The daughter of missing Swedish publisher Gui Minhai (桂民海), who was snatched in China last month, said that she fears she might never see him again and has urged the international community to take action.
Gui was arrested on a train to Beijing just more than two weeks ago while accompanied by two Swedish diplomats — the second time he has disappeared in murky circumstances into Chinese custody.
His daughter, Angela Gui, 23, told reporters that she had heard nothing from him since and had received no information about where he might be.
“There are all sorts of awful scenarios that could be unfolding,” she said, speaking from England, where she is a student.
The US and EU have called for Gui Minhai’s immediate release, and his disappearance has sparked a diplomatic row between Stockholm and Beijing.
However, Chinese authorities have so far publicly parried requests for information, suggesting only that Swedish diplomats had somehow violated Chinese law.
Civil society has come under increasing pressure since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took office in 2012, with authorities rounding up hundreds of lawyers and activists.
“I just hope that Sweden and other governments will be as vocal as possible,” Angela Gui said. “I want them to demonstrate actual consequences, instead of just repeating how unacceptable it is.”
It is the second time that 53-year-old Gui Minhai, who was born in China, but went on to become a Swedish citizen, has been snatched.
He first disappeared in 2015, one of five Hong Kong-based booksellers known for publishing gossipy titles about Chinese political leaders who went missing and resurfaced in China.
Gui Minhai vanished while on holiday in Thailand and eventually surfaced at an undisclosed location in China, confessing to involvement in a fatal traffic accident and smuggling illegal books.
Chinese authorities declared that they had released him in October last year, but his daughter said he was under “loose house arrest” in the eastern city of Ningbo, where some of his relatives still live.
Angela Gui told reporters that she had spoken to her father on Skype multiple times a week in the past three months and that he was able to move around the city, but was followed by police.
He had been allowed to go to the Swedish consulate in Shanghai three times to apply for documentation, including a new passport, and Angela Gui said she did not believe he had been told explicitly to stay in Ningbo.
Angela Gui graduated from England’s Warwick University with a master’s degree the day before her father disappeared again and had spoken to him ahead of the ceremony.
“He said: ‘I’m very sorry that I can’t be there.’ I told him it was alright because I’m doing my doctorate now, so there was another one for him to come to,” she said. “I was hoping that there would be an end to this soon and that he might be able to come home.”
Gui Minhai was on Jan. 20 grabbed by plainclothes police while on a train between Ningbo and Beijing, where he was due to have a medical appointment.
Angela Gui fears he might now be put on trial and receive a longer sentence, jeopardizing his health.
Doctors in Ningbo said her father might have the neurological disease ALS.
The muscles in his hands had begun to atrophy and he had lost some sensation in the soles of his feet, Angela Gui said.
“If he does have ALS, perhaps he might not have that much time left,” she told reporters.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not