Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court yesterday sentenced
Hong Kong resident Ching Cheong, a journalist for Singapore's
Straits Times newspaper, to five years in prison on
charges of spying for Taiwan.
According to the verdict, Ching is also deprived of political
rights for one year and his personal property worth 300,000 yuan
(US$37,500) has been confiscated.
"The penalty is a mitigated one considering that after Ching was
detained, he voluntarily confessed to more espionage activities
than those the state security departments had known about. He also
gave up his notebook computer, which contained evidence of
espionage, to the authorities," announced a statement released by
the court.
According to the statement, when he worked in Taiwan as a
journalist for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, Ching
became acquainted with two people from a Taiwan foundation, named
Xue and Dai.
It was revealed that the foundation was in truth an espionage
organization that Xue and Dai were members of, and that Ching had
full knowledge of this. The court heard that, at their request, he
supplied information pertaining to state secrets and intelligence
he received from contacts in Beijing to Xue and Dai via fax and
email from May 2004 to April 2005.
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) Chief Executive
Donald Tsang said yesterday the SAR government must respect the
"one country, two systems" principle when rendering assistance to
Ching's family's, adding that since the Chinese mainland
authorities have ruled on the case, the SAR government will not
comment on the details.
(China Daily September 1, 2006)