A Beijing court on Friday sentenced veteran Chinese state media journalist Dong Yuyu to seven years in prison on espionage charges, his family said.
Dong Yuyu, a senior columnist at the Communist Party newspaper Guangming Daily, was detained in February 2022 along with a Japanese diplomat at a Beijing restaurant.
The diplomat was released after a few hours of questioning, but Dong, 62, has been in custody since and was charged with spying last year.
“The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court convicted Yuyu of espionage, a crime that requires that the prosecution prove that the defendant knowingly acted on behalf of ‘espionage organisations’ and their agents,” a statement shared with AFP by his family said.
According to the judgement, the Japanese diplomats Dong met with, including then-ambassador Hideo Tarumi and current Shanghai-based chief diplomat Masaru Okada, were named as agents of an “espionage organisation”, the statement added.
“We are shocked that the Chinese authorities would blatantly deem a foreign embassy as an ‘espionage organisation’ and accuse the former Japanese ambassador and his fellow diplomats of being spies.”
Under Chinese law, someone convicted of espionage can be jailed for three to 10 years for less severe cases or receive heavy punishment, including life imprisonment, for serious cases.
Dong’s work has been published in the Chinese editions of The New York Times and the Financial Times.
He won the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2006-2007.
