The Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) has announced that Hong Kong senior journalist Ching Cheong, who is a correspondent for the Singapore daily Straits Times, disappeared from Guangzhou on April 22. The Singapore-resident journalist was reportedly detained and charged with “stealing state secrets” when he traveled to Guangzhou to acquire a manuscript of interviews with the former Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang.

Last year Cheong was the first person to report on a book about late ousted Party leader Zhao Ziyang, who was suffering from deteriorating health under house arrest stemming from his support for the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and later died in January. The book was written by Mr. Zong Fengming, a longtime friend of Zhao Ziyang.

The Chinese government has attempted to suppress the story of Zhao’s treatment and apparently lured Cheong to mainland China in order to prevent him from further reporting. Since his arrest by local State Security Bureau officials, authorities have reportedly threatened his wife and the Straits Times not to disclose any information concerning Cheong.

Cheong, 55, is a graduate of the University of Hong Kong and has been a journalist for 31 years. He was vice editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Hui Bao and the director of the paper’s Beijing office. After the 1989 June 4th massacre in Tiananmen Square, he was disappointed with the newspaper’s shifting stance towards support for Beijing’s crackdown on student unrest. He and several other colleagues left Wen Hui Bao and established an independent newspaper, Contemporary, where he became editor-in-chief of the monthly issue. While working at Contemporary, and later at the Straits Times, Cheong often harshly criticized the regime in Beijing.

The ICPC has expressed their deep concern over the detention of Ching Cheong and cited the arrest as yet another example of the continuing violation of free speech and persecution of journalists by the Chinese government. Last year, two journalists, Shi Tao and Zhao Yang, were arrested and received heavy sentences for allegedly “Revealing State Core Secrets.” The ICPC strongly condemned the actions, urged the world to turn its attention to the continual abuse of human rights in China, and demanded that China should immediately, and unconditionally release Cheong and other journalists who have wrongly been accused of spying.