Australian Yang Hengjun to face court in Beijing on espionage charges

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BEIJING — A heavy police presence has engulfed a Beijing court docket the place the espionage case in opposition to Australian blogger Yang Hengjun, detained by Chinese language authorities two years in the past, will probably be heard on Thursday in opposition to a backdrop of worsening ties between the 2 nations.

Particulars of the case have been shrouded in secrecy, with no info launched on which espionage company Yang is alleged to have acted for. If convicted Yang faces a jail time period of 10 years or extra on costs of endangering nationwide safety.

Yang is an Australian citizen born in China who was dwelling in New York instantly earlier than he was detained in China.

Australia has complained that Chinese language authorities haven’t offered “any rationalization or proof for the costs,” prompting a rebuke on Saturday from the Chinese language embassy in Canberra, the Australian capital.

Human rights attorneys Mo Shaoping and Shang Baojun will symbolize Yang when he seems at Thursday’s proceedings within the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Folks’s Court docket, which was closed to the general public.

Police lined the entrance of the court docket, their presence extending a block away, and checked the identities of journalists who have been refused entry.

Yang’s spouse, Yuan Xiaoliang, who has been unable to see him for the reason that couple have been stopped on the southern airport of Guangzhou in January 2019, utilized to attend the court docket listening to however was rejected, mates advised Reuters.

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In his final message to household and mates in Australia earlier than the listening to Yang mentioned in March that his well being had deteriorated however they need to not fear as a result of he had “no concern.”

“If somebody desires to take revenge on me for my writings, please clarify to the folks inside China what I did, and the importance of my writing to folks in China,” he mentioned, in accordance with a replica of the message seen by Reuters.

Australia’s International Minister Marise Payne mentioned on Thursday that Yang’s correspondence together with his household in Australia was “deeply shifting” and it has been “immensely troublesome” for him.

Australia’s ambassador to China has sought entry to the listening to o Thursday however this may be “a matter for the court docket,” Payne advised ABC radio.

“We aren’t interfering in China’s authorized system. The considerations we’ve raised are legit ones,” she mentioned.

Diplomatic ties between the 2 nations have deteriorated sharply since Yang was detained, with China imposing commerce sanctions on produce from Australia and reacting angrily to its name for a world inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, in addition to its 5G ban on telecoms big Huawei.

Yang wrote about Chinese language and American politics on-line as a high-profile blogger, and likewise penned a sequence of spy novels with plot traces centered on Taiwan, China and america.

He had been dwelling in New York as a visiting scholar at Columbia College and incomes revenue promoting American items on-line to Chinese language customers earlier than flying to China to go to household for the Lunar New Yr.

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His January 2019 detention got here similtaneously a Chinese language police crackdown on potential overseas interference and “coloration revolution.”

Yang had beforehand been arrested in 2011 in China on suspicion of being concerned within the short-lived “Jasmine Revolution” protests and launched after three days.

He wrote in a letter to his supporters in Australia after he was launched that he had as soon as labored for the Chinese language state safety company in Hong Kong and Washington, earlier than migrating to Australia in 1999.

In earlier messages handed to consular officers throughout entry visits, Yang has denied the espionage accusations in opposition to him and vowed to not confess to one thing he had not performed.

In 2019, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison mentioned it was “completely not true” that Yang had spied for Australia. (Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney and Cate Cadell in Beijing; Modifying by Clarence Fernandez and Michael Perry)