Chinese authorities have reportedly indicted a veteran journalist for espionage over a year after detaining him for meeting with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing.
Dong Yuyu, 61, was arrested in February 2022 while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat at a restaurant in a Beijing hotel. The diplomat was also detained for questioning but was later released.
Dong has since remained in custody, and his family has kept his detention a secret, hoping the charges will be reduced or dismissed. But they learned last month that Dong would be tried for espionage.
“[The family’s hope] was that investigators could understand that his foreign ties were not suspicious but a normal part of his job and a normal interaction between peoples in most parts of the world,” his family said in a statement, according to The Washington Post….