Han Terrrorism

China detained bookseller Gui Minhai to stop him from telling his story
By Oliver Chou, Mimi Lau and Catherine Wong

China snatched a Swedish citizen and former Hong Kong-based bookseller to prevent him from telling his story before a trial over his alleged involvement in “illegal book trading” wraps up, his former employer said, citing a source.
Publisher Lau Tat-man, founder and chief editor of Ha Fai Yi Publication, where Gui Minhai was a freelance writer and editor for seven years, believes Gui’s dramatic arrest on Saturday at a train station near Beijing – under the watch of Swedish diplomatic staff – was a bid to stop him from leaving the country.
“The case of Causeway Bay Books has yet to be settled in an official trial, so Gui heading towards Beijing with Swedish diplomats could have been part a plan to get him out of the country,” Lau, citing a reliable source, told the South China Morning Post.
Gui was one of five people who went missing from 2015, all of whom were associated with the bookshop that released titles critical of Beijing. 

Gui was in Thailand when he disappeared for the first time, then resurfaced in custody across the border. 

He was freed from prison in October on a drink-driving charge.
Lau could not confirm whether Gui was released on the condition that he stay within the city of Ningbo, in Zhejiang, but he said “I’m sure there are conditions attached to his release”.
“Gui has stayed low-profile since his release in October and the only person he’s had contact with is a long-time acquaintance in Shanghai,” he said.
The European Union joined Sweden’s call on Wednesday for the immediate release of Gui, which Beijing said was “unreasonable”.
The missing booksellers case made international headlines at the time, and although not much had been heard about the booksellers recently until Gui was taken away on Saturday, Lau said the authorities had continued to keep him under tight surveillance.
“Lee Po has stayed quiet and Lui Por and Cheung Chi-ping are in their Shenzhen homes and are not free to travel – that shows the officials are still worried that these people will speak out like Lam Wing-kee did once they are set free,” he said, referring to the bookstore manager who revealed details of his detention on the mainland when he returned to Hong Kong.
Lau called on the Swedish government to take the lead for the West and stand firm on international law and human rights.
“Many Western countries have kowtowed to China because of economic gains – it’s time for the West to wake up,” he said.

Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström said on Tuesday that Gui “was at the time of his arrest in the company of diplomatic staff, who were providing consular help to a Swedish citizen in need of medical care”.
“This was perfectly in line with basic international rules giving us the right to provide our citizens with consular support,” she said in a statement.
“The Chinese authorities have assured us on numerous occasions that Mr Gui Minhai has been free since his release having served a sentence for a traffic-related offence, and that we can have any contact we wish with our fellow citizen.”
In Beijing on Wednesday, the European Union’s ambassador to China Hans Dietmar Schweisgut said the EU “fully supports” Sweden’s efforts to resolve the issue with China, Reuters reported.

Magnus Fiskesjö, an associate professor at Cornell University who was a Swedish diplomat in Beijing and has known Gui since the 1980s, said the incident was “not only wrong but also damaging to China’s international image”.
“When China disrespects our country by mistreating a citizen of ours, we have to stand up for our citizen – there is no other option for it,” he said.
“It has outraged people and goes beyond the bounds of international law in a repeated and offensive manner. When people hear about this news in Sweden, they feel that this is China bullying a small country like us.”
Fiskesjö said the Swedish embassy and consulates in China had sought access to Gui since 2015 on multiple occasions since he was first detained but “with long delays and long waits”.

Han terrorism: Condemn China for kidnapping Gui Minhai

As Sweden’s reaction to the seizing of its citizen shows, countries allow Beijing to flout human rights in exchange for trade deals
By Jojje Olsson

The kidnapping of a foreign citizen in front of accompanying diplomats constitutes a new level of assault, even for China.
If the world does not condemn it in the strongest possible terms, it will also represent a new level of submission, encouraging China to continue exporting its repression abroad.
Ever since Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was first kidnapped in October 2015, my government’s primary focus in its relations with China has been to increase economic cooperation. 

Last year, our prime minister, Stefan Löfven, visited China with the largest Swedish trade delegation in decades.
Yet while Löfven claimed he had raised the issue of Gui Minhai behind closed doors, neither he nor anyone else, uttered a single word about Gui in public. 

The post-trip communique was packed with details about new trade deals and economic cooperation. Not a single line mentioned the Swedish political prisoner who was falling sick behind bars at a secret location far from conventions and banquets.
The quiet diplomacy that has characterised Sweden’s handling of Gui Minhai stands in stark contrast to the case of Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, two Swedish journalists who were jailed in Ethiopia in 2011. 

Swedish ministers became personally involved in that case almost immediately. 

The prime minister branded Ethiopia a “dictatorship”.
Gui Minhai has enjoyed no such support. 

Despite several requests, his daughter, Angela Gui, only managed to speak on the phone with foreign minister Margot Wallström for the first time at the weekend. 

The foreign ministry has told her not to contact the Swedish embassy in Beijing. 

Last year Angela told me that Lars Fredén, the Swedish ambassador to China until 2016, had deliberately avoided her when they ended up at the same social event in Stockholm.
Gui was kidnapped for a second time last Saturday. 

But only after the story was reported on Monday did Wallström issue a short statement calling for “the immediate release of our fellow citizen”.
That was the first time during Gui’s 829 days of extralegal detention that the Swedish authorities had openly criticised China’s actions.

That is, of course, exactly the way Beijing wants it. 

Because shedding light on the regime’s oppression hurts its ambitions to build its soft power to help increase the Chinese influence in international organisations, and make overseas investments with as little scrutiny as possible.
Several western countries have already been brought into line by the stick and carrot of economic cooperation. 

When Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel peace prize in 2010, Beijing severed diplomatic and trade relations with Oslo. 

Only after the Norwegian foreign minister in late 2016 travelled to Beijing and read aloud a humiliating joint statement was Norway again able to export its salmon to China.
Despite all his flattery of China, David Cameron’s government was warned that Britain should not dare comment on Beijing’s erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms.
Nowhere is Beijing’s disregard for international treaties more obvious than in the South China Sea, which China continues to militarise, despite international censure and a damning ruling from an international tribunal in 2016.
China is also succeeding in silencing the European Union’s criticism of its behaviour. 

Last year, Hungary and Greece, both big destinations for Chinese loans and investments, blocked two EU joint statements on the deteriorating human rights situation in China.
After the two Swedish journalists were released from Ethiopian jail in 2012, Sweden’ ambassador hailed international pressure as a decisive factor. 

Sweden now needs to reach out to the international community for a similar cooperation on Gui Minhai. 

Every politician who still claims a shred of morality must step out and speak out.