Missing Hong Kong bookseller’s wife drops police report

She said that the bookseller had been in touch with a friend, according to Hong Kong’s RTHK radio.

Asked how she felt about Hong Kong’s handover as British rule comes to an end, Mrs Thatcher replied: “I shall be very sad indeed”.

Echoing the thoughts of fellow opposition politicians, Lee Cheuk-yan, a pro-democracy lawmaker, said he suspected mainland authorities had pressed the couple to change their stories. Embracing the Chinese President with a state visit in 2015, Mr Cameron expressed concerns about Hong Kong with Mr Xi in private, only to be slammed down by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in public.

AFP reported that Lee’s wife had said Saturday her husband told her he was “assisting in an investigation” in a phone call after he failed to return home for dinner Wednesday.

According to the Post, Hong Kong police have said they will continue to investigate Lee’s whereabouts, despite the fact that his wife has withdrawn her report of his disappearance. The 1984 Joint Declaration provided for the handover of power in Hong Kong from Britain to China.

Mrs Lee has now said she is happy that a handwritten letter, purportedly from Mr Lee and published by Taiwan’s news agency Central News, is genuine. The case of Lee Bo, the latest associate with ties to Causeway Bay Bookstore to disappear, sparked protests and demands for answers from China’s mainland government. “I have no other choice but to trust the police, the government, and ‘one country, two systems, ‘” Choi said earlier on Monday in an interview with a local radio station. No other law enforcement agencies – outside of Hong Kong, that is – have such authority.

Lee’s disappearance came after that of four other men tied to Mighty Current and a bookstore it owns in Hong Kong, all of whom vanished in October. John Lee Ka-chiu, the acting secretary for security, admitted police were using established channels with its mainland security counterparts to determine if any Hong Kong resident was being detained.

Under its mini-constitution, Hong Kong enjoys freedom of speech and Chinese law enforcers have no right to operate in the city.

But an editorial in the Global Times newspaper, close to China’s Communist Party, accused the bookstore run by the missing men of selling publications containing “maliciously fabricated content”.

However, if Bo was indeed abducted by Chinese authorities, it would constitute a glaring breach in the Hong Kong-China “One Country, Two Systems” law.

Hong Kong’s top official, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, has said that he is “extremely concerned” about Lee and that his administration “cares very much” about the “rights and safety” of the people of Hong Kong.

There has been no official comment from the Chinese government on Mr Lee’s case. “Those books have through various channels entered into the mainland and have become a source of certain political rumors, which have caused some evil influence”.

“It may take some time”.

Ho said one possible explanation for Lee’s disappearance was that the Mighty Current publishing company was being pressured to scrap plans for a book rumored to be about an old “girlfriend or mistress” of Chinese President Xi.

In the bustling Causeway Bay shopping district where the store was located, a few curious Hongkongers and mainland tourists came by and walked up along its dark and narrow staircase now and again to check on the status of bookseller Causeway Bay Books.