Beijing [China], August 28 : A Chinese-Australian writer who has been imprisoned in China for more than four years has expressed his fear that he would pass away in prison after an enormous cyst was discovered on his kidney, CNN reported.
Accused of spying, the Australian citizen and democracy campaigner named Yang Hengjun was imprisoned in 2019 while visiting family in China and was charged with espionage, which he has refused.
A Beijing court held his trial in secret in 2021 but a verdict has been repeatedly delayed.
Yang, 58, said in a letter to his followers last Thursday that he has been dealing with discomfort and pain in his kidney for a few months. According to the letter, a doctor informed Yang that he has a kidney-squeezing cyst of 10 centimetres (almost 4 inches) following a recent physical, CNN reported.
“If something happens with my health and I die in here, people outside won’t know the truth,” Yang said in the message. “If something happens to me, who can speak for me?,” he said in the letter, according to CNN.
In May 2021, Yang was charged with espionage in Beijing and is currently awaiting a decision. The verdict has been announced ten times, each time for three months, and the upcoming likely decision date is October 9.
Feng Chongyi, Yang's friend and former PhD dissertation supervisor at the University of Technology, Sydney, encouraged the Australian government to work with other governments to pressure China to release Yang on medical parole.
“Yang Hengjun has been subjected to arbitrary detention in China by Chinese secret police for more than four years and his life is in danger,” he said, according to CNN.
Human rights campaigners have time and again accused the ruling Communist Party of China of committing widespread abuses in the name of security, steps which include confining people to internment camps, forcibly separating families and carrying out forced sterilization.
Yang, a Chinese national by birth, had previously held a position in the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Despite having Australian citizenship, Yang spent the majority of his time there, according to CNN.
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