Sweden charges Tibetan resident with spying on fellow exiles for China

Charge escalates row between the two countries following China’s detention of Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai
By Lily Kuo in Hong Kong
 

A picture of Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai, who remains in detention in China. 

Sweden has charged a 49-year-old Tibetan man living in the country for spying on his fellow exiles for the Chinese government, according to Swedish media.
State prosecutors said the man, who is Tibetan and was working for the newspaper Voice of Tibet, is suspected of supplying the Chinese government with information about the families, housing situations and travel plans of “certain people of importance to the Chinese regime”.
According to Swedish state prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist, the man had been in touch with Chinese officials in Poland and Finland. 

He had been paid 50,000 krona (£5,850) on one occasion. 

Ljungqvist said the man had been deeply embedded in the Tibetan community.
“This is a very serious crime,” he told reporters. 

The prosecutor did not give the suspect’s name.
The arrest comes about two months after Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai was taken from a train in China in the presence of Swedish consular officials. 

Three weeks later a video surfaced in which Gui expressed his guilt over unspecified offences, an admission that human rights activists said was a forced confession.

Sweden condemns China's 'brutal' detention of bookseller Gui Minhai

He remains in detention. 

Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallström, has called China’s treatment of Gui “unacceptable”. Gui is reportedly suffered from a neurological disease, but has not been allowed to see a doctor.
Critics have said Sweden is not doing enough to stand up to Beijing over the Hong Kong-based publisher who released books on China’s political elite.
Sweden is home to about 140 Tibetan exiles, according to Tibetan Community in Sweden, an organisation for the group, which has come under increasing pressure. 

Last year, Sweden’s security service also arrested a man for spying on Tibetans in the country.
“It is clear that there are spies who are sent by China to Tibetan communities, but this is the first time it’s been officially investigated,” Jamyang Choedon of the Tibetan Community in Sweden told the Swedish paper, the Local.
Uighur exiles living in Sweden have previously described ways they have been pressured to spy on each other. 

A Uighur asylum seeker told Swedish radio in an interview in 2012 that Chinese police approached her family, still in East Turkestan, saying that she had been accused of leaking state secrets. 

If she assisted in providing information, her sentence would be lighter, she was told.

Tsering Tsomo, the executive director of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Dharamsala, India, said Chinese consular officials withhold visas for Tibetan exiles with family still in Tibet to persuade them to give information on others.
“They don’t want to provoke the Chinese government, so they do something they don’t like just to get the visa,” she said.
Tsomo said others are embedded by China’s United Front Work Department, the Chinese Communist party’s arm for issues related to overseas Chinese.
“It’s quite common knowledge in the Tibetan community the United Front is very active in planting spies within the Tibetan community. They could be Tibetan, Chinese ... it could be anyone,” she said.

State hooliganism: Sweden criticises China's 'unacceptable' behaviour in detaining bookseller

Foreign minister Margot Wallström demands that Beijing give Gui Minhai access to medical and diplomatic staff
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Gui Minhai, seen on Chinese state television in 2016, has been denied access to a Swedish doctor.

Sweden has accused Beijing of refusing to give a Swedish doctor access to Gui Minhai, the jailed Hong Kong bookseller who was snatched from a Beijing-bound bullet train in January.
“China’s action is unacceptable and breaks previous assurances that our citizen would be given the opportunity to see a Swedish doctor,” the Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallström, said in a statement.

“Our work on the case continues unabated. We continue to demand that Mr Gui be given the opportunity to meet Swedish diplomatic and medical staff, and that he be released so that he can be reunited with his daughter and family,” Wallström added.
Gui, 53, was travelling to Beijing with two Swedish diplomats when he was seized by plainclothes agents on 20 January.
It was the latest chapter in a bewildering two-year saga that began in 2015 when the publisher disappeared from his Thai holiday home only to resurface in custody in mainland China, where he remained until he was allowed out of prison last October.
Some had believed the China-born publisher, who became a Swedish citizen in 1992, was on the verge of freedom. 

However, those hopes have faded since his second detention and fears are now mounting over the state of Gui’s health.
Supporters claim that on the day he was taken, Gui – who may have offended senior Chinese leaders with his gossip-filled books on Communist party politics – had been travelling to the Swedish embassy for a medical examination because of concerns he was suffering from a rare neurological disease.
“He explained to me that he couldn’t really control the movement in his fingers very well … that was obviously quite concerning,” Angela Gui, his daughter, told the Guardian last month.
Chinese authorities have played down those concerns, claiming Gui has been attended to by Chinese doctors. 

Last month dozens of EU politicians wrote to Xi Jinping to demand Gui’s “immediate and unconditional release”.
“Gui is not the first European citizen to be wrongfully detained in China, but we aspire to make him the last one,” the letter said.