Five Hong Kong Booksellers Critical of China Disappear

While there’s been no official word on what happened to the five missing people, Mr Ho told reporters that it appears their disappearances are linked to the publisher’s books.

Another pro-Beijing lawmaker, Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, said that from past experiences, mainland law enforcement agencies would not take action against Hong Kong suspects in the city.

Hong Kong is part of China but under the principle of…

“The Hong Kong government needs to get to the bottom of this very quickly, give a full and proper account to the people of Hong Kong, and put people’s minds at ease”, she said.

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.

“Our embassies in Beijing and Bangkok are working with this case”, he said.

Albert Ho, chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said the city’s autonomy was under threat.

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

He added: “To my knowledge… the book concerns the story about the girlfriend…”

He is the fifth person connected to Hong Kong’s Sage bookstore – which specialized in popular but lurid and reportedly defamatory works on Chinese Communist Party officials – to have vanished since the owner of the shop’s parent company failed to return from a holiday in Thailand last October. In the alleged letter, Lee said that “I have returned to the mainland by my own method to assist the investigation by related authorities” and that “my current situation is good, everything is normal”.

Lee went missing Wednesday evening and was last seen leaving his company’s warehouse, according to local media reports.

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 letter, faxed to an employee at the publishing company’s Causeway Bay Bookstore, said: “Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that aren’t to be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties”.

On Monday afternoon, Lee’s wife Sophie Choi went to Hong Kong police to withdraw her case, claiming a friend of Lee had been in touch with him on Monday, the SCMP reported.

“It might take a bit of time”, it said.

Police confirmed on Friday (January 1) that a missing persons report has been filed on the case.

Protest co-organiser Avery Ng says the fact the Chinese government would neither confirm nor deny its involvement in the disappearances has created widespread fear.

Books by Mighty Current are banned on the mainland but are available in Hong Kong, which enjoys freedom of the press and other civil liberties unseen on the mainland because of its status as a specially administered region of China.

“In the past we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong“. In the clip, she insisrs, “Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore, it is named as Hong Kong only”.