China yesterday declined to provide details about the detention of an Australian journalist working as an anchor for state TV who has been detained for at least two weeks without charge.
Cheng Lei (成蕾), an anchor for CGTN, China’s English-language state broadcaster, has been held since at least Aug. 14, but Australian diplomats say Beijing has given no reason for her detention.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) batted away questions over the fate of the China-born journalist, who enjoyed a high profile as a business news presenter on CGTN.
Photo: AP
“I can’t give you any specifics,” Hua told reporters.
“But you know China is a country governed by law... We will handle things according to the law,” she said.
Cheng’s case is the latest to fray relations between Beijing and Canberra, which have withered over trade, security concerns about Chinese tech and Australia’s push for a probe into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cheng has not been seen in public since being held, although Australian envoys in Beijing were able to speak to her on Thursday last week.
There are fears she could face a prolonged period of detention after reports in Australian media said she was being held under “residential surveillance.”
“Our concerns for Ms Cheng are genuine and real,” Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Simon Birmingham told ABC News yesterday.
Free media advocates also called for full information on her case.
Chinese authorities should “disclose their reasons for holding” her or “release her immediately,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said, calling China the “world’s leading jailer of journalists.”
The detention of Cheng, who conducted interviews with international CEOs for CGTN’s Global Business and BizTalk shows, has also sent shockwaves through China’s foreign journalist community.
While the cause of her detention remains a mystery, she had written a number of Facebook posts critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and the Chinese government’s approach to the COVID-19 outbreak.
One post poked fun at Xi’s visit in March to Wuhan, the COVID-19 ground zero: “The big story today, Dear Leader’s visit, triggered titters in the newsroom — waving to a big TV screen showing the coronavirus hospital in Wuhan apparently equals a visit.”
“In China ... ‘serve the people’ goes the slogans [sic]... [the] reality is the opposite,” she wrote.
Cheng also praised on Facebook a censored interview with Ai Fen (艾芬), a doctor who sounded an early alarm about the new virus in Wuhan.
She has also spoken openly about domestic violence, including at a UN Women China event in Beijing last year.
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