Matter of minutes: Why Cheng Lei did not see her family for three years

Australian journalist Cheng Lei was imprisoned in a Beijing cell because she broke an embargo on a Chinese government briefing by just a few minutes, leading to national security charges that would cut her off from her two children for the past three years.

In an interview with Sky News correspondent Annelise Nielsen on Tuesday, Cheng said she had been told while being held for six months in isolation that she had eroded the state’s authority and had “hurt the motherland” through her actions.

Australian journalist Cheng Lei, seen here on air on Chinese English-language news channel CGTN, has returned to Australia after a long period of detention in China.Credit: CGTN

“The aim [is] to drive home that point,” she said. “That in China, that is a big sin.”

Media embargoes are widely used in Australia and around the world as a public relations strategy by governments, companies and organisations to ensure that information is digested and then distributed by news networks at the same time.

“What seems innocuous to us here - and I’m sure it is not limited to embargoes, but many other things - are not in China,” she said.

Cheng did not reveal the details of the government briefing document she had released.

“I was in the business of telling people things. So you can imagine how much I have wanted to tell my story because I know this is what everyone is curious about,” she said.

“But I’m also conscious of the fact, or I’m given to understand that I can’t really divulge details or specifics.”

But she did confirm that she broke the embargo on the government document only by a few minutes.

The comments are the first time Cheng has revealed the reasons for her detention in August 2020.

Nielsen, a former colleague of Cheng at Chinese state TV network CGTN, and Cheng’s partner Nick Coyle have campaigned publicly for her release for the past three years.

The arrest sent shockwaves through the media and business communities in Beijing and came at the height of tensions between Australia and China over COVID-19, human rights and economic disputes between the two trading partners.

Fellow Australian, Yang Hengjun, a pro-democracy writer, was detained a year earlier and remains in jail in Beijing on unspecified national security charges.

Cheng said on the day that Chinese authorities first took her into detention, a senior executive at CGTN told her to urgently come into the office in Beijing to discuss a new series she was working on.

“So I get to this big meeting room and 20 people are there and then someone stands up and shows his badge and says you are wanted,” she said. “Immediately they take my belongings away, and then I’m escorted to my apartment.”

Hinting that she may be going away for a while, the state security officials told her she should turn off her power and water and have something to eat.

Cheng made herself a cheese and avocado toasted sandwich. It was the last thing she would eat outside jail for the next three years.

The first six months under China’s program of Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location [RSDL] were the hardest of her years in jail. The RSDL system allows Chinese authorities to interrogate detainees without a lawyer for six months in an attempt to extract a confession.

“It’s to make you feel isolated, and bored and pained and desperate,” she said. “The final month was just 12 hours a day of pure sitting and very little chance to get up and just pace around a very little room.”

Cheng said she was told she would be given 15 minutes of fresh air a day, but that just meant a guard would open a small window at the top of the room with the curtains still drawn. The lights were on 24 hours a day.

“Every dream was a nightmare because if it was a good dream, waking up was worse,” she said.

Cheng says memories of kindness helped sustain her during her detention.

“I had recurring dreams about my children who were still little and there was no car seat, and I couldn’t help them when there was an accident,” she said. “I had dreams about trying to reach Nick on the phone and the phone would be taken away.”

The first time she thought the nightmare might end was when she was told she would be sentenced last week.

“My exact words were ‘about bloody time’,” she said.

“[My feet] were shackled into the court van. [I was] led down the corridor to go to a normal toilet. And that was the first time I had sat on a toilet in over three years. I come out and there’s a mirror. Again, it was the first time in over three years...[I was] looking really pale and frail.”

Australian journalist Cheng Lei and her partner, Nick Coyle.Credit: The Age/ Getty Images

On Wednesday, Cheng was reunited with her children, her mother and her partner in Melbourne.

“[I see] my kids running at me and my mum who has aged a lot in three years,” she said. “We just all screamed and my mum wept. I just held on to them.”

The past week has been challenging for her to re-adjust to life outside a Beijing jail cell.

“Sometimes I feel like an invalid, like a newborn and very fragile. And other times I feel like I could fly and I want to embrace everything,” she said.

“Because of this whole ordeal, I keep expecting people to drop out of the sky and arrest me. Or something will happen to my children. I have to make up for you know, absent mummy for the next few years.”

Cheng Lei has returned to Australia

In jail, Cheng would pretend she was listening to FM radio making love song dedications to pass the time.

When she got back in the car in Melbourne, one of the first songs she heard was The Boys of Summer.

“If there was a nuclear holocaust, there would still be some Australian radio station playing The Boys of Summer,” she said.

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