“You see these things in movies. It feels very Hollywood, but it's unnerving,” said Dale Buckner, CEO of Global Guardian, an American private security company. The Wall Street Journal.
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The severity of Yang's sentence – the highest ever imposed on a foreigner for espionage – shocked even the most seasoned observers.
John Cam, who has worked with prisoners in China for more than three decades, said it was “unheard of.”
Richard MacGregor, a fellow at the Lowy Institute, said it put “on wide display the opacity of the Chinese legal system” and its “vindictiveness toward people who challenge it.”
Lawyers condemned the legal system for holding the trial behind closed doors, as well as years of pre-charge detention and restrictions on independent legal advice.
Greg McIntyre, president of the Law Council of Australia, said: “The sentence against Dr Yang falls short of international standards.”
Yang's suspended death sentence shattered the illusion that foreigners were likely to face a lighter sentence in the Chinese system.credit: Bloomberg
Yang's treatment is not unusual, the norm in a country with an increasingly punitive legal system aimed at extracting confessions to maintain a 99 percent conviction rate.
Despite the death threat, Yang has always maintained his innocence of the vague spying allegations against him. Human rights groups estimate there are 5,000 foreigners in Chinese prisons. At least 50 of them are Australian.
The day after Yang's sentencing, Chinese activist Li Qiaozhou was convicted of “subverting state power” after she published articles about the torture of her imprisoned partner, Xu Zhiyong.
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Li will now join Xu and more than a million other local residents behind bars, after being sentenced to nearly four years in prison.
Yang's suspended death sentence shattered the illusion that foreigners were likely to face a lighter sentence in the Chinese system. Perhaps it was because he did not give in to it.
“I have no fear now. I will never compromise,” he said in a letter to his two sons before his trial in Beijing. “I love you all and know that I am loved.”
