A Swedish bookseller who spent more than two years in custody after his suspected abduction by Chinese agents is now “half free,” a friend has claimed, amid suspicions that he is still being held under guard by security officials in eastern China.
Gui Minhai (桂民海), a Hong Kong-based publisher who specialized in books about China’s political elite, mysteriously vanished from his Thai vacation home in October 2015. He later reappeared in China, where he was imprisoned on charges related to a deadly drunk-driving incident more than a decade earlier.
Gui’s disappearance — and that of four other booksellers, including one British citizen — was seen as part of a wider crackdown on Chinese Communist Party opponents that has gripped China since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took power in 2012.
Details of Gui’s two-year detention have remained murky, but he is understood to have been held for at least part of that time in the eastern port city of Ningbo.
Earlier this week, Chinese authorities claimed that he had been released on Oct. 17, although his daughter, Angela Gui, disputed that claim on Tuesday, telling reporters that he had yet to contact her and appeared still to be in “some sort of custody.”
Yesterday, after several days of uncertainty about his whereabouts, reports emerged that appeared to confirm his partial release.
Bei Ling (貝嶺), a Boston-based dissident writer and friend, said Gui Minhai was in Ningbo and living in rented accommodation.
He said Gui Minhai held a 40-minute telephone conversation with his daughter on Thursday night.
However, Bei told the Hong Kong Free Press Web site that his friend was only “half free.”
Angela Gui told Radio Television Hong Kong that there were “many things that need to be clarified” about her father’s situation and declined to comment further.
“She said she had received a phone call, but did not confirm it was from her father,” the broadcaster reported.
A spokesperson for the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs said: “We have received reports from the Chinese authorities that Gui Minhai has been released and we’re doing our best to obtain more information.”
Activists suspect that rather than completely freeing Gui Minhai, Chinese authorities have moved him from a detention center into what they call China’s “non-release release” system.
Under this Kafka-esque system, regime opponents are nominally freed, but in fact continue to live under the watch and guard of security agents.
“Non-release release” has been the fate of a number of those targeted as part of Xi’s campaign against human rights lawyers, which has seen some of the country’s leading civil rights attorneys spirited into secret detention before “reappearing” in a different form of captivity.
Bei told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post that Gui Minhai had informed relatives that he wanted to travel to Germany: “But for now, he is not sure if the Chinese authorities will allow him to leave China.”
“He will only enjoy true freedom if he is allowed to leave China. If he cannot leave China, he could end up just like Liu Xia [劉霞],” Bei said, referring to the wife of late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) who has also been living under the watch of security agents since her husband’s death in July.
“Definitely he is still under surveillance, otherwise the whole thing wouldn’t be so mysterious,” said Patrick Poon (潘燊昌), a Hong Kong-based activist for Amnesty International who is following the case.
“We still need to see whether the authorities will allow him to go [to Germany] and it seems to me that he will still be under surveillance for some time before he is allowed to go,” he added.
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