British embassy in Beijing says it is aware of reports that one of the five missing publishers may be UK passport holder

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

British officials are urgently investigating whether one of five missing Hong Kong booksellers is a UK passport holder, the British embassy in Beijing has told the Guardian.

Five members of Hong Kong’s publishing industry have gone missing since October, and there is growing suspicion that Chinese security agents have spirited the men into custody in mainland China.

Hong Kong politicians call for Beijing to answer over bookseller's 'abduction' Read more

The missing include Gui Minhai, a publisher known for his exposés of the lives of senior Communist party leaders, who was taken from his seafront holiday home in Thailand on 17 October.

Last Wednesday, Lee Bo, Gui’s 65-year-old business partner, also went missing in Hong Kong, prompting protests from pro-democracy politicians who fear Beijing is responsible for what they call a wave of kidnappings.

On Monday, Gui’s daughter, who is studying in Britain, told Hong Kong’s Chinese-language Ming Pao newspaper she had approached police in the UK over Lee’s disappearance since he had once told her he was a British citizen.

A spokesperson for the British embassy in Beijing said its officials were aware of reports that one of those reported missing may be a British passport holder.



“We are urgently investigating with the relevant authorities,” the spokesperson said. “We are deeply concerned by reports about the disappearance and detention of individuals associated with the Causeway Bay Books bookstore in Hong Kong. We are monitoring all the cases closely.

“We encourage the Hong Kong SAR government to honour its commitment to protecting the freedom of the press, and we hope the Chinese authorities will continue to make every effort to ensure that the environment in which the media and publishers operate in the Hong Kong SAR supports full and frank reporting.”



The suspected abductions have sent shockwaves through Hong Kong publishing circles, where complaints over increasing censorship and pressure from Beijing are common.

They have also sparked protests from pro-democracy groups, who see Lee Bo’s apparent snatching as the latest sign of Beijing’s meddling in the former colony, which is supposed to enjoy far greater political freedoms than the mainland.



On Sunday, Claudia Mo, an outspoken Hong Kong legislator, described the incident as “a huge attack on Hong Kong’s ‘one country, two systems’ [model]” which was introduced following the colony’s return to Chinese control in 1997.



“What they have done is completely unthinkable and this is giving people cold chills,” Mo added. “If that can happen to the booksellers today it is going to happen to you and me tomorrow and it is going to happen to the whole of Hong Kong the day after. It is just more than scary.”

On Monday, Hong Kong’s unpopular chief executive, CY Leung, said his government was “highly concerned with this case” but said there was still no indication of the involvement of Chinese security forces.



Beijing has so far made no comment on the disappearances, which many believe are an attempt to silence Gui Minhai’s publishing company, Sage Communications.



“I don’t have any information on that,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday afternoon when asked about Lee Bo’s disappearance.



However, suspicions that Chinese authorities were involved grew on Monday after an editorial in China’s state-run media accused the booksellers of publishing books filled with “vicious fabrication” about Chinese politicians.



Bei Ling, a Chinese dissident who knows Lee Bo’s wife, said he believed the publishing company had infuriated Beijing by publishing two recent books about Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai, the disgraced Communist party leader whose wife was jailed for the 2011 murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.

On Sunday, Albert Ho, a pro-democracy politician in Hong Kong, said Gui’s company had been planning to publish a book about one of Xi’s former girlfriends. “There were warnings given to the owners not to publish this book. This book has not yet gone to print, but probably it has something to do with this book,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.

If confirmed, the apparent abduction of a British passport holder by Chinese security officials would complicate the two-day trip to China this week of the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond. Hammond arrives in Beijing on Tuesday at the invitation of China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi.

Britain has largely avoided public criticism of China over political and human rights issues as part of Downing Street’s bid to build a “golden era” of relations with China. The chancellor, George Osborne, has repeatedly ruled out engaging in “megaphone diplomacy” with Beijing.

However, Britain was forced to speak out last month after diplomats and foreign journalists were subjected to “completely unacceptable” levels of violence by police outside a civil rights lawyers’ trial in Beijing.