The daughter of missing bookseller Gui Minhai has said that she hopes information on her father’s whereabouts will emerge now that his colleague Lam Wing-kee has been released. In a statement published on Friday, Angela Gui said that Lam was able to speak out when he returned to Hong Kong on Tuesday as he does not have family in the mainland who can be punished and threatened.
“Lam Wing-kee’s brave statements about his kidnapping and illegal detention yesterday have finally confirmed what we all suspected had really happened to the ‘missing’ Causeway Bay booksellers,” she said.
“It is now beyond doubt that my father, like Mr Lam, was also abducted, forced to confess on television to crimes he has not committed, and to decline help from family and lawyers,” she added.
She called for his release and urged China to address the “illegal treatment” of her father and his colleagues.
Statement from missing bookseller Gui Minhai’s daughter. pic.twitter.com/dfdOolRfz2
— Tom Grundy (@tomgrundy) June 18, 2016
Gui, 51, is a Swedish naturalised citizen and co-owner of a publishing company in Hong Kong. He went missing in Thailand last October 17. He was last seen on Chinese state television “confessing” to evading a suspended two-year prison term over a drunk driving death 13 years ago. Though he is confirmed to be in Chinese custody, his exact whereabouts remain unknown.
In an interview with CNN’s Kristie Lu Stout on Thursday, Angela Gui said: “I really hope that this recent news about Lam Wing-kee being released means that we will have news about my father soon as well.”
She expressed concerns about her father’s safety, as well as her own: “My life has obviously changed since my father was abducted, and I am much more careful about what personal information I give out.”
In May, Angela Gui – who is studying in the UK – gave testimony at a US committee hearing on the human rights situation in China.
Gui is the only bookseller, among the five who went missing, who has yet to resurface.
See also: ‘An absurd place’: Returned bookseller says he underwent 20-30 forced interrogations without lawyer
Gui was born in Zhejiang, China and went to Peking University to study history before heading to Sweden in 1988. In 2013, Gui and others established Mighty Current Media in Hong Kong, which published politically sensitive books banned in mainland China.
