Lena's Focus Story

Lena’s Focus Story:
China has freed the Hong Kong journalist, Ching Cheong, 58, who was jailed for charges of spying on Taiwan. Cheong was a correspondent for The Straits Times in Singapore and was released from a prison in Guangdong Province a few days before the Lunar New Year holiday. He spent nearliy two years out of the five-year sentence. It was not cleared why Cheong was freed. The chief executive of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang said “It is most gratifying that he could reunite with his family in time for the Spring Festival”. Cheong was sentences concerned selling state secrets to a Taiwan donation. Soon after Cheong’s arrest, he admitted to spying. Human rights campaigners in Hong Kong said that Choeng’s early arrest was valid, and the conviction had been flawed. The direstor of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, Law Yuk-kai, said, “It fell far short of the standards of criminal proof required under international human rights treaties, and there was no presumption of innocence.”