We suffer tremendous freedom guilt says Cheng Lei, after Chinese detention
The Australian-Chinese mother shone a light on the human costs of hostage diplomacy.
An emotional Cheng Lei has detailed the ongoing psychological costs of her detention in China and said she does not know why she was freed when the Australian-Chinese writer Yang Hengjun was sentenced to death.
‘The freedom guilt we all suffer is tremendous,’ Cheng told an audience in Canberra on Wednesday.
The Chinese-born Australian television journalist and mother-of-two was freed last October after spending three years in a Chinese jail. She was accused of endangering Chinese national security. After her release, she said her arrest related to breaking a media embargo by a few minutes.
She broke down in tears multiple times as she spoke alongside Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Sean Turnell, two Australians who were detained in Iran and Myanmar respectively before being freed after years of diplomatic negotiations.
Together, they launched The Australian Wrongfrul and Arbitrary Detention Alliance which they and their families founded to advocate for other people purposefully detained by foreign governments for political purposes.
One of those is the Australian-Chinese writer Yang Hengjun who was sentenced to death earlier this year following his arrest in 2019.
Asked why she thought the Chinese had treated her case so differently from Yang’s, Cheng was emotional.
‘It’s a very, very difficult question to answer,’ she said.
‘When I heard about his sentence I couldn’t stand still, it’s almost like we question why we’re here and they’re not.
‘And I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer.’
Cheng said her case would have been easier and clearer if she had been charged with murder, as she detailed the toll it had taken on her family.
‘If I had committed murder my situation would have been easier than that opaque, absolute isolation and mental torture,’ she said.
‘And to say that arbitrary detention only affects a few people would be utterly wrong.
‘It is like an earthquake that reverberates to this day that shakes everything to the core.
‘People ask me how I am and I find it very hard to say “fine thank you,'“ - I’m not fine.
‘I’m sleeping too little and trying to do too much because there is a huge crater that I am trying to fill.’
Her words were met with applause in a show of support by those attending the launch at the Canberra-based think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
The discussion was hosted by ASPI boss Justin Bassi who worked on their cases in his previous role as Chief of Staff to former foreign minister Marise Payne.
Cheng’s comments were made on the same day as China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in Canberra to meet Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
Wong raised Yang’s case with Wang and told him that Australians were ‘shocked’ by the sentence.
Much of Cheng and Yang’s time in detention was during the same period that Australia-China relations fell to an all-time low, following the former centre-right government’s tougher security stance on China and call for an inquiry into the origins of Covid.
Cheng has previously said she felt the attitude of the Chinese authorities toward her softened after the Australian Labor Party was elected to office in May 2022.
Wang did not attend Wong’s press conference held after their meeting.
Wong said the government was fulfilling its mission of stabilising the relationship, evidenced by China continuing to lift the tariffs Beijing imposed on Australian goods as punishment for its position on a Covid inquiry.
‘Stability is a good thing, and we seek a stable and productive and mature relationship with China,’ Wong said.
‘Australia will continue to be Australia; China will continue to be China.
‘We are bound by geography, by history, by our peoples, by our trade.
‘We know that there are differences that arise out of who we are and we want to manage them wisely.’
Wang issued an extremely warm statement in which he said that Australia-China relations were back on track.
‘Since China-Australia relations are on the right track, we must not hesitate, deviate or turn back,’ the statement said.
‘Now that the direction of progress is clear, we must strive to move forward steadily, well and far.’