Bookseller Gui Minhai snatched again by Chinese authorities: reports

Hong Kong-based publisher Gui Minhai has been snatched again by mainland authorities, according to reports.

Gui, a Swedish citizen, was one of five Hong Kong-based booksellers known for salacious titles about the lives of China’s political elite who went missing in 2015 and resurfaced in detention on the mainland.

Ostensibly held over a fatal traffic accident a decade earlier, the 53-year-old was formally released from custody in October, and has been living in the eastern coastal city of Ningbo.

According to the New York Times, Gui — who has been kept in China and forced to report regularly to police — was taken from a train bound for Beijing under the eyes of two Swedish diplomats on Saturday.

The publisher’s daughter Angela Gui told the NYT that 10 plainclothes officers boarded the train near the capital and led him away.

“I just know that things have taken a very drastic turn for the worse,” she told the newspaper.

Gui was reportedly visiting Sweden’s embassy in Beijing for a medical examination after he showed symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called A.L.S, a disease that attacks the brain and spinal chord.

The NYT said Chinese officials accused Gui of sharing “secret information” with Swedish diplomats and meeting with them illegally.

According to the SCMP, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström said the country was working “around the clock” on the matter.

“The Swedish government has detailed knowledge of what has happened and I have summoned China’s ambassador. I have also been promised information about Mr. Gui’s situation,” the minister said, according to the SCMP.

Gui is one of five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in 2015 and later appeared in mainland Chinese custody. The other four booksellers have returned to Hong Kong.

He disappeared from his holiday home in Thailand in October of that year. He later appeared on Chinese state television CCTV making a “confession”, in which he said he had voluntarily surrendered to the Chinese authorities over his supposed involvement in a hit-and-run accident in Ningbo 2003.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1z0wFNGLrc

The suspected abductions, however, were widely condemned as an effort by China to suppress publications critical of its communist party elite.

Gui was co-owner of the Causeway Bay-based Mighty Current Media, known for its books on Chinese leaders and political scandals, which are banned in China but are popular with mainland tourists visiting Hong Kong.



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