Australian authorities confirmed that Cheng Lei was arrested on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas, around six months after she was first detained.
The family of an Australian journalist arrested in China has pleaded with authorities to grant the former high-profile state TV news anchor access to her two school-age children.
Australian authorities confirmed on Monday that Cheng Lei, 49, was arrested on February 5, 2021 on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas, around six months after she was first detained in mid-August.
“We are absolutely convinced of her innocence,” a family representative said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
Cheng, a business news anchor on Chinese state media’s English-language channel CGTN, where she had worked for almost a decade, had regularly attended business functions and embassy events for the Australian community while working in Beijing.
Payne said the Australian government “has raised its serious concerns about Ms Cheng’s detention regularly at senior levels, including about her welfare and conditions of detention”.
Tensions between Australia and China have been high for the past year, after Canberra called for an international investigation into the source of the coronavirus pandemic and Beijing responded with trade reprisals.
Cheng was born in China but moved with her parents to Australia as a child and attended university in Queensland. Her children, aged nine and 11, were visiting their grandparents in Australia amid school closures in Beijing caused by the coronavirus pandemic when the journalist was detained.❐
Reuters
