YANG Hengjun (legal name, Yang Jun)
A writer, scholar and political commentator with Australian citizenship, Yang Hengjun is held under a suspended death sentence with reprieve after conviction of ‘espionage’. Yang has been in various forms of detention since January 2019, after he returned to China from the US with his family. Yang was initially held at a secret location for six months in a notorious form of incommunicado detention called ‘Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location’, where he was reportedly tortured. In August 2019, Yang was formally arrested on suspicion of ‘espionage’ without any evidence supporting the charge disclosed to his family or consular representatives (see Case Lists 2023/2024, 2022, 2020 and 2019). On 5 February 2024, reports emerged that Yang Hengjun had been handed down a suspended death sentence with reprieve, a penalty in Chinese law where a death sentence may be reduced to a sentence of life imprisonment after a two-year period of ‘good behaviour’.
Throughout his more-than-two years of pre-trial detention, Yang was denied family visits and was granted limited access to legal counsel and consular visits. He was reportedly subjected to over 300 interrogations and his request for the dismissal of testimony he gave under torture was denied by the Chinese government. On 27 May 2021, Yang’s trial was held behind closed doors and reportedly lasted less than seven hours, with his consular representatives denied the ability to attend, a breach of both the Vienna Convention and the Australia-China bilateral consular agreement. There are ongoing concerns for his health and wellbeing after he was diagnosed with a painful cyst on his kidney in 2023. PEN International has learned that Yang was transferred to Beijing Municipal No. 2 Prison in June 2024.
Yang Hengjun, born on 18 April 1965, is a novelist, scholar and political commentator, said to be an ex-employee of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, who is committed to the advancement of human rights and greater freedoms in China. Yang is the author of the Fatal Weakness spy trilogy, which was reportedly banned in China but has been shared widely online among Chinese diasporas. He also has a significant following on Chinese social media for his online blog posts, which frequently highlight democratic values, earning him the nickname ‘Democracy Peddler’ among his followers.