Bookseller vows to remain vocal critic of Beijing

Staff writer, with CNA





Hong Kong dissident and bookstore owner Lam Wing-kei (林榮基) lamented a heavy sentence handed down by a Chinese court to one of his business partners and vowed to continue to speak out against Beijing’s persecution.

Gui Minhai (桂民海), one of five people linked to Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay Books (銅鑼灣圖書) who disappeared temporarily, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court on charges of spying, the court said on Monday in a statement on its Web site.

The court added that Gui, a naturalized Swedish citizen, had in 2018 applied for the restoration of his Chinese citizenship.

Lam on Tuesday said that he was sad to learn of Gui’s sentence.

“He was held for almost two years after his disappearance in Thailand,” Lam said. “Shortly after his release, he was again apprehended. Considering that, what intelligence could he obtain and provide to foreign countries?”

Lam said he suspected that China had forced Gui to seek the restoration of his Chinese citizenship, which would constitute a human rights violation.

While the heavy prison sentence might scare dissidents in China, it would only heighten sentiment in Taiwan and Hong Kong against communist China, he said.

“The Causeway Bay Books controversy will not end with Gui’s conviction,” Lam said, vowing to continue to make his voice heard.

Between October and December 2015, Lam, Gui and three other people linked to Causeway Bay Books disappeared involuntarily one after another.

Chinese authorities had said that the bookstore was selling “banned books.”

Gui was reportedly abducted by a man at an apartment in Pattaya, Thailand, on Oct. 17, 2015.

About three months later, he appeared on TV in China, saying that he was culpable in a hit-and-run incident in 2003 that had left a female university student dead in Ningbo, China.

The other four men were released and allowed to return to Hong Kong after they testified that Gui had been running the bookstore illegally.

In October 2017, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs confirmed the release of Gui, who had written several books about politics in China.

However, on Jan. 20, 2018, Chinese law enforcement officers again arrested Gui, who was traveling on a train with two Swedish diplomats, and accused him of providing classified information to foreign officials.

Lam fled to Taiwan in April last year and has since extended his visa twice. He is applying for business permits to reopen the bookstore in Taiwan, which would allow him to obtain a work permit.