Ten years since arrest of Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong in Shenzhen
On April 22, 2005, Ching Cheong was detained while returning to Hong Kong. He would spend more than 1,000 days in prison on the mainland. To mark the anniversary of his detention, presented here is a feature Post Magazine first published in February, 2013.
''Unrepentant” was a word that became prominent in China during the Cultural Revolution, when Deng Xiaoping’s adversaries labelled him an “unrepentant capitalist-roader”. But the late paramount leader spent no time in jail or in chains. Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong has perhaps more of a claim to the word; having spent almost three years in jail on an espionage charge he denies, he declares he remains unrepentant for loving his country.
The title of his account of the ordeal, published last year, is, in direct translation: “My 1,000 Unrepentant Days”. Speaking on the eve of the launch of the English edition, published by Straits Times Press and titled My 1,000 Days Ordeal: A Patriot's Torture, Ching looks positively upbeat.
“I have no regrets whatsoever. In fact, my 1,000 days in prison are an empowerment. They allowed me to reflect deeply on why China can survive a long history of ‘unjust, false and wrong cases’, as the saying goes, and how to put a stop to it,” says the reporter for Singapore’s The Straits Times newspaper.
His conviction was reflected in the first prayer he said after his conversion to Christianity in jail: “God, please give me strength, so that I can walk firmly on my path of patriotism, and strive for China’s reform and opening up, democracy and freedom, and peaceful unification.”
“Is anyone bringing dad here?” he asked at the family reunion, shortly after he was released and returned to Hong Kong, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, 2008. When he was told his father had died in 2006 – and that the news had been kept from him for his own sake – he fell to his knees wailing, “Father, I am very sorry; I have not been a good son, please forgive me.”