BEIJING - The trial of Australian television anchor Cheng Lei on charges related to state secrets started in Beijing on Thursday morning (March 31) under heavy security and behind closed doors.
A former anchor for state broadcaster CGTN, the English-language arm of CCTV, Cheng was detained in August 2020 and formally arrested about a year ago for allegedly supplying state secrets overseas.
Australian Embassy officials were not allowed to enter the No. 2 People’s Intermediate Court, with police officers citing national security laws.
“This is deeply concerning, unsatisfactory and very regrettable,” Australian Ambassador Graham Fletcher told journalists outside the courthouse. “We can have no confidence in the validity of a process which is conducted in secret.”
He said that Australia is concerned because it has no information about the charges that Cheng, 46, is facing, and cannot understand why she is being detained.
Mr Fletcher added that Cheng has been allowed to choose her own legal representation, and her team are “as far as we can tell... very competent lawyers”.
Outside the court compound, large contingents of police and plainclothes security kept watch, taking videos and pictures of those gathered while also checking journalists’ credentials.
In a statement provided to The Straits Times, Cheng’s family said they were informed of her trial last Friday.
“Her two children and elderly parents miss her immensely and sincerely hope to reunited with her as soon as possible,” the statement said, adding that they would not be making further comment.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement last Saturday that Canberra had been informed of Cheng’s upcoming trial, calling for its officials to be allowed to attend the hearing under a bilateral consular agreement.
“We expect basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms,” she said.
Australian officials have had regular visits with Cheng, most recently on March 21, Ms Payne added.
On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that Cheng’s rights would be guaranteed, and referred journalists to previous statements put out on her detention.
Cheng was born in China and moved with her parents to Australia as a child. Later she returned to China, where she built a television career first with CNBC, starting in 2003, and from 2012, as a prominent business news anchor for CGTN.
The trial comes as diplomatic relations between Australia and China remain tense, after Canberra urged an international probe into the source of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and Beijing responded with trade reprisals.
China has a near 100 per cent conviction rate in most criminal cases.
Last May, in a separate case at the same court, Australia’s ambassador to China was also denied entry for the trial of blogger Yang Hengjun, who was being charged with espionage. There has been no verdict in his trial.
In a trial last March of Canadian former diplomat Michael Kovrig in the same court, Canadian officials were denied entry.
