Last month PEN and other human rights organisations renewed their call for the release of Yang Hengjun (whose legal name is Yang Jun), a writer and Australian citizen who is currently in prison in China, where in 2024 he received a suspended death sentence. Recent media reports suggest his health has deteriorated as a result of ill-treatment during detention.

A writer of spy novels, an academic and a political commentator, Yang has described himself as a ‘democracy pedlar’, and was well known for his outspoken commentary on Chinese public affairs. A former Chinese diplomat and an agent for China’s Ministry of State Security, Yang worked in the private sector in Hong Kong before moving to Australia in 1999, where he earned a PhD at the University of Technology Sydney. He became an Australian citizen in 2002. Before his arrest, he was living in the United States and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University. 

Yang was detained in January 2019 by the Chinese security services after flying from the United States to China with his wife and her child, both Chinese citizens, on a visa run. He was initially held at a secret location for six months – a notorious form of extrajudicial detention known as ‘residential surveillance at a designated location’ – and was reportedly tortured. In August 2019, Yang was formally arrested on suspicion of espionage. No evidence supporting the charge was disclosed to his family or consular representatives. 

During the following two years of pre-trial detention, Yang was denied family visits and had limited access to legal advice and consular assistance. He was reportedly subjected to over three hundred interrogations, and his request for the dismissal of the testimony he gave under torture was denied by the Chinese government. 

On 27 May 2021, Yang’s trial was finally held behind closed doors. It reportedly lasted less than seven hours. Australian consular representatives were denied permission to attend, a breach of both the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the bilateral Australia–China consular agreement. On 5 February 2024, two years and nine months after this flawed trial, Yang was sentenced to death (suspended for two years), and returned to custody. In mid-2024, he was transferred to Beijing Municipal No 2 Prison.

Since his transfer, Yang has suffered from ill health, including a large cyst on his kidney that has not been adequately treated. Media reports suggest that Yang’s health has worsened in recent months, impacting his ability to participate in the mandatory prison labour programme, which provides detainees with an allowance to purchase basic necessities, including food and cold-weather clothing. Unable to work, Yang cannot afford toothpaste and is forced to wear socks on his hands instead of gloves.

In China, denial of medical care is routinely used as a form of punishment for those detained on political grounds. Writer and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo was belatedly diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer while serving an eleven-year prison sentence. One month after his diagnosis, Liu died in a hospital bed under police guard, raising serious questions about his treatment.

The severity of Yang’s sentence serves as a chilling reminder of the Chinese authorities’ eagerness to use the legal system to silence dissidents. According to a statement released last year by Australia’s minister for foreign affairs, Penny Wong, Yang’s sentence will only be commuted to life imprisonment if he does not commit any ‘serious crimes’ in a two-year period. Ma Thida, chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, said: 

Reports of the appalling treatment of imprisoned writer Yang Hengjun are deeply painful, highlighting the Chinese authorities’ failure to provide adequate medical care for those detained on politically motivated grounds. It is distressing to see his health deteriorate under such conditions. We stand with him and continue to call for his immediate release, as well as for the care he deserves while unjustly detained. 

Yang’s friend Feng Chongyi, an academic living in Sydney, told the BBC, ‘He is punished by the Chinese government for his criticism of human rights abuses in China and his advocacy for universal values such as human rights, democracy and the rule of law.’

In 2019 The Guardian published a short extract from Yang’s first spy novel, Fatal Weakness, in which the protagonist, Yang Wenfeng, is hauled in for questioning by the police: ‘You’ve spent time in America; they say people there only tell the truth when talking to their priests and their psychologists, but lie when talking to police, if they talk at all. I have to warn you, this is China, where the people tell the police and The Party the truth.’ There’s a bitter irony to these words, given Yang’s current situation.

Readers might like to send appeals urging the Chinese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Yang Hengjun and seeking assurances that he has adequate access to food and medical care while he remains imprisoned, in accordance with China’s international human rights obligations.

Appeals to be addressed to:

His Excellency Zheng Zeguang
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
49–51 Portland Place, London W1B 1JL
Fax: 020 7636 2981
Email: political_uk@mfa.gov.cn