{"id":1411533,"date":"2022-03-30T21:15:01","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T01:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1411533"},"modified":"2022-03-30T21:15:11","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T01:15:11","slug":"australian-journalist-cheng-lei-faces-trial-in-beijing-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/australian-journalist-cheng-lei-faces-trial-in-beijing-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian journalist Cheng Lei faces trial in Beijing court"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Faustralian-journalist-cheng-lei-faces-trial-in-beijing-court%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1411533&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/2022-03-31T002311Z_1_LYNXNPEI2U00K_RTROPTP_0_AUSTRALIA-CHINA-CHENGLEI-TRIAL_1.jpg\" alt=\"People walk outside the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People&#039;s Court, where Australian journalist Cheng Lei is expected to face trial on state secrets charges, in Beijing\" \/><br \/>People walk outside the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People&#8217;s Court, where Australian journalist Cheng Lei is expected to face trial on state secrets charges, in Beijing, China March 31, 2022. REUTERS\/Florence Lo<\/div>\n<p>March 31, 2022<\/p>\n<p>By Martin Quin Pollard<\/p>\n<p>BEIJING (Reuters) -Australian journalist Cheng Lei was due to face trial in a heavily-guarded Beijing court on Thursday on state secrets charges after more than 19 months in detention. <\/p>\n<p>Cheng, who was a television anchor for Chinese state broadcaster CGTN before being detained in August 2020, was formally arrested a year ago on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas. <\/p>\n<p>Cheng\u2019s family members have said they are convinced she is innocent.<\/p>\n<p>Outside the No.2 People\u2019s Intermediate Court where Cheng was to be tried on Thursday morning, a heavy security presence included uniformed police and plain-clothed security personnel. Police, who had taped off areas close to the north entrance of the court, checked journalists\u2019 IDs and asked them to move away.<\/p>\n<p>Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement on Saturday that her ministry had asked Chinese officials that Australian officials be allowed to attend Cheng\u2019s hearing in line with a consular agreement between the two nations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe expect basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms,\u201d her statement read.<\/p>\n<p>Payne said Australian officials have had regular visits with Cheng, most recently on March 21.<\/p>\n<p>Australia has previously said it was concerned about Cheng\u2019s welfare and conditions of detention and what it said was a \u201clack of transparency\u201d over the case. <\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s courts have a conviction rate of well over 99%, according to calculations by China Justice Observer, a local web portal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer two children and elderly parents miss her immensely and sincerely hope to reunite with her as soon as possible,\u201d Cheng\u2019s family said in a statement provided to Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>At a news conference earlier this week, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman did not directly respond to a Reuters query on whether Australian officials would be permitted to attend, but did say that Cheng\u2019s rights would be fully guaranteed.<\/p>\n<p>Last May, in a separate case at the same court, Australia\u2019s ambassador to China was denied entry to the trial of Australian blogger Yang Hengjun, who was accused of espionage. In a trial last March of Canadian former diplomat Michael Kovrig in the same court, Canadian officials were denied entry. <\/p>\n<p>Cheng was born in China and moved with her parents to Australia as a child. Later she returned to China where she built a television career first with CNBC, starting in 2003, and later, starting from 2012, as a prominent business news anchor for China\u2019s English-language CGTN. <\/p>\n<p>The trial comes as diplomatic relations between Australia and China remain tense, after Canberra urged an international probe into the source of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and Beijing responded with trade reprisals.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard in Beijing and Kirsty Needham in SydneyEditing by Tony Munroe and Raju Gopalakrishnan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People walk outside the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People&#8217;s Court, where Australian journalist Cheng Lei is expected to face trial on state secrets charges, in Beijing, China March 31, 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1411533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}