China thuggish regime

Swedish media calls for action against attacks from Chinese officials
Journalists are denied visas and editors receive threatening emails
By Richard Orange in Malmö

Swedish media was moved to make the statement after a cartoon in the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten came under similar pressure from Chinese officials. 

Sweden’s leading newspapers and broadcasters have together called on their government to take stronger action against China for its “unacceptable” repeated attacks on the country’s media, which have included visa bans and threats.
In a strongly worded statement, Utgivarna, which represents Sweden’s private and public sector media, complained that journalists had been put under intense pressure by Chinese government representatives.
“Time and again, China’s ambassador Gui Congyou has tried to undermine the freedom of the press and the freedom of expression under the Swedish constitution with false statements and threats,” the statement read.
It said journalists had been denied visas, while editors received a near-constant stream of threatening and critical emails and phone calls.
“It is unacceptable that the world’s largest dictatorship is trying to prevent free and independent journalism in a democracy like Sweden. These repeated attacks must cease immediately,” the statement said.
It said the government should raise the issue at EU level and together with other member states “strongly protest” over the attacks on press freedom.
Tensions between Sweden and China have been rising since 2015, when Chinese agents seized the dissident Chinese publisher Gui Minhai while he was on holiday in Thailand. 

Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen, is still being held by Chinese authorities and his case has been heavily covered by the Swedish media.
The friction has increased since Gui Congyou (no relation) was appointed China’s ambassador in November 2017.
In November last year he threatened that China would “surely take counter-measures” after Sweden’s culture minister, Amanda Lind, attended a ceremony to award Gui Minhai the Tucholsky prize for writers facing persecution.
This month he was summoned to see Sweden’s foreign minister, Ann Linde, after he described the relationship between the Swedish media and the Chinese state using an analogy that many interpreted as threatening.
“It is like when a lightweight boxer is trying to provoke a fight with a heavyweight boxer, and said heavyweight boxer is kindly encouraging the lightweight to mind his own business, out of goodwill,” he told Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT.
On Tuesday the Chinese embassy to Denmark demanded an apology for a cartoon published in Jyllands-Posten.
The latest cartoon, which altered the Chinese flag to stars with viruses, was “an insult to China” and “hurts the feelings of the sick Chinese people”, the embassy said.
Patrik Hadenius, the chief executive of Utgivarna, said his members had felt moved to act after they saw Danish media coming under similar pressure.
“It’s not just a problem for Sweden but a problem for all democratic countries. Just the other day it happened in Denmark,” he said. 

“We felt we needed to lift this to higher levels.”

Swedish Quisling

Sweden Charges Ex-Ambassador to China Over Secret Meetings
The diplomat, Anna Lindstedt, arranged unauthorized talks between the daughter of a detained bookseller and two men representing Chinese interests.
By Iliana Magra and Chris Buckley

Sweden’s former ambassador to China has been charged with “arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power,” after she held what Swedish prosecutors said on Monday were unauthorized meetings with two men representing Chinese state interests.
The announcement of the charges was the latest twist in a four-year-old case, in which a Swedish citizen was spirited to China from Thailand, the ambassador held what the authorities say were secret meetings in a Stockholm hotel, and ties between China and Sweden have been strained.
The former ambassador, Anna Lindstedt, was accused earlier this year of arranging the talks between Angela Gui, the daughter of Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller detained in China, and two Chinese men who had offered to help free Mr. Gui in January.

Instead of talks about freeing her father, Ms. Gui was pressured to keep silent.
After the talks at a Stockholm hotel, Ms. Gui accused Lindstedt, the ambassador at the time, of arranging the talks without authorization from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. 

The ministry opened an internal investigation into Lindstedt in mid-February.

Swedish Quisling Anna Lindstedt

“In this specific consular matter, she has exceeded her mandate and has therefore rendered herself criminally liable,” Hans Ihrman, the deputy chief public prosecutor for Sweden’s National Security Unit, said in a statement on Monday. 

Mr. Ihrman said the charge of arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power was “unprecedented.”
“We have looked way back to find any kind of indictment for this, but in modern times we have no trail of an investigation,” he said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Ihrman described the meeting as an attempt by Chinese officials to stop Ms. Gui’s criticism of the Chinese government because of the treatment of her father.
“It’s about this daughter’s right to freedom of speech, which they have tried to act upon,” he said.
Nevertheless, he said, Lindstedt acted on her own without the necessary support or permission from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The charge can bring a maximum prison sentence of two years under the Swedish Penal Code. 

A trial date for Lindstedt has not been set, Mr. Ihrman said. 

The Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported Monday that prosecutors chose a milder charge than what the government’s security service had sought, “disloyalty when negotiating with a foreign power,” which carries up to a 10-year sentence.

Mr. Gui was one of five Hong Kong-based publishers who were abducted and taken to China in 2015 after publishing books that were critical of the Communist Party elite, setting off international condemnation.
After being taken from Thailand to China in 2015, he was formally released two years later but was not allowed to leave the country.
Mr. Gui was again detained early last year, when two Swedish diplomats tried to accompany him on a train from Shanghai to Beijing, where they planned to take him into the Swedish Embassy. 

But Chinese police officers boarded the train and took him into custody.
They said later that Mr. Gui was suspected of illegally providing state secrets, but gave no details or evidence. 

Soon after, the Chinese authorities brought Mr. Gui before a group of reporters, and he told them that the Swedish diplomats had wanted to spirit him back to Sweden.
Mr. Ihrman, the Swedish prosecutor, said on Monday that Mr. Gui was in a Chinese prison.
Relations between Sweden and China have been strained since Gui Minhai was kidnapped in 2015, and tensions increased last month when the Swedish office of the writers’ group PEN said that it was awarding a literary prize to Mr. Gui. 

The prize is given annually to an author or publisher who is persecuted, threatened or living in exile.
Three days later, the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm called the prize a “farce” and threatened consequences if members of the Swedish government were to attend the award ceremony.
A week later, Amanda Lind, Sweden’s minister of culture, not only attended the ceremony but also awarded the prize, despite warnings from the Chinese ambassador that Ms. Lind and other government officials working in the area of culture would no longer be welcome in China.
Late last month, China appeared to follow through on its warning, with SVT reporting that two Swedish films had been banned from screenings in China.
Last week, after a seminar in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Swedish-Chinese relations, the Chinese ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyou, told the newspaper Goteborgs-Posten that China would limit trade with Sweden because of its handling of the Gui Minhai case.

Jesper Bengtsson, the chairman of Swedish PEN, said the organization was surprised by the “amazingly” strong response from China to this year’s award.

“Governments and regimes have often reacted but never with threats, and threatening to block ministers from visiting China, Mr. Bengtsson said in a telephone interview, adding that the Swedish culture minister always attends the award ceremony.
Previous prize recipients include Nasrin Sotoudeh, the Iranian human rights lawyer who is serving a 38-year prison sentence after being convicted of crimes against national security, and Dawit Isaak, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist who was arrested in Eritrea in 2001 on security charges and has been imprisoned without a trial ever since.

Freedom Fighter

Sweden honors detained political writer Gui Minhai

AFP-JIJI

Sweden's Culture Minister Amanda Lind awarded the prize. 

Sweden's culture minister Amanda Lind on Friday defied a Chinese threat of "counter-measures" by awarding a Swedish rights prize to detained Chinese-Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai.
Known for publishing titles about Chinese political leaders out of a Hong Kong book shop, Gui disappeared while on holiday in Thailand in 2015 before resurfacing in mainland China several months later.The Swedish section of free speech organisation PEN International gave its Tucholsky Prize to the 55-year-old Gui, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen currently in detention at an unknown location in China.

"China resolutely opposes Swedish PEN awarding a criminal and lie-fabricator," China's ambassador to Sweden said in remarks published in English on the embassy website.

Swedish PEN's Tucholsky Prize is for a writer or publisher being persecuted, threatened or in exile from his or her country.

In spite of China's threats, Swedish Culture and Democracy Minister Amanda Lind attended the ceremony.
"Those in power should never take the liberty to attack free artistic expression or free speech," Lind said while presenting the award in Stockholm. 

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven stressed earlier in the day that the Scandinavian country would not back down.
"We are not going to give in to this type of threat. Never. We have freedom of expression in Sweden and that's how it is, period," Lofven told Swedish Television.

Strained ties
Lind had earlier called Beijing's threat "serious".
"We have made it clear to China's representatives that we stand by our position that Gui Minhai must be released and that we have freedom of expression in Sweden," Lind told TT.
"This means that Swedish PEN must, of course, be allowed to award this prize to whoever they want, free of any influence. And as culture and democracy minister it is natural for me to attend the award ceremony," she said.
Relations between Sweden and China have been strained for several years over Gui Minhai's detention. 

He has appeared on Chinese state television confessing to a fatal drink-driving accident from more than a decade earlier.
He served two years in prison, but three months after his October 2017 release he was again arrested while on a train to Beijing, travelling with Swedish diplomats.
His supporters and family have claimed his detention is part of a political repression campaign orchestrated by Chinese authorities.

The Tucholsky Prize, named after German writer Kurt Tucholsky, who came to Sweden in the early 1930s as a refugee from Nazi Germany, is worth 150,000 kronor (14,000 euros, $15,500).
The prize, established in 1984, has been previously won by Adam Zagajevski, Nuruddin Farah, Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin and Svetlana Alexievich, among others.