The Swedish citizen’s abduction a decade ago from a third country by Chinese agents is outrageous, egregious, and chilling
By Benedict Rogers in UCA News
Ten years ago today, a Chinese-born Swedish national, Gui Minhai, was kidnapped from his holiday apartment in Pattaya, Thailand, by Chinese agents. He disappeared, only to reappear on Chinese state television three months later, delivering a forced confession.
Five years later, in February 2020, the Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Gui to ten years in prison for “illegally providing intelligence to foreign countries.”
Today, his exact whereabouts are unknown, and he has been denied access to his family and to consular support from the Swedish embassy, effectively making him a victim of enforced disappearance and transnational repression.
Despite repeated requests by his daughter, Angela Gui, his current place of detention is unknown, raising further concerns about his physical and mental condition.
The abduction of a Swedish citizen from a third country by Chinese agents is an outrageous, egregious, and chilling example of China’s campaign of transnational repression globally. And it is vital that the world should not stop demanding answers from Beijing. The world must not forget Gui Minhai.
The behavior of China’s state security apparatus has been brazen.
Two years after his abduction, Gui was reportedly released from detention, although he remained under strict surveillance. But in 2018, he was re-arrested, seized by Chinese police while traveling to Beijing by train in the company of two Swedish diplomats.
Gui had been heading to the Swedish embassy for a medical examination after suffering neurological symptoms, although it is believed he may also have been intending to complete an application for a new Swedish passport.
To snatch a Swedish national from right under the noses of Swedish diplomats is an extraordinary act of complete disregard for diplomatic protocol or international norms.
Gui was subsequently forced by the Chinese authorities to publicly renounce his Swedish citizenship — a violation of international law and Sweden’s sovereign rights.
Under Swedish law, citizenship can only be renounced following a formal examination and decision by the Swedish Migration Agency.
Gui has also been forced to make at least two televised confessions on Chinese media.
Gui is a writer and publisher who ran a publishing company and bookshop in Hong Kong, selling books banned in mainland China.
Causeway Bay Books shut down in 2015, after Gui and four other employees, all at different times that year, disappeared.
One of them, Lam Wing-kee, reopened the bookshop in Taiwan after being arrested and detained in China for more than 400 days. The other three booksellers — 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 remains in prison.
Sweden has continued to call for Gui’s freedom, and last week the European Parliament adopted a resolution demanding his immediate and unconditional release.
The United Nations has also highlighted his case.
In November 2024, nine UN 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 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 other similar cases.
Yet the Chinese regime continues to ignore appeals from the international community.
As we mark the tenth anniversary of Gui’s kidnapping, governments around the world must renew demands for his immediate and unconditional release and urge the Chinese government to allow him unhindered contact with his daughter and other family members and to receive independent medical care.
The government of Sweden, with the support of the European Union, must lead the way in demanding information about Gui’s whereabouts and ensuring full consular access.
The government of Thailand must clarify the circumstances of Gui’s unlawful abduction and rendition from Thailand to China a decade ago, and work to protect others in Thailand who may be at risk from China’s transnational repression.
Gui Minhai’s case is emblematic of the Chinese Communist Party’s severe repression of dissent and its escalating crackdown on freedom of expression and press freedom.
China ranks 178th out of 180, and is the world’s leading jailer of journalists and writers, according to Reporters without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. It is time for the international community to stand up to Beijing, to say enough is enough, and to demand the release of Gui Minhai.
This article was originally published in UCA News.