Australian journalist Chen Lei, who has been detained in China for three years, stressed that she misses her children and the sun in a rare message released on Thursday during a consular visit, AFP reported.

“Most of all, I miss my kids,” she said in this message, which was shared by Australian media and her boyfriend Nick Coyle on X. And “I miss the sun,” she says.

“The sun shines through the window of my cell, but I can only be in the sun for 10 hours a year,” she says, listing other difficult aspects of her imprisonment: she hasn’t seen a tree in three years, and her bed linen has only been aired once. year and so on

Chen Lei, who worked for China’s English-language state broadcaster CGTN, was detained in August 2020. The mother of two children, who were 9 and 11 at the time of her arrest, is being prosecuted by Beijing for “divulging state secrets abroad,” which did not provide any details.

She was tried behind closed doors in March, without the Australian ambassador, and sentenced to life in prison.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she asked her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Jakarta last month about Chen Lei and another Australian citizen, writer Yang Hengjun, who is also imprisoned in China under unknown circumstances.

Relations between Australia and China, its most important trading partner, have recently eased after several years of misunderstandings.