Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who was recently released after being detained in China for three years, said in an interview aired on Tuesday that the reason was due to “breaking an embargo.”
Detention for Breaking Embargo
In her first television interview since her release earlier this month, Cheng said that she was accused of breaking a government-imposed embargo, with a television broadcast on the state-run TV network – the China Global Television Network, by a few minutes following a briefing by officials.
She did not clarify the nature of the embargo.
However, the news anchor told Sky News Australia that her treatment in custody aimed to “drive home that point that in China that is a big sin.” “That you have hurt the motherland and that the state’s authority has been eroded because of you,” she added.
“What seems innocuous to us here is — I’m sure it’s not limited to embargoes, but many other things — are not in China, especially (because) I’m given to understand that the gambit of state security is widening,” she said.
Australian journalist Cheng Lei gives her first interview since returning home after three years of detention in China. pic.twitter.com/b1KzOg2pEE
— South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) October 18, 2023
Cheng returned to her mother and two children, aged 11 and 14, in the city of Melbourne.
China’s Account
However, Cheng’s account starkly differs from China’s version of the offence.
The Ministry of State Security claimed last week that, in May 2020, the journalist was approached by a foreign organisation, to whom she provided state secrets that she was privy to due to her job. This, the ministry said was in violation of a confidentiality clause signed with her employer.
A police statement on the matter did not name the organisation or the nature of the secrets.
Cheng was sentenced to two years and 11 months for the offence, and was deported after the sentencing because of the time she had already spent in detention.
In other shocking revelations on the conditions of her detention, the Chinese-born journalist said that the first time in more than three years that she had sat on a toilet or seen her reflection in a mirror was during a visit to a toilet at the courthouse on the morning before she was sentenced.
She added that her commercial airline flight from Beijing to Melbourne was the first time she had slept in darkness in three years because the lights in the detention facilities were never switched off at night.