A court in Beijing has sentenced a prominent Chinese journalist to seven in years in prison for espionage, his family said.
Dong Yuyu (pic), a commentator and editor, was taken away by police while meeting a Japanese diplomat at a restaurant in February 2022.
He has been in police custody since then.
The Beijing Number 2 Intermediate People’s Court read the verdict but did not share a copy with Dong’s lawyers or family.
No announcement was available on the court’s website or its Weibo account.
The verdict named then-Japanese ambassador Hideo Tarumi and Shanghai-based chief diplomat Masaru Okada as agents belonging to an espionage organisation, according the family’s statement.
Dong had served as the deputy head of the editorial department at Guangming Daily, one of the five major state-owned papers in China, which was once considered more liberal than other state-backed papers.
Dong also contributed to the Chinese edition of The New York Times.
In his published writings, including essays and opinion articles, Dong had voiced his support for constitutional democracy and political reform, which later were considered to be against the stance of the Communist Party.
He had contacts with foreign diplomats, scholars and other journalists as part of his decades-long career and counted Tarumi, the ambassador, as a friend. — AP
