SYDNEY – Jailed Chinese-Australian journalist Cheng Lei has described the bleak conditions she faces in detention in a rare public message released on Thursday, ahead of the third anniversary of her imprisonment by Beijing.

“I miss the sun,” reads the message, described as a “love letter” to Australia dictated to officials on a consular visit.

“In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year.”

The message was shared with Australian news outlets and on the social media platform X by Cheng’s partner, Mr Nick Coyle, on Thursday evening.

Cheng, a former anchor for Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, is formally charged with “supplying state secrets overseas”, though no further details have been supplied.

Her detention came as relations between Australia and China cratered, raising speculation it was politically motivated.

In 2022, Mr Coyle said he had serious concerns about a “range of health issues” Cheng faced behind bars.

In Thursday’s poignant message, the mother of two said she had not seen a tree in three years and spoke of her longing for Australia and the outside world.

She said her bedding in jail was taken out to air only once a year.

“When it came back last time, I wrapped myself in the doona (quilt) and pretended I was being hugged by family under the sun,” the message read.

It ended with these words: “Most of all I miss my children.”

Cheng has been detained since August 2020, but was formally arrested only in February 2021.

She was tried last March behind closed doors, with even Australia’s ambassador to China blocked from entering the court to observe proceedings.

The court deferred the verdict and Cheng’s sentence, which could extend to life in prison.

“She has missed her daughter going to high school. Her parents aren’t getting any younger and Lei is their only child. So time is getting more and more precious,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Mr Coyle as saying on Thursday.

In July, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she had again raised Cheng’s case when she met China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on the sidelines of an Asean summit in Jakarta.

Ties between the two sides have been improving since the election of Australia’s centre-left Labor government in May 2022.

Last week, China announced it was removing extra tariffs on Australian barley imposed in 2020 at the height of the dispute. AFP