HK wants answers on missing bookseller

The company’s co-owner, Gui Minhai, is also among those missing, the other three being staff members.

Meanwhile, broadcaster HTHK reported that Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security, John Lee, had said the police would expand the scope of their investigation into Lee’s disappearance. 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.

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers yesterday said they would press the government for answers after a fifth employee of a publisher specializing in books critical of China’s leadership went missing.

The number indicated the call came from Shenzhen, the mainland Chinese city next door to Hong Kong, the report said.

“This has been one of the black holes in the Hong Kong-mainland legal relationship”, Young said by telephone.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying also told reporters Monday that there’s no evidence so far to support suspicions that security agents from the mainland were involved in the disappearances.

Lee, an investor in Mighty Current and majority shareholder of Causeway Bay Books, was reported missing by his wife last week when he failed to come home after making a book delivery.

There is a rumour that this is happening because the publishing firm of the bookshop in Causeway Bay was about to launch a book about Xi’s former girlfriend from some years ago.

A demonstrator posts a portrait of Causeway Bay Books shareholder Lee Bo and another of the missing men during a protest Sunday.

“It would be unacceptable if mainland law enforcement agents enforce laws in Hong Kong because this violates the Basic Law”, Leung said, in a reference to the territory’s mini-constitution.

Only law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong have the legal authority to enforce laws and to take necessary actions in Hong Kong.

Mr Bo’s wife said she had received a call from her husband from Shenzhen, and that he spoke in Mandarin rather than Cantonese.

The incidents have led to fears in Hong Kong that the freedom afforded to the city after it was transferred from British to Chinese rule in 1997 was coming under threat from shadowy tactics by Beijing.

Lawmaker Albert Ho said Sunday that the city is “shocked and appalled” by the disappearance of Lee Bo.

“The Hong Kong government needs to handle this case with transparency”, said China researcher Maya Wang.

“He said he wouldn’t be back so soon and he was assisting in an investigation”, she said. Some have linked the absences to a planned book on the past “love affairs” of China’s President Xi Jinping.

“Whatever has happened, it is rootless to doubt that the policy of one country, two systems is changing and to claim that the mainland will control Hong Kong“, it said.

The publications are banned on the mainland but are known to be popular among Chinese tourists visiting Hong Kong.

However, Mr Lee’s case has sparked extra attention in Hong Kong because he disappeared from the city; the others – all mainlanders – vanished from Thailand and mainland China.