Swedes vent fury at publisher’s detention by Chinese

China’s ambassador to Sweden has been summoned to explain the second abduction of dissident publisher and writer Gui Minhai.

Angela Gui as a child with her father Gui Minhai. Picture: AFP

China’s ambassador to Sweden has been summoned to explain the abduction of dissident publisher and writer Gui Minhai, the second time he has been seized by Chinese authorities.

Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen, was taken on Friday by 10 non-uniformed officers as he travelled by train to Beijing from the eastern city of Ningbo, where he was living, while accompanied by two Swedish diplomats

His daughter, Angela, said he had been seized after the train stopped at a small station near the capital. He had been due to be examined at the Swedish embassy after showing symptoms of motor neurone disease.

The Hong Kong-based publisher and writer of racy books on the Chinese leadership was first snatched from his holiday home at Pattaya, Thailand, in late 2015. Four of his Causeway Bay Books colleagues disappeared from Hong Kong about the same time. All reappeared in China.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry said yesterday it was “fully aware” of what had happened to Dr Gui, without giving further details. Ministry spokesman Patric Nilsson said that “forceful measures have been taken at a high political level”.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström had summoned China’s ambassador to a meeting and had been promised information about what had happened to the publisher.

Angela Gui, who is studying in Britain, told Radio Sweden her father had clearly been abducted again and was being held at a secret location. “Things have taken a very drastic turn for the worse,” she told The New York Times.

The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ms Gui said her father’s symptoms had developed while earlier in custody. She said he wished to receive medical treatment in Europe, and that a Swedish doctor had flown to Beijing to examine him.

In February 2016, a videotaped “confession” by Dr Gui was broadcast on China Central TV in which he expressed remorse for a fatal driving accident in Ningbo in 2003, and in another interview later that year admitted trying to smuggle ­illegal books into China.

Released from custody last October, he has been required to report regularly to the police in Ningbo, the city near Shangahi where he grew up. He is not allowed to leave China.

Amnesty International described the incident as “absolutely appalling” and called for Dr Gui to be released and allowed to seek medical treatment.

The fact that he had been snatched in front of diplomats should be a “wake-up call” to the international community, said Amnesty’s China researcher William Nee.

Chinese authorities were widely criticised after jailed Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo died from liver cancer last July.

Dr Gui, a 53-year-old Peking University history graduate, became a Swedish citizen while studying for his doctorate at Gothenburg University and renounced his Chinese citizenship.

He wrote about 200 books under the pen-name Ah Hai during a decade spent mainly in Hong Kong. The books, comprising lurid, uncorroborated tales of Chinese leaders, sold well. Dr Gui reaped a bonanza with the lurid downfall of minister Bo Xilai.

President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has also been the subject of such publications.

Colleague Lam Wing-kee was freed in June 2016 to return to Hong Kong after eight months. He went public over the ordeal of the five booksellers, saying their “confessions” had been made under duress. He said he had been released only in order to obtain and return to the mainland with a hard drive containing a list of Causeway’s readers. He has ­refused to return.