RSF Calls for Pressure on China to Free Swedish Publisher Gui Minhai, Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

Jojje Olsson/RSF

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on democracies to pressure the Beijing regime to release the Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, who has been arbitrarily detained for more than 4 years and sentenced to 10 years in prison yesterday despite serious problems. health.

Swedish publisher Gui Minhai , 55, arbitrarily detained in China despite serious health concerns, was sentenced on Monday (February 24th) to ten years in prison for “illegally disseminating classified information abroad. “ Gui Minhai, the main shareholder of a Hong Kong publisher known for its scandalous publications on privacy Chinese leaders, is the latest held in a group of five editors who disappeared in 2015 before reappearing at meetings of forced confessions on Chinese public television. In its judgment , the Intermediate People’s Court of Ningbo (Zhejiang) indicates that Gui Minhai “pleaded guilty” and “Will not appeal” and ensures that the publisher, naturalized Swedish in 1996, would have voluntarily taken the steps to restore his Chinese nationality in 2018.

RSF denounces this scandalous travesty of justice and calls on democracies around the world to pressure China to release Gui Minhai and all other imprisoned journalists and bloggers.

The case of Gui Minhai sets a dangerous precedent in which the Beijing regime claims the right to kidnap a European citizen in a third country, to arbitrarily detain him for more than 4 years and to sentence him to a prison sentence equivalent to to a death sentence given his state of health ” , indignant Erik Halkjaer, president of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Sweden.

This relentlessness towards a foreign citizen, in defiance of the Chinese constitution as well as international law, shows that Beijing considers the passivity of democracies as a given,” regrets Cédric Alviani, director of the East Asia office of Reporters Without Borders. “If he does not meet with more resistance, the regime of Xi Jinping will know that he can with impunity remove his opponents anywhere in the world , hold them incommunicado for as long as he wishes, exhibit them on television like fair beasts , pretend that they are free in defiance of the obvious, and even prevent them from being treated. “

Kidnapped in Thailand

Gui Minhai, principal shareholder of the Hong Kong bookstore Causeway Bay and the publishing house Mighty Current, specializing in scandal revelations on the privacy of Chinese leaders, disappeared on October 14, 2015, presumably kidnapped by the Chinese secret services in his residence in Pattaya (Thailand). He reappeared on the public channel CCTV on January 17, 2016, for an allegedly “spontaneous” confession filmed in a Chinese detention center.

The Beijing regime blamed him, in bulk, for having carried out “illegal commercial operations” , for “ having disclosed state secrets” and for “ having illegally dated foreign diplomats. ” In 2017, Chinese authorities have also prevented to meet with a doctor chosen by the embassy as he presented symptoms of a severe neurological disease.

RSF has repeatedly called for the release of Gui Minhai and has submitted his case to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD). On November 15, 2019, the publisher was awarded the Tucholsky Prize of the association for the defense of freedom of expression PEN Sweden, awarded by the Swedish Minister for Culture and Democracy despite public threats made by Chinese Ambassador to Sweden Gui Congyou . Last week in Sweden, a group of press freedom activists, including RSF, also published an open letter calling for the publisher’s release.

China, with more than 100 journalists behind bars, ranks 177th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2019 RSF World Press Freedom Index . Sweden is in third place.