China jails Singapore newspaper reporter for spying

By Donny Kwok

HONG KONG (Reuters) – A Chinese court jailed a reporter for
a Singapore newspaper for five years on Thursday for spying,
the latest in a series of high-profile cases illustrating
China’s curbs on the media and dissent.

Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based China correspondent for the
Straits Times who has been detained in China since April 2005,
was also deprived of his political rights for a year and had
personal property worth 300,000 yuan ($37,700) confiscated,
Xinhua news agency said.

Ching, 56, was charged with spying for Taiwan, the
self-ruled island over which Beijing claims sovereignty. He was
detained in the southern province of Guangdong where, his wife
has said, he had traveled to collect documents related to
disgraced former Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang.

Court officials in Beijing reached by telephone declined to
comment on the verdict or sentencing in a trial which was held
behind closed doors. Ching’s wife could not be reached.

Ching’s lawyer, He Peihua, and a family member left the
court by car. Reached by telephone, the lawyer said the family
had asked him not to reveal any details.

Singapore Press Holdings Ltd., the parent of the Straits
Times newspaper, called on China to consider releasing Ching on
medical parole.

“We note with concern the sentence meted out. As he is
known to be suffering from high blood pressure and is not in
the best of health, we appeal to the Chinese authorities to
show him leniency and compassion,” it said in a statement.

China is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with at
least 32 in custody and another 50 Internet campaigners also in
prison, rights group Reporters Without Borders says.

A PATTERN OF CASES

On Friday, a Beijing court dismissed charges that a Chinese
researcher for the New York Times had illegally leaked state
secrets, but sentenced him to three years for fraud.

Zhao Yan, 44, had been accused of telling the U.S.
newspaper details of rivalry between Chinese President Hu
Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, over military
appointments in 2004.

Days before Zhao’s sentencing, China jailed blind human
rights activist Chen Guangcheng for four years and three months
for damaging property and disrupting traffic in what critics
considered an unusually harsh sentence.

Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China,
said she had serious concerns about the case.

“Coming close on the heels of the sentences announced for
Zhao Yan and Chen Guangcheng, this sentence also sends a
chilling message to journalists, lawyers and other rights
defenders,” she said via e-mail.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association was “very
dissatisfied” with the verdict and the lack of transparency,
said spokeswoman Serenade Woo. Ching was likely to appeal, she
said.

Allen Lee, a Hong Kong delegate of China’s parliament and a
friend of Ching, said the sentence was harsh.

“It’s hard to imagine that he’d do anything damaging to the
Chinese government,” said Lee.

Xinhua last year said Ching had received millions of Hong
Kong dollars from Taiwan’s intelligence apparatus and used the
money to buy unspecified information on China’s political,
economy and military affairs between 2000 and 2005.

The China-born Ching, like many Hong Kong residents, holds
a passport of the Special Administrative Region as well as a
British National (Overseas) passport issued in the waning days
of British colonial rule. He is also a Singapore permanent
resident.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret in Hong Kong and
Chris Buckley and Benjamin Kang Lim in Beijing)