| Agence
France Presse August 4, 2005 HONG KONG A HONG Kong reporter detained in China since April is expected to be formally charged with spying this week and could be expelled after being convicted, a newspaper reported here Thursday, August 4. Chinese authorities are expected to charge Ching Cheong, Hong Kong-based chief China correspondent for Singapore's the Straits Times newspaper, on Friday, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified sources. The journalist was likely to be convicted and sentenced to a jail term or expelled from China, it said. Ching's wife Mary Lau expressed surprise at the news but admitted some Hong Kong officials, who were her friends, had heard Beijing was considering different options, including expelling her husband from China. "It seems all very sudden. I don't know anything yet and I'm still waiting for news," Lau told AFP. Hong Kong's Security Bureau declined to disclose details of the case but said Ching's family would be informed of any developments. "The central government has made it clear that it would handle the case strictly in accordance with the law and that the constitutional rights of the individual concerned would be fully respected," it said in a statement. Ching, 55, was arrested in April but the Chinese authorities waited until May to announce he was being held on espionage charges. They said he had admitted to spying for "overseas organs" in return for money. He has been held under house arrest. Lau has said she believed her husband's arrest was connected to his attempts to acquire the manuscript of a publication about the late Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang. Zhao, who died in January, was purged and kept under house arrest for the last 16 years of his life for opposing the June 4, 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Ching's arrest has caused international condemnation. About 500,000 journalists from more than 100 countries last month signed a petition calling on China to treat him fairly. Hong Kong has been a Chinese territory since 1997 but retained media and other freedoms, as well as a separate government, under the deal that saw its return from former colonial power Britain. |
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