Missing Hong Kong bookseller is British citizen, Foreign Office confirms

Hong Kong’s top leader Leung Chun-ying said Monday (Jan. 4) that it would be “unacceptable” and a violation of the Basic Law that governs the semi-autonomous city if mainland Chinese authorities were enforcing laws in Hong Kong.

THE “missing persons” case of five booksellers from Hong Kong who specialized in mainland-related political titles has led to a range of theories, not least of which is the fear that Beijing is tightening its grip on the Chinese special administrative region (SAR) in matters such as freedom of the press and expression. His disappearance came weeks after four other men affiliated with the bookshop also went missing.

“Only legal enforcement agencies in Hong Kong have the legal authority to enforce laws in Hong Kong”, Leung said.

Four of his co-workers in the Mighty Present publishing company vanished previous year while beyond Hong Kong they were taken for questioning by security forces in mainland China.

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Hong Kong police have said they will continue to investigate Lee’s whereabouts, despite the fact that his wife has withdrawn her report of his disappearance.

But China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Mr Lee is “first and foremost a Chinese citizen” and called on others not to make “groundless accusations”.

But in Hong Kong, where a broad range of civil liberties was guaranteed to last a half-century by the agreement that paved the way for Britain to return its former crown colony to China in 1997, publishing such books is not only legal but it is also a thriving business catering to visitors from the mainland. One of the five is British, with Hong Kong media reporting that it is Lee. Causeway Bay Books is known to have published material critical of China’s Communist Party. The fax was published by Taiwan’s Central News Agency, seemed rather odd, given that Hong Kong police have no record of Lee passing through immigration, and his wife is already on the record saying that he was not carrying any travel documents.

On Monday, C.Y. Leung, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing chief executive, insisted there was no evidence Lee had been abducted.

The Basic law is Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho said Sunday there were rumours the publisher was preparing a book on an old “girlfriend or mistress” of Chinese President Xi Jinping and had faced pressure to scrap it.

Hua Chunying, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told journalists at a regularly-scheduled press conference that she had no information about the case.

Also of note, Lee’s wife, Sophie Choi, withdrew her earlier complaint with the Hong Kong Police Department, based on a report in the local Ming Pao newspaper.

“The writer of the letter said: “(I) returned to (the) mainland my own way and am working with the concerned parties in an investigation which may take a while”.

“I asked him if it was about the previous cases, he said yes”. As I have told the media yesterday, the Police have finished examining the CCTV around the location where he was last seen. Australia’s government past year expressed “deep concerns” after China sent two police officers to Melbourne in late 2014 without permission to question a suspected economic fugitive. The other three were last seen in mainland China.

“The hottest theory is that Lee Bo was detained by mainland law enforcement personnel in a so-called cross border operation”, the paper said in a signed commentary article on Monday, pointing to the content of books sold in Causeway Bay Books as a contributing factor.