The launching of a “smear campaign” against recently returned bookseller Lam Wing-kee is “adding fuel to the fire,” said pro-democracy former lawmaker Ronny Tong Ka-wah on DBC radio on Monday.
“[Beijing] never understands that when you have these kinds of situations, using these kinds of tactics… will make more people believe in this incident and believe in [Lam],” said Tong. “They never understand how Hong Kong people think,” he added.
Tong later said that he has suggested to the mainland since the beginning that it needed to assure Hongkongers that such things will not happen in the future.
Lam, one of the five missing booksellers, held a surprise press conference last Thursday claiming that he was arrested in Shenzhen in October last year. He said that he was detained and ill-treated by a “special unit” separate from official mainland police. Since then his colleagues at the Causeway Bay Bookstore and his girlfriend in the mainland have separately accused Lam of lying and using their relationship to run his banned books business.
Belief in One Country, Two Systems
While Lam said that he could not see how the Hong Kong government had helped or protected him, Tong said that Lam’s actions show that he still has faith in One Country, Two Systems.
“To be honest, him holding the press conference shows that he believes in One Country, Two Systems,” said Tong, “or else why would he dare to say such things?”
