The mystery surrounding five missing Hong Kong booksellers known for titles banned in China deepened after one purportedly wrote a letter saying he was fine and helping with an investigation in China, prompting his wife to drop a missing person’s report.
Hong Kong police late on Monday said that Lee Bo’s (李波) wife canceled the report, but that they would continue investigating the other cases. They did not say whether Lee had been located.
Lee and four other people associated with publisher Mighty Current, which specializes in books critical of the Chinese Communist Party leaders, have vanished in recent months. Their disappearances have prompted fears that Beijing is eroding the “one country, two systems” principle that’s been in place since Britain ceded control of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Photo: AFP
When Lee vanished last Wednesday, he reportedly did not have his travel permit for China with him, triggering speculation that Chinese security agents entered Hong Kong to abduct and spirit him there.
Four other people linked to the publishing company went missing, starting in October last year, but they were last seen either in China or Thailand.
An image of Lee’s handwritten letter was first published by the Central News Agency in Taiwan late on Monday. Hong Kong media have also published the image, crediting the agency.
The letter, faxed to an employee at the publishing company’s Causeway Bay Bookstore, said: “Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that aren’t to be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties.”
“It might take a bit of time,” the letter said. “My current situation is very well. All is normal.”
The letter gave no details about the investigation.
Local media reported that Lee’s wife, Choi Ka-ping (蔡嘉蘋) asked police to drop the missing person’s report after learning of the letter, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed. Telephone calls to her by reporters went unanswered.
Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers and human rights activists were skeptical the letter proved Lee was safe.
“If he did indeed write the letter, it was almost certainly written under duress,” said William Nee (倪偉平), Amnesty International’s Hong Kong-based China researcher.
“What we see in mainland China all the time is that police and state security put enormous pressure on family members not to speak to media and not to raise a fuss on social media. If indeed it was state security that detained Lee Bo, one wonders whether the same tactics are being used to silence family members here in Hong Kong,” Nee said.
Hong Kong police still have missing person’s files open for three of the other four missing members or shareholders of the publisher or the bookstore. They said they would continue to investigate Lee’s case as well.
Britain yesterday confirmed that Lee was a British passport holder and British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, visiting Beijing, said he had raised Lee’s case with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi (王毅).
Additional reporting by Reuters
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