Hong Kong Journalist Sentenced To Five Years
Mary K. Brunskill - All Headline News Staff Writer Beijing, China (AHN) - A Hong Kong-based reporter of a leading newspaper in Singapore was sentenced Thursday by a Chinese court to five years in prison after he "voluntarily confessed" to spying for Taiwan. Ching Cheong, 56, a journalist for the Straits Times newspaper in Singapore, was convicted of selling "state secrets and intelligence" to a Taiwanese foundation that was actually a spy agency. The Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court also confiscated Ching's personal property and took away his political rights for a year. A court document said, "The penalty is a mitigated one considering that after Ching Cheong was detained, he voluntarily confessed to more espionage activities than those the state security departments had known about." Quoting a document released by the court, the state-run Xinhua news agency said, "He also gave up his notebook computer, which contained evidence of espionage, to the authorities." Ching's wife, Lau, said an unnamed intermediary set him up, telling him he could help get tapes of interviews with the late Zhao Ziyang, a Communist Party leader who was deposed after the crackdown on the Tienanmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989. The Chinese government has recently imprisoned dozens of journalists as part of a campaign for stricter media controls. Hong Kong journalists have been protesting against the verdict and |
