars in China

In Japan, he was a visiting researcher at Keio University in 2010 and a visiting professor at Hokkaido University in 2014. Freedoms of the press and expression have declined significantly in China since his arrival at the head of the State of President Xi Jinping in 2013.

Authorities tightly control media content, and Chinese nationals who work for foreign media sometimes face pressure.

A total of 44 journalists or citizen journalists are behind bars in China, according to a December 2023 count by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a US-based organization.

In February, a Beijing court gave a suspended death sentence to imprisoned dissident writer Yang Hengjun, who has Australian citizenship, after finding him guilty of espionage.

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