‘Disappeared’ publisher jailed after secret trial at Chinese court
A DIPLOMATIC row escalated yesterday between Beijing and Stockholm after a Chinese court jailed Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen kidnapped by the authorities in 2015 on charges of providing intelligence to foreign entities.
There was no publicity about his hearing until a statement from a court in Ningbo city stating Mr Gui had “accepted” the verdict of a trial in January, making it impossible for him to appeal.
“There was no transparency,” said Patrick Poon, China researcher for Amnesty International. “How could he have been given a fair trial?”
Sweden’s foreign ministry yesterday summoned China’s ambassador to demand Mr Gui’s release. “We demand Gui Minhai be released so he can be reunited with his daughter and family,” said Diana Qudhaib, a spokesman at Sweden’s ministry for foreign affairs.
Stockholm also demands “access to our citizen so we can provide the consular support he is entitled to”. There are signs China plans to block Swedish diplomatic assistance as the court statement claimed that Mr Gui had reinstated his Chinese citizenship in 2018. China does not recognise dual citizenship, with foreign settlers required to renounce their former nationality.
A broader political repression campaign has intensified in recent years under Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. Mr Gui, 55, was one of five Hong Kong-based booksellers known for publishing salacious titles about China’s ruling Communist Party elite. All the booksellers were abducted – or “were disappeared” – around the same time. Mr Gui had reportedly been about to publish a book about Mr Xi’s love life. Such books are banned in China, but legal in Hong Kong under freedoms promised when the British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The disappearances captured international attention, given the apparent audacity of the Chinese government to kidnap people abroad and squirrel them back to the mainland.
Mr Gui vanished five years ago while on holiday in Thailand, before surfacing in China, confessing to smuggling illegal books and to a fatal drink-drive accident in 2003. He served two years in prison, before being snatched a second time in 2018 by Chinese authorities while travelling with Swedish diplomats on a train to Beijing. Weeks later he appeared in a state-arranged media conference claiming Sweden “sensationalised” his case and exploited him like a “chess piece.” His supporters said his pronouncements were made under duress, a tactic in China that gives courts a 99.9 per cent conviction rate. Last year, China objected to Mr Gui being awarded the Tucholsky Prize in recognition of his services to free speech.
The Swedish government and Mr Gui’s daughter, Angela Gui, a PHD candidate at Cambridge university, have yet to publicly comment.