Activists call the video, in which Gui criticises his home nation of Sweden, ‘the product of pure coercion’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Three weeks after he was snatched from a Beijing-bound train, the Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai has resurfaced in police custody, making what activists denounced as a surreal, venal and shameful video confession to a series of unspecified offenses.



“I feel ashamed about myself. I have made mistakes,” Gui, 53, is filmed telling a small group of reporters who said they had been given access to the prisoner by Chinese security officials.

“My message to my family is that I hope they will live a good life. Don’t worry about me. I will solve my own problems myself.”

Sweden condemns China's 'brutal' detention of bookseller Gui Minhai Read more

Gui, a Hong Kong-based publisher who specialised in titillating tomes on China’s political elite, had last been heard of on 20 January when he was seized by plainclothes agents as he travelled to China’s capital with two Swedish diplomats.

Supporters say Gui, whose increasingly phantasmagorical tale began when he vanished from his home in Thailand in 2015, had been heading to the Swedish embassy for a medical check-up amid suspicions he was suffering from a rare neurological disease.



However, Gui rejected that narrative on Friday as he was paraded before reporters from pro-establishment news outlets including the South China Morning Post, an English-language broadsheet which faced criticism in 2016 for printing a mysterious and apparently coerced interview with a young Chinese activist.

Gui, who has spent much of the past two years in custody but was partially freed last October, accused Sweden of “sensationalising” his case and tricking him into a botched attempt to flee China.



“I fell for it,” he says. “Sweden offered me a plan, and that was to use my medical appointment as an excuse to get to the Swedish embassy in Beijing. And then they would wait for an opportunity to get me to Sweden.

“My wonderful life has been ruined and I would never trust the Swedish ever again,” Gui adds.



Forced televised confessions have become a hallmark of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s increasingly hardline rule with a succession of government critics – including Gui and the human rights activist Peter Dahlin – appearing on camera to admit their supposed sins.

Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch’s China director, said Gui’s “interview” looked like the latest example of such staged admissions: “The venality of that video is breathtaking – as is the substance, which is suspiciously perfectly crafted to try to undermine Sweden’s access to him.”



“Sweden and the EU should call it out for what it is – the product of pure coercion – and redouble their efforts to free him.”



Måns Molander, the group’s Sweden and Denmark director, tweeted: “#China is forcing Swedish citizen #GuiMinhai to ‘confess’ and make public statements. We have seen it before.”

William Nee, an Amnesty International campaigner, tweeted: “This sort of contrived video and media interview made in incommunicado detention is shameful.”

Sweden made no immediate comment but last week Stockholm condemned China’s “brutal intervention”.



Several of the images of Gui published by the South China Morning Post show a missing tooth on the right-hand side of his mouth. Speaking to the Guardian last week, his UK-based daughter, Angela Gui, said she had noticed the missing tooth during Skype conversations they had held before his latest detention.



“He wouldn’t explain in detail what had happened to it. But I got quite a clear sense that it must have come out during torture or some other kind of mistreatment in custody,” she said.

Chinese authorities said Gui was being held on suspicion of leaking state secrets. “He was in incommunicado detention for two years. So who would have told him these state secrets?” questioned his daughter.



“I can only guess that it might have something to do with what happened when he was taken the first time. And that whoever ordered this didn’t want this to come out.”