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SYDNEY: The Australian government said on Saturday (10 October) that it has been informed that the Chinese authorities have decided to prosecute Australian citizen Dr. Yang Hengjun on “charges yet to be announced”.
“We will continue to provide consular support to him and his family, and to defend his interests,” a spokeswoman for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in emailed comments.
The detained writer, Dr. Yang, will face trial in Beijing on an espionage charge and a judge is expected to be appointed in the next fortnight, friends added on Saturday.
The 55-year-old blogger was detained by Chinese authorities in January 2019 at the Guangzhou airport after arriving from New York. He has been held in a Beijing detention center without access to his family, while his wife remains in China.
His Beijing lawyers were notified on Wednesday that Dr. Yang’s case has been transferred to the Second Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing, a friend told Reuters.
A judge is expected to be appointed in the next two weeks to hear the case, said Feng Chongyi, a friend of Dr. Yang and a professor at the Sydney University of Technology.
Under the Chinese legal system, the charge, evidence to support the charge and a proposed sentence will be handed over to the court at the beginning of the trial, Feng said.
Dr. Yang’s lawyers have met with him twice, for an hour each time, in the past month, his first legal access after 21 months of detention and questioning by Chinese security authorities.
Consular access via video link to Australian embassy officials was restored in September after being suspended amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Yang told his family in a message last month that he was innocent and would “never confess to something that I have not done.”
Australia has strongly opposed the charge.
Diplomatic relations between China and Australia have deteriorated this year, after Beijing imposed trade retaliation in response to Canberra’s major calls for an international investigation into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed that another Australian state television host, Cheng Lei, had been detained in Beijing and was being investigated on suspicion of endangering national security.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters on Saturday.
