A prominent Chinese journalist has been sentenced to seven years in a Beijing court for espionage, according to his family.
Dong Yuyu, a commentator and editor, was arrested by police in February 2022 when he met a Japanese lawyer at a restaurant, according to the Associated Press, and has been in police custody ever since.
The ruling on Friday named then-Japanese ambassador Hideo Tarumi and Shanghai-based official Masaru Okada as agents of the spy agency, Dong's family said.
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Chinese journalist Dong Yuyu stands at the gates of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in May 2017. (Dong Family via AP)
Dong previously worked as the deputy head of the editorial department at Guangming Daily, a state-run newspaper in China. He also contributed to the Chinese edition of the New York Times.
His published work includes his support for constitutional democracy and political reform, which was later viewed as contrary to the position of the Chinese Communist Party.
Dong had connections with foreign diplomats, scholars and journalists through his many years of work as a journalist. He also considered Tarumi a friend.
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Dong Yuyu, a commentator and editor, was arrested by the police in February 2022 when he met the Japanese ambassador at a restaurant. (Stock)
His family said he knew he was under constant surveillance by the country's security guards, so he wanted to be as open as possible when meeting his Japanese or American counterparts.
“With Yuyu's conviction, every Chinese citizen, when dealing with a Japanese embassy – or perhaps other foreign embassies and diplomats – is expected to know that the Chinese government may consider those embassies to be 'espionage agencies,'” the family said. statement. “All reasonable Chinese citizens should be shocked by this idea.”
Dong had connections with foreign diplomats, scholars and journalists through his many years of work as a journalist. (Stock)
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The US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, condemned Dong's conviction.
“Punishing Dong for exercising his freedom of speech and press, guaranteed by the PRC constitution to all its citizens, is wrong,” Burns said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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