Brutality masquerades as justice

Diplomatic sensitivities tend to preclude the use of pejorative terms such as tyranny, oppression and torture. So we simply say this: China’s formal charging of Australian-Chinese writer Yang Hengjun after 14 months’ detention shows the Communist Party’s scant regard for the rights of those it perceives as dissidents. Dr Yang, an Australian citizen since 2002, has been shackled in heavy chains, bound to a stool from 7am to midnight and subjected to intensive interrogation to break him. Australian consular officials report Dr Yang’s cell has been constantly and brightly lit, with no respite, and that he was refused showers for a fortnight at a time, denied letters and messages from family and friends, and allowed to read books only by Chinese President Xi Jinping. He has been forced to swallow up to nine unknown tablets a day

Now he has been charged with espionage, a charge he emphatically denies, for which he could face the death penalty. Travelling with his wife, he was detained at Guangzhou airport in January last year en route to a conference in Shanghai from New York, where he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University. He was taken to an unknown “black prison”, to a subterranean concrete cage.

The timing of the charges is telling. China has moved against Dr Yang under the cover of COVID-19, its accidental legacy to the world, which it is now trying to use to win friends across Europe and Asia by dispensing masks, test kits and medicos to countries with failing health systems. Its supposed goodwill might look a little less insincere if it afforded overseas political prisoners procedural fairness.

As Foreign Minister Marise Payne said yesterday, crises are a time for nations to pull together. But China’s treatment of Dr Yang shows its ruthless disregard for human rights has not improved. Dr Yang’s treatment also sends a clear message to the widespread Chinese diaspora. If they criticise the communist regime and revisit their homeland they do so at their peril.

China’s conduct makes a mockery of the store it says it places on its membership of the UN Human Rights Council — a useless charade of an organisation at best. Dr Yang’s treatment also exposes the hollowness of claims by the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, at a Canberra press conference in December. Dr Yang’s legal rights “are well protected” and his health was “in good condition”, Mr Cheng claimed. China expected Australia to “respect China’s judicial sovereignty”. That demand cannot be taken seriously when Dr Yang has not had access to legal representation.

After initially voicing Australia’s deep concerns clearly and loudly, the Morrison government has advocated on Dr Yang’s behalf discreetly, with the aim of giving China a diplomatic “off ramp”. That was prudent. But Australia deserves a more considered response to its representations than that of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which last year “deplored” Senator Payne’s comments, tactful as they were. The official demanded that Australia “stop interfering in the handling of the case by the Chinese side and stop making irresponsible remarks”. While China continues to fail the test of justice, Australia must hold fast to our values, protect our citizens as far as possible and raise the alarm internationally when grave injustices such as this are done to Australians.