Five men linked to an anti-establishment bookstore in Hong Kong disappeared last year, with many suspecting Chinese involvement. Dateline investigates their case and talks to the daughter of one of the disappeared men, who is speaking out for truth and justice.
Angela Gui never imagined she would attend her university graduation alone, it was a milestone that her father had been looking forward to sharing with her.
ANGELA GUI, MISSING BOOKSELLER’S DAUGHTER: I just always assumed that he would be there. Actually experiencing that day without him there was very strange.
It has been one year since Angela has heard from her father Gui Minhai, a Chinese born Swedish national. He was last seen outside his holiday apartment in the Thai resort town of Pattaya on October 17th 2015, then he disappeared.
ANGELA GUI: I would of never been able to imagine that publishing some books could get a person kidnapped, to get a person with a Swedish citizenship kidnapped and taken into China from a third country.
Angela believes her father was abducted and imprisoned for speaking out against the Chinese Government, for her this is made even more shocking because he holds only Swedish citizenship. Angela’s father, Gui Minhai owned a share in a Hong Kong bookstore that has become the centre of a mystery and we are travelling to Hong Kong to try to unravel it.
This busy street in downtown Hong Kong is home to the Causeway Bay Book Store, the books the store once sold are banned in mainland China but legal in Hong Kong, the store proved highly profitable for its owners until one by one, five men linked to the store started to disappear. But it wasn’t really until the apparent abduction of the fifth bookseller – Lee Bo – the Hong Kong public took notice.
PROTESTOR (Translation): Oppose political kidnapping! Safeguard “One Country, Two Systems.”
By the time Lee went missing on the 30th of December, rumours were rife that China’s secret police were behind the other disappearances.
PROTESTORS (Translation): Release Lee Bo!
Lee’s case caused greater outrage because unlike his colleagues, he vanished from within Hong Kong, he was also a British citizen.
LEE CHEUK YAN, HONG KONG LEGISLATOR: I think it’s obvious that he was being smuggled into China for investigation and this is really much concern for the people of Hong Kong because we thought that we are secure.
LEE CHEUK YAN (Translation): Safeguard “One Country, Two Systems”!
Since its return to China in 1997, Hong Kong has been governed by its own constitution, under an arrangement known as “One Country, Two Systems”. Law enforcement officers from the mainland are not allowed to operate here. Activists and pro-democracy legislators say what happened to Lee is a violation of that policy and a breach of China’s agreement with the United Kingdom. When the British Foreign Secretary raised the issue with his counterpart in Beijing, this was the answer received:
WANG YI, CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTER (Translation): Under Hong Kong’s Basic Law and Chinese law, he is first and foremost a Chinese citizen.
This industrial building in the eastern part of Hong Kong, is where Lee Bo was last seen before he went missing. CCTV footage seen by a source shows him leaving with a bag of books at around 5.45pm. Curiously, Lee broke with habit and took the cargo rather than the passenger lift, he never returned home. That evening his wife called a family friend.
LEE BO’S FRIEND “MR WONG” (Translation): His wife asked my wife to go with her to see if he had fainted there. They went to the warehouse, there was no one there.
This man has unique insight into the events leading up to Lee’s disappearance. He is a personal friend of Lee’s, a writer and a publisher. For security reasons, he asks us during our first meeting to keep his identity secret… we’ll call him “Mr Wong”.
MR WONG (Translation): Anyway, I’ll be the sixth. I am so old, that if they get, I won’t be able to do hard labour.
Wong says, Lee struggled to run the bookstore after his colleagues disappeared, so when an investor called Chan approached him with an offer of help, he took it. According to a copy of the draft contract, the tears were overwhelmingly in Lee’s favour.
MR WONG (Translation): Chan would pay the rent, if the shop made losses, he would cover them, if it made a profit, Lee Bo would get 75% and Chan 25%.
But who exactly is this generous mystery investor? Local cameramen filmed him with police leaving the bookstore in early January, his name… Chan Hin Shing. Chan has since proved elusive but official documents from Hong Kong’s company registry reveals he is the director of a business that owns this - the Sands Sauna, an establishment offering "special" massages for men. There's no evidence to show that prior to the agreement with Lee, Chan was ever involved in the book trade. Wong believes he was acting on behalf of some other, more powerful people.
MR WONG (Translation): It’s the Chinese Communist Party, they took over the bookshop so they could control it.
CHOI KA PING, LEE BO’S WIFE (Translation): I think he is in Shenzhen.
Lee Bo's wife's told Hong Kong's Mingpao newspaper that he called her on the night he went missing. He spoke to her in Mandarin, rather than Cantonese, the language they normally use.
CHOI KA PING (Translation): It was as if there were people with him listening in.
Something else didn't add up. According to Choi, her husband wasn't carrying his travel documents.
CHOI KA PING (Translation): Police say there was no record of him leaving Hong Kong. We are willing to stop what we do if the people who took him hear this, I hope they can…let him come back safely.
MAN (Translation): Is the fax real or fake?
CHOI KA PING (Translation): Real, it is in his handwriting.
One day later, Choi paid a visit to the police to cancel the missing person's report she had lodged. She said her husband had been in touch again. Lee Bo had apparently sent this fax to his new mysterious business partner and investor, Chan Hin Shing. In the handwritten note, he said he had gone to China using his own method – perhaps in response to reports that he had crossed the border without his travel documents. He also said he was helping with an investigation which could take a while to complete and that everything was normal. But nothing is normal about the bookseller's case. Lee Bo had been planning to release a new book in January. Copies had already been printed but after Lee went missing, so too did the book.
MR WONG (Translation): 2017: Massive Change in China. That’s the book, reduced to waste paper, thrown away.
NEWS READER (Translation): What sort of person is Gui Minhai? What is the truth behind his disappearance?
Three months after Gui Minhai disappeared from his apartment in Thailand, he finally turns up. On China state television, he makes a surprising confession.
GUI MINHAI, MISSING BOOKSELLER (Translation): There was an accident, I heard a bang - there had been an accident.
According to the news report, some 12 years ago, Gui was driving under the influence of alcohol when he hit and killed this young woman. He was given a 2-year suspended sentence, and barred from leaving China during the period. But allegedly, Gui fled the country shortly after the court delivered its verdict.
GUI MINHAI (Translation): It has nothing to do with anyone else, I don’t want anyone or any organisation…including the Swedish government, to intervene.
Rather than putting an end to speculation, Gui's television appearance raises even more questions. Why does he look different at different points of his alleged confession? The length of his hair changes. His shirt is sometimes light, sometimes dark. And why does he often glance at the camera between sentences? For Gui's daughter, Angela, the confession was difficult to watch.
ANGELA GUI: I am afraid that I won’t get to see my father again. I still couldn't really grasp that it was actually my father that was being made to say all these things.
On the same day that China state TV broadcast the confession, Angela's father sent her a number of messages.
ANGELA GUI: My dad's English is quite good, so this doesn't sound like him at all. He writes, "Hi, Angela, I am OK. Pls don't worry for me. I have returned China by myself for solving some personal problems, if anybody ask about me...Pls keep silence, which is important for me.”
ANGELA GUI AT CONGRESS: I want my testimony today to be a reminder…
But for Angela, remaining silent is not a choice.
ANGELA GUI: My father, a Swedish citizen, he was abducted by Chinese state agents from a sovereign country and is still in unofficial and illegal detention in China.
The shy graduate has been forced to become an activist. This year she has made appearances at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and the US Congress, appealing for her father's release.
ANGELA GUI: I sometimes find it useful to call myself an accidental activist because I think that is what I have become. I have no plans on becoming an activist.
Despite her work as a human rights defender, this past year has changed Angela forever.
ANGELA GUI: I am not going to quit until my dad is released and I don't know how long that is going to take. But I think I'll just continue doing what I can do because I think that's what I should do.
CCTV footage shows Angela's father returning to his apartment at around 1.15pm on the 17th of October 2015. A man emerges from the shadows by the guardhouse, and then disappears from view. Gui gets out of his car, dressed in shorts and flip-flops. An apartment security guard helps him unload his things. He then gets back in the car and according to staff at the apartment, picks up the unidentified man at the guardhouse before driving off. He's not been back to his holiday home since. But others have.
Two weeks later, surveillance cameras at the apartment building capture footage of these four men. Earlier, Gui had called the building manager, and told her to let them into his apartment. The time on the camera shows they spent 28 minutes inside. Also campaigning for Gui Minhai's release is his friend, the exiled Chinese poet Bei Ling. He has travelled to Thailand to search for clues into his friend's disappearance.
BEI LING, EXILED POET (Translation): He really knows how to enjoy life. He bought such a nice apartment.
On the floor, there's a parcel, it's addressed to Gui and dated the 8th of October, 2015 – 9 days before he went missing. Someone's already ripped the box open, more books, many of them with the potential to anger some very powerful people in China.
BEI LING (Translation): The computer is gone. Only the monitor is left. So the computer’s been removed.
Mai, the apartment manager, later confirms that the computer was removed by the four men who visited Gui's home after he disappeared. She also reveals one more thing.
BEI LING (Translation): A number for the four mystery men who went to his house… and took his computer and passport. The number’s been cancelled.
Gui was apparently aware he'd ruffled some important feathers, after he went missing Lee Bo told journalists what he knew.
LEE BO (Translation): He said he had been warned, they told him to be careful and stop talking the way he did, he had some relatives on the mainland, they also passed on warnings, telling him not to be so extreme.
So far we've assumed only five booksellers have been detained since October. But in fact, others have also been targeted by mainland Chinese agents. Publisher and magazine editor Lau Tat Man mentored Gui and Lee when they first started in the business. He tells us that a sixth person was illegally held in China late last year - his wife.
LAU TAT MAN, PUBLISHER (Translation): The agents I know contacted the people responsible, they told me these people were angry with me. They also said “Do you know the five who were detained have been ratting on you?” They want to scare me.
China’s liaise office in Hong Kong doesn’t respond to our request for comment, now it appears a special team, set up more recently, has decided to take an even more aggressive approach.
LAU TAT MAN (Translation): They came here and abducted a Hong Kong resident, that resident must have committed what they see as a major transgression.
But why did these five men attract the attention of a special team of secret agents? In an email to Gui's daughter Angela, Lee Bo wrote that Gui had contacted his Hong Kong publisher two days before he disappeared. He was apparently planning to print a new book, though he didn't say what it's about, or who wrote it. Could this latest book be the reason Gui and his bookshop were targeted?
In early February, a book called Xi Jinping and his Lovers suddenly appears online. It's a salacious and imaginative take on the Chinese President's romantic life. It's author, New York-based writer Xi Nuo, causes a stir when he says his book is the reason why Gui and his colleagues disappeared. He challenges the Chinese government to let the booksellers go and to sue him instead. Xi Nuo does not respond to our requests for an interview. But we've come to New York to meet an author who has written more than 25 books for Gui Minhai and Lee Bo. He is furious with Xi Nuo.
LIU LU, WRITER (Translation): Gui doesn’t even know who he is, he has never met Gui, never called him or even emailed him. So there’s the loophole. There’s the lie.
ANGELA GUI: To my knowledge, my dad has been held somewhere in China for a year. I am afraid that I will not see my father again.
A month after his first appearance on China TV, Angela’s father, Gui Minhai is back on camera. This time, he admits to being a smuggler.
GUI MINHAI (Translation): So we discussed ways to evade checks…by the Chinese customs officals.
LUI POR, MISSING BOOKSELLER (Translation): I regret following Gui Minhai.
The same report features three of the other missing booksellers. All of them blame their plight on Gui.
LAM WING KEE, MISSING BOOKSELLER (Translation): Gui Minhai’s books are made up.
Then, a day later, Lee Bo is interviewed on the same channel.
LEE BO (Translation): Yes, I gave up my British passport.
He also insists he smuggled himself into China to help in an unnamed investigation. Four months after starting his investigation, Gui Minhai's friend, the poet Bei Ling, has come to Hong Kong. The bookstore's remained shuttered since January, but the door isn't locked.
BEI LING (Translation): They have removed all the sensitive books, it’s not just one book about Xi Jinping, it’s the 100 books Gui has published that have angered the Chinese government….. Look at that unhappy face!
That afternoon, Bei Ling meets a friend who has been helping him with the investigation. Woo Chih-Wai is actually our source, Mr Wong. He's decided it's no longer necessary to hide his identity.
WOO CHIH WAI, LEE BO’S FRIEND (Translation): If they decide to kidnap me now, everyone knows what’s going on.
Woo ran the bookshop after its manager disappeared in October. Even now, he visits the shop regularly. He likes to read the messages left outside by well-wishers.
WOO CHIH WAI: Continue to speak up. Never stop. Freedom ends when we are all silent.
But the five booksellers won't be speaking as they once did.
LEE BO (Translation): We’ve published enough. This money…
MAN (Translation): Were you told not to keep publishing?
LEE BO (Translation): I wouldn’t say that.
At the end of March, Lee Bo reappears briefly in Hong Kong.
MAN (Translation): Is somebody telling you what to say?
LEE BO (Translation): I have said everything I need to.
After speaking to the media, he was bundled into a van which we followed to the border with mainland China. Of the 5 booksellers taken, 3 have since been released and returned to Hong Kong but the whereabouts of Gui Minhai is still unknown. And for his daughter, Angela, the fight for his freedom continues.
ANGELA GUI: Despite having been told to stay quiet, I believe speaking up is the only option I have. There are so many other people who are at risk of being abducted like my dad, who have been arrested. If I can speak out and if I can do anything, I really should.
producers
lynn lee
james leong
additional camera
marc hill
additional editing
micah mcgown
nick hogan
narrator
janice petersen
editors
micah mcgown
simon phegan
david potts
18th October 2016