Five years after Gui Minhai was kidnapped

My article in the Toronto Star today summing up what we’ve learned five years after the kidnapping of Gui Minhai, 17 oct 2015.–Magnus Fiskesjö

Source: The Toronto Star (10/19/20)
Five years after Sweden’s Gui Minhai was kidnapped we must keep fighting for his release
By Magnus Fiskesjö, Contributor

October 17 marked five years since my fellow Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, an old friend of mine, was kidnapped from Thailand by Chinese agents, who forcibly took him to China. He had not visited for years — a precaution, since he co-owned the Causeway Bay Bookstore in Hong Kong, which specialized in books critical of the Chinese regime.

Gui’s case is highly relevant not just for Sweden and for Hong Kong, but also for Canada, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Kazakhstan and other countries that have also seen their citizens seized by the Chinese regime. What are the lessons we have learned?

In early 2016, Gui was forced to appear on Chinese state TV in an obviously staged confession, pretending he had returned on his own volition to help resurrect an old traffic accident.

This was, of course, a stalling tactic. Had my country seen through this old trick, and acted faster to put our foot down, we might have secured Gui’s freedom sooner.

And a firm stance from Sweden, Europe and beyond might even have forestalled China’s brutal and appalling 2020 crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedoms.

After all, it was clear early on, that Gui’s disappearance was no isolated case, but an assault on the bookstore, in turn intended to intimidate all of Hong Kong. Soon, four more of Gui’s colleagues disappeared: three on trips across the border; one taken from the bookstore warehouse in Hong Kong, despite the judicial autonomy promised Hong Kong under the principle of one country, two systems. Yet Hong Kong’s governor even said it was no concern to her, whatever China did to Hong Kong booksellers. The shocking writing was already on the wall.

When Lee Bo, taken from Hong Kong, re-emerged on Chinese TV, his story was that he voluntarily left for China on business (forgetting to tell his wife). He was later let go, but has retreated into silence — like the others.

Except one. Lam Wing-Kee, who has recently successfully reopened the bookstore in Taipei, became a key witness on exactly how the coerced confessions are created. After he managed to flee in July 2016, Lam gave a detailed account of being hooded, transported, and forced to perform a prescripted statement to the satisfaction of the police and TV team choreographing the spectacle. Nobody can accept these coerced statements as genuine.

All five, including Gui, were forced to apologize for selling their books. Gui was paraded three times so far, more than any other such victim. During a brief period of house arrest (late 2017 and early 2018), he visited our Shanghai consulate and renewed his Swedish passport.

Swedish diplomats were also made to believe they could take him to see a doctor, yet Gui was brutally dragged off the train by plain clothes men, in front of two Swedish officials. It took two weeks for the Chinese government to acknowledge the thugs were their men. After a last confessional spectacle, it appears nobody has seen him since. Later, it emerged that one of his few consular visits (which China is also obligated to provide, by international law) lasted only one minute.

Amazingly, in house arrest Gui managed to give his daughter, Angela Gui, a stack of prison poems. They were recently published as a bilingual Chinese and Swedish book, entitled I Use My Finger to Draw a Door on The Wall. I first knew Gui as a poet, and his talent and humour still shines through in this new collection.

Sweden struggled to handle the case, hoping China would respect international law. Instead, we were stonewalled, and treated to cruel spectacles. In a strange twist, the naive former Swedish ambassador to Beijing was led astray by shady businessmen whose mission wasn’t to free Gui, but to silence all critics, especially the brilliant Angela. She was told to shut up or “never see her father again” — which is, by the way, exactly the same blackmailing methods China uses to intimidate Uighurs in exile.

The main lesson we have learned is that the judiciary in China is a pretense, which exists only to safeguard the Communist Party. Fair trials simply are not possible, since everything is under the control of the party. Its concocted cover stories simply cannot be believed.

The regime didn’t even tell Sweden they held a trial in February 2020, only that they gave Gui 10 years on secret charges — and, supposedly, that he had asked to drop his Swedish citizenship (which is Swedish only; not dual). China’s hyper-arrogant ambassador to Stockholm then told us the issue of our fellow citizen no longer exists.

But we refuse to accept this. Today, an overwhelming public opinion as well as Sweden’s government, all eight parties in our Parliament, and the EU, all demand Gui Minhai’s release and reject the theft of his citizenship.

Last month, EU leader Charles Michel told Xi Jinping this, directly to his (virtual) face. This Oct. 17 the Swedish foreign minister again reiterated our demands. A new Swedish signature campaign is under way. The latest of a long line of demonstrations outside the Chinese embassy in Stockholm was just held, with 10 prominent speakers. As one of them said, the Chinese regime is only showing its weakness, and will lose by continuing to detain Gui Minhai.

We will never stop, and never forget.

Five years after the kidnapping, given what has happened in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and elsewhere, it’s also clear that we must get much more serious. We must form a global alliance to defend international law, or the Chinese regime will supplant it with their version of “might is right.”

Magnus Fiskesjö is a professor in the department of anthropology at Cornell University, former cultural attaché at Sweden’s embassy in Beijing and former director of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm.

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