The daughter of a previously missing Hong Kong publisher specializing in tabloid-style books on China’s leaders has dismissed a Chinese state television broadcast showing her father confessing to a hit and run attack.
Gui Minhai (桂民海), 51, and four of his colleagues from publishing house Mighty Current (巨流) or its Causeway Bay Books (銅鑼灣圖書) shop disappeared over the last few months, sparking protests in the former British colony against China’s security services accused of carrying out the illegal snatchings in order to silence critics abroad.
On Sunday night, a tearful Gui was shown China Central Television (CCTV) saying he turned himself in to Chinese authorities in October last year for his involvement in a fatal hit-and-run incident in Ningbo in December 2003.
Photo: REUTERS
“I am taking my legal responsibilities, and am willing to accept any punishment,” Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.
Gui’s daughter, Angela, has now told the Guardian that she could neither deny nor confirm the crime her father publicly admitted to, but dismissed that he had voluntarily returned to China, saying that he was seized against his will while he was in Thailand in October.
“I do still believe he was abducted. I still think it is suspicious that he and his associates went missing. Even if it is true, I don’t think that is why he is there,” she said by telephone from Britain.
Gui, a Swedish citizen and co-owner of Mighty Current, was visiting his beachfront apartment in Pattaya when he vanished, shocking his family and friends.
His colleague Lee Bo (李波) told the Guardian at the time that he was planning to visit Gui with his wife for Lunar New Year, casting further doubt that Gui voluntarily handed himself in.
Lee, a 65-year-old major shareholder of Causeway Bay Books and British passport holder, became the fifth bookseller to go missing this month, deepening the international furor.
During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said that if Chinese authorities had been responsible for Lee’s snatching it would represent an “egregious breach” of the former colony’s supposed autonomy from China.
Asked about Gui’s sudden public reappearance, a spokesperson for the Swedish embassy in Beijing said: “We are aware of the information published in news media. We are not commenting on it. Instead, we continue to seek clarifications from the Chinese authorities.”
Angela Gui said she had spoken to the Swedish government, who had summoned China’s ambassador over Gui’s case and that of another Swedish citizen and rights lawyer who was detained in China.
“I’m going to follow up now. This is a game changer,” she said.
In his public confession, Gui warned off international attention and directly addressed Sweden.
“Although I now hold the Swedish citizenship, deep down I still think of myself as a Chinese. My roots are in China. I hope the Swedish authorities would respect my personal choices, my rights and my privacy, and allow myself to deal with my own issues,” he said.
Gui’s books, often ill-sourced publications focusing on the sex lives of Chinese Communist Party elite, have riled China’s leaders.
A Hong Kong-based publishing source said this month that Gui’s next venture was a book called Xi and his six women, adding that Beijing abducted the five booksellers to end “a concerted smear campaign” against the Chinese leader.
Gui had last been seen on security footage shot outside his apartment in Thailand. The building manager later told the Guardian that a Chinese man had waited at the condominium for Gui and got in the car with him before driving off.
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