Why Have 5 Booksellers Mysteriously Vanished In Hong Kong?

Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying on Monday hit out at the “disappearance” of a fifth bookseller and publisher linked to a bookstore known for selling political gossip about the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Like the four others who disappeared in recent months, Lee is associated with publisher Mighty Current.

Lee Bo, an employee at the Mighty Current publishing house and shareholder of Causeway Bay Books, went missing on Wednesday after going to retrieve books from the company warehouse, local media quoted his wife as saying.

“We should give time to the police to conduct their investigation”, said acting security secretary John Lee.

Critics in Hong Kong, including politician and former journalist Claudia Mo, said the disappearances were sending a chill through the city’s once-vibrant media scene.

But pro-democracy lawmakers said it appeared likely Lee had been kidnapped by Chinese police, and expressed shock, anger and fear.

“In Hong Kong, the only people who can exercise the power of the law are our legal enforcement agencies of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government”, he said.

She said the call was from a number in the nearby Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The Liaison Office and Hong Kong Immigration Department could not be reached for comment.

In her statement, written with Scholarism leader Joshua Wong, Chow says that Lee Bo’s case makes it clear that Hong Kong citizens no longer enjoy the personal safety and human rights protection that they are guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984.

Owner Gui Minhai, along with general manager Lui Bo, store manager Lam Wing-kei and staff member Cheung Jiping were reported missing between 22nd and 24th October 2015. The city’s police said that there was no record of Lee leaving Hong Kong, according to a report in the city’s largest-circulation English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post. “Anyone who thinks they may have information that may lead to a better understanding of their whereabouts and the reasons why they seem to be missing in Hong Kong or from Hong Kong would be welcome to provide such information to the Hong Kong government authorities”.

The suspected abductions have sent shockwaves through Hong Kong publishing circles, where complaints over increasing censorship and pressure from Beijing are common.

“Now mainland personnel have enforced laws in Hong Kong illegally, will this result in a change of the one country two system?”.

On Sunday, Claudia Mo, an outspoken Hong Kong legislator, described the incident as “a huge attack on Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” [model]” which was introduced following the colony’s return to Chinese control in 1997.

But less than two decades into Chinese rule, freedom is eroding fast in Hong Kong. His last communication was an email informing his printers to a new book he would be sending over the proofs for shortly, but never did.

The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs said its embassies in Bangkok and Beijing were investigating reports that a Swedish national had been detained in Thailand or China.

When the four other publishers disappeared last autumn Lee had said he was a shareholder in the Mighty Current publishing company.

Small groups of protesters have marched through central Hong Kong demanding to know what happened to the men.