China Sentences Swedish Bookseller Gui to 10 Years in Jail
China Sentences Swedish Bookseller Gui to 10 Years in Jail
(Bloomberg) -- Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was sentenced to 10 years in jail in China and will be stripped of his political rights for five years for “illegally providing intelligence overseas,” in a case that has triggered a diplomatic row between the two countries.
China said it detained Gui on suspicion of illegally providing state secrets and intelligence to overseas parties and endangering state security, according to a Feb. 10 report by the state-run Xinhua news agency that cited the police.
Authorities in mainland Zhejiang province filed a case against Gui at a court in Ningbo this January. He pleaded guilty and will not appeal, according to a statement published Monday on the court’s website.
It added that Gui, who was born in the mainland and became a Swedish citizen in 1996, had applied to restore his Chinese nationality in 2018. That could make it tougher for him to get help from European diplomats, as China doesn’t recognize dual citizenship.
Both the court and China’s Foreign Ministry maintained that Gui’s rights had been guaranteed according to the law.
“China is a country with the rule of law. China’s authorities handled the Gui Minhai case in accordance with the law, his rights were upheld throughout the sentencing,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters Tuesday in Beijing. He added that China “opposes foreign interference” in the case.
Diplomatic Flare
Human rights groups have long denounced Gui’s detention. Patrick Poon, a China researcher at Amnesty International, said Tuesday that it was “odd” Gui would want to resume his Chinese nationality at this time.
“It seems to be the Chinese government’s tactics to stop him from getting any more support from the Swedish government,” Poon said by WhatsApp message.
Gui went missing in Thailand in 2015, one of five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared around the same time in a crackdown for helping sell books in China that were banned by the ruling Communist Party. He and four other booksellers later surfaced in mainland China.
Tensions over the case flared last year when Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven rejected China’s threats that Sweden would “suffer the consequences” of awarding Gui a freedom of speech prize.
The bookseller’s sentencing comes the month after China’s ambassador to Stockholm, Gui Congyou, caused a diplomatic uproar in which he said the Nordic country’s media had “smeared” China.
He also compared the relationship between Sweden’s media and China to one in which “a 48 kilogram-weight boxer keeps challenging an 86 kilogram-weight boxer to a fight.” His comments led three parties in Sweden’s parliament to call for his ouster.
Sweden on Tuesday responded to China’s sentencing of Gui by renewing its call for his liberation.
“We have been clear all along that we demand the release of Gui Minhai so that he can be reunited with his daughter and his family,” Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said in a radio interview. “That demand remains.”
Taken Away
Gui was initially released from Chinese custody in October 2017, but remained in the mainland under what Amnesty said was police surveillance and restrictions on his movement.
Months later, in January 2018, he was taken by plainclothes officers while traveling to Beijing by train in the company of two Swedish diplomats, according to Amnesty. Gui had been traveling to the Chinese capital to seek a diagnosis for what was feared to be Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, an illness of the nervous system.
At the time of his disappearance, Chinese state media said he had been jailed for a drunk-driving incident more than a decade earlier, in which a person was killed.
--With assistance from Peter Martin and Niclas Rolander.
To contact the reporters on this story: Blake Schmidt in Hong Kong at bschmidt16@bloomberg.net;Natalie Lung in Hong Kong at flung6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Karen Leigh, Chris Kay
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