Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court yesterday sentenced Hong Kong resident Ching Cheong, a journalist for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, to five years in prison on charges of spying for Taiwan.

According to the verdict, Ching is also deprived of political rights for one year and his personal property worth 300,000 yuan (US$37,500) has been confiscated.

"The penalty is a mitigated one considering that after Ching was detained, he voluntarily confessed to more espionage activities than those the state security departments had known about. He also gave up his notebook computer, which contained evidence of espionage, to the authorities," announced a statement released by the court.

According to the statement, when he worked in Taiwan as a journalist for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, Ching became acquainted with two people from a Taiwan foundation, named Xue and Dai.

It was revealed that the foundation was in truth an espionage organization that Xue and Dai were members of, and that Ching had full knowledge of this. The court heard that, at their request, he supplied information pertaining to state secrets and intelligence he received from contacts in Beijing to Xue and Dai via fax and email from May 2004 to April 2005.

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) Chief Executive Donald Tsang said yesterday the SAR government must respect the "one country, two systems" principle when rendering assistance to Ching's family's, adding that since the Chinese mainland authorities have ruled on the case, the SAR government will not comment on the details.

(China Daily September 1, 2006)