The Australian Left's appalling silence on Cheng Lei
Advocates for Julian Assange have nothing to say on journalist detained by China
Right now there are two Australian journalists being held in foreign jails for a prolonged period: Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has been fighting in British courts American extradition request on espionage and hacking indictments since April 2019; Cheng Lei, a business program host for China’s state TV CGTN, was arrested over three years ago in Beijing and awaiting court verdict on unspecified national security related charges.
Both Assange and Cheng were accused of being a national security threat to powerful nations by leaking government secrets; both were treated arbitrarily and unfairly, according to their respective supporters. However the public statements and reactions of the Australian political left tell a different story: avalanche of advocacy for Assange, and almost nothing showing any concern for Cheng apart from the Government.
On 9th May, Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, Greens Senator David Shoebridge along with three other members of the Bring Assange Home Parliamentary Group met with US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy to raise “the widespread concern in Australia about the ongoing attempts by the US to extradite Mr Assange to America”. There is no similar parliamentary group for Cheng, and no reports of any parliamentary delegation to the Chinese Embassy to demand her release.
On the same day, former Labor Foreign Minister and NSW Premier Bob Carr went on ABC radio blasting the pursuing of Assange by the “American security state”, calling it “nonsense” and “bullshit”. A week earlier he claimed in a statement that America treats Australia with “contempt”, like “a client state” and “push over”.
Carr has tweeted more than twenty times for Assange in the last decade, ironically one of which was him defending the Australian Government’s handling of the situation while he was Foreign Minister, claiming “Assange had more consular support than any Australian in a comparable time”.
But a search of Carr’s Twitter history reveals no mention at all for Cheng Lei, and his only publicly available comment about her detention was in an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald in which he referred to Cheng (and another Australian citizen held in China, Dr Yang Hengjun) merely in a matter-of-fact way as “hostages”. No moral outrage. No talk of “client state”. No condemnation of the Chinese Government for holding Australians hostage.
Go to the twitter pages of Adam Bandt, leader of the Greens, and Senator Shoebridge, you will find dozens upon dozens of tweets calling for release of Assange and condemnation of the US and British governments. There was exactly one post from Bandt mentioning Cheng over two years ago expressing concern. The only tweet from Shoebridge on Cheng’s case was when he complained about the perceived lack of government representation for Assange compared to Cheng.
Last month more than fifty MPs signed an open letter calling for Assange’s release, including every MPs and Senators of the Greens. Yet none of them, with the notable exception of Labor MP for Wills, Peter Khalil, participated in another open letter in July 2022 in support of Cheng (among the signatories were high profile ex-politicians John Howard, Alexander Downer and Gareth Evans).
The same pattern of behavior applies to prominent left wing journalists, such as John Pilger and Mary Kostakidis, who have constantly expressed support for Assange but kept silent about Cheng’s treatment by Beijing. Kostakidis even tried to whitewash China’s action tweeting that “Both Russia and China who have now charged journalists can just point to Assange. A good reason to remove him as an excuse for other countries”
In a remarkable display of chutzpah, the hard-left online magazine Pearls and Irritations last month attacked Foreign Minister Penny Wong for her “double standard” in calling for “acceptable standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms” for Cheng, but not for Assange (Wong did express her concern later in an address to the National Press Club that Assange’s legal case and imprisonment had been going on for too long and should end). While numerous commentaries condemned US pursuit of Assange, there is not one article critical of Cheng’s imprisonment on John Menadue’s website.
But let me actually compare Assange and Cheng’s situations head on:
Assange was charged by the US for 18 counts of conspiracy to commit computer hacking and espionage. The indictments and evidence of his alleged criminal activities have been publicly available and clear. The charges against Cheng by Chinese prosecutors were vague and unspecified. Three years on to this day, the world still doesn’t know exactly what crime she was accused of committing.
While there are concerns about the conditions of Belmarsh prison where Assange is held, overall he has been afforded full protection of the law and procedural fairness under the British legal system. The protracted legal proceedings were caused by his appeal to court rulings and his current imprisonment is entirely his own making, after breaching his bail by hiding inside the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape charges (by the way a shameful display of hypocrisy by the left, which has been advocating loudly for women in the Me-too movement but chose to stand by Assange in his sexual assault allegations). For Cheng’s trial, Australian diplomats were denied entry to observe court proceedings in contravention of relevant Aus-China consular agreement. She has not been allowed to communicate with her two young children throughout the entire period of imprisonment. She has not been presented with evidence or witnesses. While a typical death penalty trial in China can only take a few days to conclude, her prosecution has been going on for over three years and a court decision has been delayed many times with no explanations given.
In Britain and America, supporters of Assange have utilized all the tools a free and democratic society provides, through lobbying, interviews, publications, petitions to argue for his release, while China, being one of the harshest censorship regimes in the world, doesn’t allow any advocacy for her in the public arena.
If Assange is extradited to the US, his legal team has the opportunity to argue before the judges to have the charges examined on constitutional grounds of press freedom, and the court has the independence and the power to quash the charges if they see fit. The Chinese judicial system is strictly under the political leadership of the Communist Party. The timing of Cheng’s arrest (right after AFP’s search of homes of Chinese journalists in Australia), the lack of evidence against her, and the numerous precedents of Chinese Government taking foreigners hostage for diplomatic bargaining give us no assurance that her trial was conducted fairly.
Supporters of Assange insist his extradition is an attack on press freedom. According to Reporters Without Borders, China ranks second last, just one spot above North Korea, in their 2023 World Press Freedom Index, with more than a hundred journalists in jail. The left’s collective silence on Cheng is an appalling example of double standard and hypocrisy. Justin Bassi, Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s executive director, attributed it to “fear of being punished by China for any criticism versus the confidence that the US and Britain will rationally engage”.
That’s too charitable. I think the Australian left has been so consumed by their jihad against the US “hegemony”, the “deep state”, the “military industrial complex”, that they don’t see and don’t care about injustice perpetrated by China, or other geo-political competitors of the US, because the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
Enemy of my enemy is my friend.... kind of like CCP starting a civil war when Japan is slicing parts of your country off...still I’m not sure Assange is worth protecting, his revelation of secrets probably caused deaths of undercover agents and informers- good people.