{"id":13432,"date":"2016-10-18T22:03:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T14:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=13432"},"modified":"2016-10-19T03:40:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T19:40:26","slug":"china-one-year-since-gui-minhais-abduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2016\/10\/18\/13432\/","title":{"rendered":"China: One year since Gui Minhai\u2019s abduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Criticism of foreign governments\u2019 inactivity and\u00a0connivance as China\u2019s crackdown \u2018goes global\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adam N. Lee, chinaworker.info<\/p>\n

A year has passed since Gui Minhai disappeared in Thailand, on 17 October 2015. Gui, a Swedish citizen, is one of five Hong Kong book publishers who were all captured separately and detained in China.<\/p>\n

Their case has shaken the China-ruled territory, underlining Beijing\u2019s erosion of Hong Kong\u2019s political freedoms and limited democratic rights. A recent poll by the University of Hong Kong Public Opinion Programme shows public confidence in Hong Kong\u2019s media and media freedom has fallen to its lowest level in 23 years. Politically, the kidnappings undoubtedly influenced recent elections in Hong Kong and the powerful growth of pro-independence sentiment. They also showcase the growing overseas reach of the Chinese dictatorship not only in Hong Kong but further afield.<\/p>\n

\"Free
Free Gui Minhai website<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gui and his four colleagues ran the book company \u2018Mighty Current\u2019 from Hong Kong, publishing books critical of top Chinese leaders including a book about the vast family fortune of current ruler Xi Jinping. Their literary activity was fully legal in Hong Kong, and should therefore be protected under its so-called \u2018One country, Two systems\u2019 formula of political autonomy. China\u2019s state security and police forces are banned from\u00a0operating in Hong Kong. Yet following their\u00a0extra-judicial disappearance, Gui and his colleagues\u00a0now\u00a0face punishment in China for distributing \u201cillegal\u201d publications.<\/p>\n

Three of the group were apprehended while visiting mainland China, but Gui and his colleague Lee Bo, a British citizen, were illegally \u2018renditioned\u2019 by Chinese security agents with the connivance of the governments of Thailand and, in Lee\u2019s case, Hong Kong. The Thai military junta has shifted closer to the Chinese regime since the country\u2019s elected government was overthrown in 2014. The Thai government told Swedish authorities there is no record of Gui legally leaving Thailand. It is therefore reasonable to conclude, as the Swedish newspaper Expressen does, that Gui was smuggled\u00a0over the border to Cambodia \u2013 ruled by an even closer Chinese client regime \u2013 and from there flown to China. This method, in flagrant violation of international law, replicates those used by US undercover forces against international \u2018terror\u2019 suspects.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s arrest of Peter Dahlin marks ominous new stage in crackdown<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Crackdown goes \u2018global\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

As chinaworker.info<\/strong> has pointed out, Gui\u2019s case and other recent cases mark the \u2018globalisation\u2019 of Xi Jinping\u2019s campaign of repression \u2013 the most severe in a quarter century. The Chinese state is believed to have abducted political dissidents in Myanmar (16-year-old Bao Mengmeng, the son of an arrested rights lawyer) and Laos (dissident journalist Li Xin), as well as in Thailand in the recent period. Both Malaysia and Kenya have this year deported dozens of Taiwanese nationals suspected of fraud, not to their home country, but to China, despite protests from Taiwan\u2019s government. Earlier this month, the Hong Kong student activist Joshua Wong was detained and refused entry to Thailand, with the Thai authorities stating this was at China\u2019s request.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is exporting its paranoia and its poor practices \u2013 disappearances, arbitrary detention and censorship of dissent. This is a worrying sign for activists and organisations throughout Asia and beyond,\u201d said Sarah Brooks, Asia Program Manager at the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR).<\/p>\n

Gui Minhai\u2019s daughter Angela, who has been campaigning on her father\u2019s behalf, has set up a website<\/a> to publicise facts about the case and pressure foreign governments to pursue the case more vigorously. There is growing concern among journalists and human rights activists in Sweden that its Social Democratic-Green government has done far too little to pressure the Chinese regime over the illegal detention of one of its citizens. One year after his disappearance, Gui is still not formally charged with any crime! Neither Sweden\u2019s representatives nor his daughter have been told where Gui is being held. On both counts this is a violation of the dictatorship\u2019s own legal rulebook as well as international agreements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Swedish government hasn\u2019t given Gui Minhai\u2019s case enough importance,\u201d says Sweden-based dissident Da Hua. \u201cThey want to maintain their profitable business links with the Chinese regime and therfore issues like freedom of speech and the kidnapping of a Swedish citizen are being toned down,\u201d he told chinaworker.info.<\/p>\n

An example of this is the delegation of 30 Chinese corporate leaders who held talks with the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan L\u00f6fven on 12 September at the government\u2019s Stockholm headquarters Rosenbad. If the Swedish government was serious, even about demanding an explanation from the Chinese authorities about\u00a0why and where Gui is being held, it would announce the cancellation of all such official meetings. Like other European governments, guided by profit interests, it is clearly not prepared to take this approach.<\/p>\n

Hong Kong: Kidnapped bookseller breaks silence<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Trial by television<\/strong><\/p>\n

In January, Gui Minhai was paraded on state television making a \u2018confession\u2019 to a decade-old traffic offense and telling foreign governments and media not to \u2018meddle\u2019. Angela Gui notes that her father\u2019s tee shirt appears to change colour during the film. One of Gui\u2019s fellow booksellers, Lam Wing-kee, the only one to escape from China\u2019s grip and currently living in fear for his safety in Hong Kong, revealed how his own filmed \u2018confession\u2019 was enacted \u2013 with a script and even a director who made him retake certain parts again until satisfied with the quality!<\/p>\n

\u201cTrial by television\u201d is now an established method of Xi\u2019s crackdown. Despite growing numbers who are sceptical towards these \u2018confessions\u2019, they\u00a0serve as a deterrent to others. Often family members are held as hostages, as in Imperial times. This is also why whole groups are being arrested in coordinated sweeps \u2013 rights lawyers, NGO activists, and the five Hong Kong publishers \u2013 to maximise the coercive effect on individuals held in isolation and refused access to\u00a0a lawyer\u00a0to take part in filmed \u2018confessions\u2019. The political purpose \u2013 to spread terror among regime critics \u2013 is not so different from terrorist groups making videos of their captives before executing them. Human rights lawyers, hundreds of whom were rounded\u00a0up in July 2015, were similarly forced to make filmed \u2018confessions\u2019 which were then used as the main evidence to convict them.<\/p>\n

Another recent victim of these gangster methods is Lin Zuluan, the 72-year-old elected leader of the Wukan village council, who has been jailed for over three years on trumped-up corruption charges. Lin recently retracted his televised \u2018confession\u2019 and mounted an appeal which unfortunately has little chance of success under the regime-controlled court system.<\/p>\n

In Lin\u2019s case, as with several of the detained lawyers, \u2018confessions\u2019 were extracted after family members (Lin\u2019s grandson) were seized and threatened with similar trumped-up charges. This shows how the Chinese regime is increasingly ruling through a system of judicial frame-ups and state terror aimed at eradicating all elements of opposition. As its economic woes deepen this trend is growing.<\/p>\n

The case of Gui Minhai shows that the struggle to expose the gangster methods of the Chinese dictatorship and build pressure in support of its many victims must be stepped up. Capitalist governments have shown that they rank \u2018corporate rights\u2019 far higher than \u2018human rights\u2019. A big part of the coming struggle is to increase pressure from below \u2013 from the workers\u2019 movement and ordinary people \u2013 upon these governments and their billion-dollar deals with brutal authoritarian regimes.<\/p>\n

chinaworker.info says<\/strong><\/p>\n