Beijing cops diplomatic protest over treaty breach

Australia has lodged a diplomatic protest with Beijing over the detention of three Australian citizens originally from China.

Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun. Picture: AAP

Australia lodged a diplomatic protest with Beijing after a longstanding consular treaty with China was breached over the detention of three Australian citizens originally from the communis­t nation.

Canberra recently complaine­d about the speed with which diplomats were notified about the detention of Chinese-­Australian Yang Hengjun by Beijing’s security services, which also broke with the bilateral agreement.

Australia — unlike Britain, Canada and the US — has not updated its travel advice to includ­e a warning that Aust­ralian citizens who were previously Chinese nationals or had Chinese heritage have a greater chance of being treated like a Chinese citizen when detained.

Following Mr Yang’s detention, Chinese media warned that visitors with both Chinese and foreign passports would be treated as Chinese within China.

The three cases in question, which occurred in 2017, involved Australians citizens with Uighur heritage who were travelling under Australian passports. In two of the cases, China was late in notifying Australian authorities about the detention.

In a third case, government sources told The Australian that Chinese officials failed to notify Australian authorities that the person had been detained at all.

One of the detentions, first revealed by The Australian last June, involved an Australian citizen of Uighur ethnicity being held in a detention centre in the Xinjiang region in August 2017 for about a month during a visit to see family.

The source said Australia had complained about the delays through diplomatic channels.

On Friday, the department confirmed the protests were made in October and November 2017 via the Australian embassy in Beijing.

A former diplomat told The Australian it was “almost unheard of” for Australian authorities not to be notified in consular cases.

A Department of Foreign Affair­s and Trade official told a Senate estim­ates hearing last year about the detentions in the northwest China region. “Three indiv­iduals … have told us they were detained in Xinjian­g during the course of last year, but have since returned,” the DFAT official said. “In relation to the three Australians who had been detained for a period of, I think, only a matter of weeks, we only found out about that after they had left Xinjiang.”

China has been accused of detain­ing as many as a million of its nationals of Uighur or other Turkic ethnicities in the region in re-education centres.

While Australian travel advice warns nationals travelling to China that they could be treated as Chinese nationals if they travel on a Chinese passport, the US, Canada and Britain have updated their advice to warn citizens of Chinese heritage their citizenship could be ignored by Beijing.

Australian Uighur advocate Nurgul Sawut said yesterday that Australia should follow suit. “The Australian government (doesn’t think) if you had a Chinese passport previously and you get your Australian citizenship and you’re travelling to China, that will be a risk factor,” she said. “Still they don’t consider that’s a risk factor.

“When it comes to Uighur ­people, there’s no such alert, no such warning, no such travel notic­e. They should. Canada did. Why can’t Australia do the same thing?”

La Trobe international relations professor Nick Bisley said in the wake of the Yang case, Aust­ralian officials should consider changes to DFAT travel advice.

In January, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said there was no need for Australia to update its travel advice. Yesterday, she decline­d to comment when asked whether that position had changed.

DFAT’s Smart Traveller website said its advice was updated in October and remained current.

When Mr Yang was first detained­, Senator Payne said China had not informed Aust­ralian diplomats of his detention “in the most timely way”.

Under the agreement signed in 1999, if Chinese officials arrest an Australian citizen, they must notif­y Australian consular offic­ials within three days and allow for a consular visit to the detainee within two days of notification.