Chinese journalist Gao Yu faces life sentence for leaking state secrets
Gao Yu, an outspoken liberal journalist, denies charges as she goes on trial in Beijing
Gao Yu was arrested in April and charged with feeding a secret document to ‘an overseas website’ Photo: AFP
Beijing10:09AM GMT 21 Nov 2014
A prominent liberal Chinese journalist has denied that she “leaked state secrets” during a four-hour trial in Beijing.
Gao Yu, 70, was arrested in April and charged with feeding a secret document from the Communist party’s central leadership to “an overseas website”.
Two weeks after her arrest, Ms Gao appeared on state television to “confess” her crimes.
“I believe what I have done touched on legal issues, and has harmed the national interest,” Ms Gao said in the broadcast.
“On this point, what I have done is extremely wrong. I sincerely accept the lesson and plead guilty.”
In court, however, Ms Gao retracted the confession, saying it had been made under duress. Her son, Zhao Meng, also vanished in April.
Mo Shaoping, her lawyer, said her son has also been charged with leaking state secrets, is being monitored and is currently in Hebei province on an escorted “holiday”.
Police officers and plain-clothed agents forced journalists to leave the area around the No.3 People’s Intermediate Court in Beijing and Ms Gao’s trial was closed to the public because it involved state secrets.
Chinese authorities have not confirmed which document Ms Gao leaked, but some speculated it was “Document No.9”, an internal Communist party memo calling for cadres to be vigilant against Western ideas such as “universal values” and “Western-style journalism”. Mrs Gao faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if found guilty.
Ms Gao has been jailed before for “leaking state secrets”. In 1993 she used two anodyne quotations of Deng Xiaoping, China’s former paramount leader, that had not yet been publicly released on the mainland.
