October 25, 2017
Protesters in Hong Kong last year with pictures of Gui Minhai, third from left, and other missing booksellers. Their disappearances raised questions about the rule of law in the semiautonomous city.
Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
HONG KONG — A co-owner of a Hong Kong publishing house who has been held in China for two years has not been heard from, despite assertions by the Chinese authorities that he was released last week, his daughter said Tuesday.
The publisher, Gui Minhai, was a co-owner of Mighty Current Media and its bookshop in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong, which sold popular, thinly sourced potboilers about China’s leaders. The mysterious detention of Mr. Gui and four of his colleagues two years ago raised questions about the rule of law in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city, and efforts by China to silence critics beyond its borders.
Mr. Gui, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen, disappeared from his home in Thailand on Oct. 17, 2015. He appeared on Chinese state television in January 2016, giving what appeared to be a forced confession to a drunken-driving fatality in China more than a decade earlier. He said he had returned to China voluntarily to face justice, but his supporters said they believed he had been kidnapped as part of an effort to shut down an irritant to China’s ruling Communist Party.
Four other men associated with the publishing house were also detained and were later released. One, Lee Bo, disappeared off the streets of Hong Kong, but denied he had been kidnapped. Another, Lam Wing-kee, spoke out after he was released last year, describing long periods of solitary confinement and a forced confession.
Swedish diplomats said they had been told by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Mr. Gui would be released on Oct. 17, his daughter, Angela Gui, said in a written statement Tuesday. But when diplomats went that day to the place where he was being held, they were told he had been released at midnight, she said.
“They were also told that he was ‘free to travel’ and that they had no idea where he was,” she wrote.
Ms. Gui said she had not heard from her father since, nor had any of his friends or other family members. She wrote that the Swedish Consulate in Shanghai reported receiving a call on Monday from a Swedish-speaking man who claimed to be Mr. Gui, and who said he would apply for a passport in one or two months but first wanted to spend time with his ailing mother.
“To my knowledge my grandmother is not ill,” Ms. Gui wrote. “My father is not in fact with her. It is still very unclear where he is. I am deeply concerned for his well-being.”
Sofia Karlberg, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, said that “according to information from the Chinese authorities, Mr. Gui Minhai has been released in China.” But she would not say when the ministry had received the information, or whether its diplomats had had direct contact with Mr. Gui.
Elisabeth Asbrink, chairwoman of the Swedish chapter of PEN International, the writers’ group, expressed doubt that Mr. Gui was free. “We are very glad if this is true, but if this is true, it is an anomaly,” she said by telephone, adding that China was “completely unreliable” on human rights issues.
Margot Wallstrom, Sweden’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter that her government was “still occupied” with the matter and was “seeking further clarification.”
Over the past week, the Communist Party of China has been holding its twice-a-decade party congress, during which a new lineup of leaders is unveiled. President Xi Jinping’s name and ideology were written into the party constitution during the congress.
The party considers the congress period to be sensitive, and outspoken critics are sometimes sent on forced trips outside Beijing and other major cities until it is over. With the end of Mr. Gui’s two-year sentence coming just before the start of the event, the authorities may have wanted to prevent him from contacting the outside world.
“This week I have slept with my phone on my pillow waiting for my father to call,” Ms. Gui wrote. “I will continue to do so until he does.”
