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Hong Kong (CNN)The case of five Hong Kong booksellers allegedly abducted by Chinese government agents shows how the international community has failed to pressure Beijing on human rights, a new report claims.
In June, bookseller Lam Wing-kee told CNN how he was blindfolded and seized by “special forces” as he crossed the border from Hong Kong to China.
He spent five months in solitary confinement and a time under house arrest before being returned to Hong Kong on bail, where he defied his captors to tell the world what had happened.
“The booksellers’ disappearances were a vivid indication that the long arm of the Chinese security state could and would reach into Hong Kong and beyond,” PEN America, which lobbies for free speech rights worldwide, said in a statement.
Angela Gui, whose father Gui Minhai is still in detention in China, told PEN that “if the international community stays quiet, it’s just going to be forgotten about and the Chinese will keep him as long as they like.”
Gui Minhai is a Swedish citizen, and the country’s representatives have called for him to be released. He was born in China but does not hold a Chinese passport.
Beijing however has largely refused to acknowledge Gui’s Swedish citizenship, and regards him as Chinese.
British diplomats have also complained of being denied access to detained bookseller Lee Bo, who holds a UK passport.
Lee is “first and foremost a Chinese citizen,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in January.
“It’s a bizarre view of citizenship,” Angela Gui told CNN recently. “China is a country that doesn’t really respect the rule of law.”
China has repeatedly asserted that it views Gui and Lee’s cases as an internal affair, and warned against “unwarranted accusations” from outside parties.
The booksellers case, warns PEN, “indicates China’s determination to unilaterally define issues of narrative and even identity, in the expectation that it will not be challenged.”
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