He has been convicted of passing “intelligence data to a strange power”
Last minute about the coronavirus
Archive image of a protest in Hong Kong with a photo of Gui Minhai on a banner (Kin Cheung / AP)
ISMAEL ARANA | HONG KONG, Correspondent in Asia
25/02/2020
With the media focus overturned in the News of the coronavirus , China announced on Tuesday ten years in prison of the Swedish editor and bookseller Gui minhai, of 55 years, to which a court of the city of NOBO found guilty of "intelligence data to a foreign power". His sentence puts the end of the case of the missing bookumes of Hong Kong, An convoluted episode that highlighted the scope of the repression and censorship of Beijing against the annoying voices for the regime.
The ruling against GUI was issued on Monday by the intermediate court of NOBO, Eastern China city where the accused was born, Although it was not made public until Tuesday. According to the official statement, The defendant He declared himself guilty and did not appeal the sentence, which also includes the loss of their political rights for five years. Of auction, The court ensures that Gui resigned from his Swedish nationality, obtained in 1996, during the past year 2018, which makes it very difficult for Stockholm to provide some type of assistance.
A rocambolesco scandal
The case of Gui and his four colleagues, who ran a publishing house and a bookstore in Hong Kong specialized in the sale of volumes on intimacies and scandals - real or fictitious- of the communist elite, It is one of the most bizarre and controversial in the Chinese legal system in recent years..
It all started in October 2015, when Gui disappeared from his vacation home in Thailand and was illegally taken to China. As the days go by, Three other collaborators of his mysteriously evaporated after entering mainland China, while a fourth, his partner Lee Bo, He lost track of him on the streets of Hong Kong, where the Chinese police have no jurisdiction to act. Their cases caused great concern in the former British colony, where these disappearances were seen as a serious undermining of the principle of “one country, two systems.”” governing its relationship with mainland China.
months later, one after another, all reappeared in Chinese detention centers, where they confessed before television cameras to having committed different crimes. The most famous of all was that of a Gui who, between tears and apologies, admitted to fleeing China years ago for fear of going to jail after running over and killing a girl in 2003 when he was driving drunk and had returned to the country voluntarily to face justice.
After two years in prison, the bookseller was released in 2017, although his relatives always reported that his movements were restricted and that he lived confined to an apartment under police surveillance in Ningbo.. But in January 2018, Gui was arrested again when he was heading to Beijing in the company of two Swedish diplomats to, according to your version, undergo a medical examination at the embassy after beginning to show symptoms of a degenerative disease.
weeks later, He appeared before the media again to ensure that he had been manipulated by the Swedish authorities, that they had “sensationalized”” his story and they tried to remove him from the country “illegally”. “My wonderful life has been ruined and I will never trust Sweden again”, said.
His case caused a worsening of relations between Beijing and Stockholm and , in the end, cost the Swedish ambassador in Beijing her job, Anna Lindstedt, which the Prosecutor's Office of his country accused last December of having exceeded its functions. one month before, The Swedish PEN awarded Gui the Tucholsky Prize, named after a German writer who fled Nazi Germany for Sweden. That gesture irritated Beijing, who warned the Scandinavians that they would “suffer the consequences”.
Sweden insisted on Gui's release
After knowing the sentence, the Swedish foreign minister, Ann Linde, He said his government continued to insist that Gui should be released. “Now we are gathering more information”, he said on his Twitter account, adding that its diplomats had not had access to the trial. “The Government continues to demand that Gui Minhai be released and that we have access to our citizens to provide them with consular support”.
The harsh sentence also provoked a wave of criticism from NGOs and human rights organizations.. Para Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, The ruling is an example of “the Chinese government's bottomless hostility toward critics and its shameless use of its legal system.”. Gui has not committed any crime and should be released immediately.", pointed out.
