Three missing Hong Kong booksellers could be back home ‘soon’ after mainland detention
Due to their ‘good attitude’ , Lam Wing-kee, Lui Por and Cheung Ji-ping might be granted bail pending trial amid revelations unlicensed publications were mailed to the mainland
The missing five booksellers from Causeway Bay Books mailed unlicensed publications into the mainland, a Chinese media outlet reported on Sunday night.
The report, the first from mainland media to link the disappearance of the five booksellers to their business in books “not yet approved”, also hinted that three of the booksellers currently detained by mainland authorities could go home soon.
Shanghai-based online portal Thepaper.cn, citing police information, reported that one of the five missing booksellers, Gui Minhai, co-owner of publishing house Mighty Current, had ordered his associates – Mighty Current general manager Lui Por, Causeway Bay Books manager Lam Wing-kee, and Lui’s assistant Cheung Ji-ping – to mail 4,000 such books to 380 buyers across 28 mainland cities and provinces since October 2014.
Causeway Bay Books is owned by the publishing house.
Watch: Hong Kong’s missing booksellers - a timeline of events
The report said Gui, a mainland-born Swedish national, set up Mighty Current publishing company in 2012, acquiring Causeway Bay Books in 2014. Gui hired Lam as the bookstore manager.
Under Gui’s orders, Lam, Lui and Cheung allegedly sold the books to mainland readers. Knowing that the books were not yet approved by the mainland’s press and publication authority, they altered the covers and sent the books via the postal service to avoid customs inspections.
The booksellers also allegedly opened a bank account on the mainland specifically used to receive payment from mainland customers for the books, the report said.
“In some places the postal services might not be able to reach, I arranged for my friends on the mainland to help forwarding the books to the buyers,” it quoted Lam as saying.
The report did not provide an update on Mighty Current co-owner Lee Po, whose disappearance triggered widespread concern in Hong Kong, but instead repeated previous reports that he had willingly to return to the mainland to assist in the investigation on Gui, and had testified against the latter.
Watch: Missing Hong Kong bookseller paraded on China’s state television
Last month, Gui made an explosive appearance on state-run CCTV, claiming he had surrendered to the mainland authorities over a car crash more than a decade ago, in which he killed a woman.
The report by Thepaper.cn said the accident happened in Ningbo in 2003, and Gui fled China in November 2004 because he did not want to be jailed.
Gui said he had decided to return to the mainland last June because he felt guilty for missing his father’s funeral, and he wanted to see his old mother. Authorities allegedly found clues to Gui’s other crimes when looking into the crash and launched an investigation.
The report said Lui, Lam and Cheung were arrested in Shenzhen and Dongguan on October 17 and 24, and had confessed to their crimes.
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“What I have done was under the influence of Gui. It was Gui dragging me down the path of crime,” Lui was quoted as saying. He allegedly said that Gui had never paid him the promised dividends from the book sales.
Lam reportedly said Gui had asked him to sell more books in the mainland, and that the content of the books was fabricated, or compiled from information downloaded from the internet.
Cheung reportedly said he had brought the money from the book sales from the mainland to Hong Kong under Gui’s instructions.
In an apparent attempt to address widespread public suspicion in Hong Kong that the fatal crash was a mere fabrication due to discrepancies in Gui’s age in different reports carried by state media, the Thepaper.cn said that Gui had obtained a mainland driving license with a fake identification document showing a different date of birth.
The report concluded by saying that due to their “good attitude”, Lam, Lui and Cheung might be granted bail pending trial and might return to Hong Kong in the near future.
