http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

17 june 2016

 

China acting like 'thugs' with detention of Hong Kong booksellers

By Neil Connor

 

Angry protesters gathered in Hong Kong on Friday as politicians said the Chinese government was behaving like “thugs” after a local bookseller revealed he was blindfolded, interrogated and detained for eight months.

In comments which are certain to infuriate Beijing, Lam Wing-kee told on Thursday how he was kept under constant surveillance in a tiny room after being held by Chinese “special forces” after he entered the mainland last October.

His explosive account of his mysterious disappearance was the latest twist in a saga which has gripped Hong Kong amid fears that freedoms in the former British colony are being eroded by Beijing.

Mr Lam is one of five men who worked at the Mighty Current publishers who went missing last year, with many observers saying they had been targeted by Beijing for their trade in books which are highly-critical of Chinese leaders.

Responding to Mr Lam’s revelations, Claudia Mo, a Civic Party politician in Hong Kong, told The Telegraph: “It reminds me of reports of what happened in East Germany in the 1970s or 80s before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“It is unbelievable. They are behaving like thugs. The people who took him are not even from the police or military. This is all very covert.”

A succession of political groups protested outside China’s liaison office in Hong Kong on Friday.

Members of pro-democracy party Demosisto shouted "Defend the freedoms of Hong Kongers!" and plastered posters supporting Mr Lam over the outside wall.

Joshua Wong, a teenage activist who helped found the party, said Mr Lam’s revelations had exposed the “suppression” of Hong Kong by the Chinese state.

“This incident proves the end of the one country, two systems rule,” he told The Telegraph, referring to a principle agreed before the territory was handed back to China by Britain in 1997 which guaranteed freedoms in Hong Kong.

Mr Lam is the first of the booksellers to openly speak out about their disappearance, and his version of events directly contradicts Beijing’s position that the men went to the China voluntarily to help with an investigation.

The 61-year-old and two colleagues where held in October not long after they entered the mainland from Hong Kong, while a fourth man Gui Minhai was apparently abducted from his Thai holiday home days later.

The disappearance in December of the fifth publisher – British passport holder Lee Bo – sparked international outcry as it appeared highly likely that he was taken by Chinese agents who were operating in Hong Kong.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond raised concerns about Mr Lee in February, calling his disappearance a “serious breach” of the Joint Declaration, a treaty signed between China and the UK ahead of the 1997 handover.

“We remain deeply concerned by the case of Lee, a British citizen,” a spokeswoman from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said on Friday.