90 human rights groups call for action, mark 10-year anniversary of Chinese government’s arbitrary detention of Swedish publisher Gui Minhai
(BANGKOK, October 17, 2025)—The Chinese government must end the arbitrary detention of Chinese-born Swedish publisher and writer Gui Minhai, Fortify Rights and a coalition of 90 human rights organisations said in a joint statement to mark the 10th anniversary of his kidnapping from Thailand.
Chinese agents in Thailand kidnapped Gui Minhai, a founder of a Hong Kong publishing house, on October 17, 2015 from his holiday apartment in Pattaya. Five years after his kidnapping, in February 2020, the Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him to ten years in prison on the alleged charge of “illegally providing intelligence to foreign countries.”
“Chinese authorities should free Gui Minhai immediately. Ten years on from the completely illegal abduction of Gui Minhai from his holiday apartment in Thailand, and more than five years on from his sentencing in China, information regarding his whereabouts and well-being has not been disclosed and Gui Minhai has been denied access to his family and to consular support from the Swedish Embassy,” said Benedict Rogers, Senior Director at Fortify Rights. “His daughter, Angela Gui, has not been informed of his whereabouts since the verdict was passed, despite making repeated requests. There are serious concerns about his physical and mental health.”
The joint statement released this week notes that Sweden has demanded the release of Gui Minhai, but Chinese authorities reportedly coerced him into renouncing his Swedish citizenship and reinstating his Chinese citizenship. This constitutes a violation of international law under the Vienna Convention and Sweden’s sovereignty rights because, under Swedish law, citizenship can only be renounced following an examination and a formal decision by the Swedish Migration Agency. At the time of his arrest, Gui Minhai had only Swedish citizenship.
Following his abduction from Thailand on October 17, 2015, Gui Minhai disappeared for three months. He reappeared on Chinese state television, delivering a forced confession. He made a further forced televised confession in 2018.
In 2017, Gui Minhai was released from detention, although he remained under strict surveillance. But in 2018, he was re-arrested by Chinese police while travelling by train to Beijing in the company of two Swedish diplomats. He was believed to be on his way to the Swedish Embassy in Beijing for a medical examination by a Swedish physician.
Gui Minhai is a writer and publisher who founded a publishing company and bookshop in Hong Kong that sold books banned in mainland China. Causeway Bay Books closed down in 2015 after Gui Minhai and four other employees disappeared at different times that year. The other four—Lam Wing-kee, Lee Bo, Lui Bo, and Cheung Chi-ping—were all released after months of detention in China. Of the five Causeway Bay booksellers, only Gui Minhai remains in prison.
Last week, the European Parliament adopted a resolution demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Gui Minhai. Sweden has made repeated demands for the release of its citizen. In November 2024, nine U.N. Special Procedures – including the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the situation of human rights defenders, and the independence of judges and lawyers – issued a joint Communication to the Chinese government, demanding information about Gui’s whereabouts and expressing concern about the enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, and incommunicado detention of Gui, along with several similar cases in China.
The joint statement signed by 90 groups urges the Chinese government to immediately and unconditionally release Gui Minhai, allow him unhindered contact with his daughter and other family members, guarantee his safety, psychological well-being, and provide adequate and independent medical care. It also urges Sweden, the European External Action Service, the European Commission, and Member States to continue to demand his immediate release and transparency regarding his whereabouts, and to communicate to China that the continued unlawful and arbitrary detention of Gui Minhai will have serious political consequences for bilateral relations, and to condition any economic collaboration on his release.
The statement also calls on Thailand to clarify the circumstances surrounding the unlawful kidnapping and rendition of Gui Minhai, immediately cease all actions that facilitate the repression and persecution of human rights defenders, journalists, and advocates of press freedom by China within Thailand, and to end the deportation of Chinese human rights defenders and journalists to China, in accordance with the principle of non-refoulement. Gui Minhai’s case is one of several in which foreign activists have been kidnapped or detained in Thailand, and refouled back to China or neighboring Southeast Asian countries. In some cases, the abducted activists remain disappeared.
“Gui Minhai should never have been abducted from Thailand in the first place. His detention in one form or another in China for ten years is arbitrary and unlawful,” said Benedict Rogers. “On the tenth anniversary of his abduction, the governments must step up efforts to secure his release and to pressure China to stop its brutal repression of freedom of expression.”