Gui Minhai, detained Hong Kong bookseller, jailed for 10 years in China
A Chinese court has
sentenced Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison for “providing
intelligence” overseas, in a case that has highlighted China’s far-reaching
crackdown on critics. A court in Ningbo, an
eastern port city, said on Tuesday that Gui had been found guilty and would be
stripped of political rights for five years in addition to his prison term. The
brief statement said Gui had pled guilty and would not be appealing against his
case.
Gui, a China-born
Swedish citizen ran a Hong Kong publishing house that acquired the independent
bookstore Causeway Books, popular for gossipy titles about China’s political
elite. Gui was one of five people associated with the store who disappeared in
2015, in a case that rippled across Hong Kong, prompting
fears about China’s growing grip over the city where the publishing industry
had long enjoyed freedoms granted under the “one country, two systems”
framework.
Gui, who disappeared
from his holiday home in Thailand and was held incommunicado for months,
eventually reappeared in 2016 in mainland China on state
television. In a staged confession, he said he had turned himself in over a
drink-driving incident that took place a decade earlier. Many human rights
observers believed he had been coerced into making the statement. Gui was partially
released in 2017 but barred from leaving the country. In January 2018, he
was detained
by plainclothes officers while traveling with two Swedish diplomats to
a medical appointment, causing severe diplomatic fall out between China and
Sweden... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/25/gui-minhai-detained-hong-kong-bookseller-jailed-for-10-years-in-chinasee also
"Tell the world! Tell the world!" Tien An Men, June 4, 1989
