Swedish police arrived in Thailand this week to investigate the case of missing publisher Gui Minhai, according to Apple Daily.
The newspaper cited building management staff at Gui’s holiday home in Pattaya as saying that Swedish investigators came on Wednesday to see Gui’s flat. They also took some surveillance footage from the building, the report said.
HKFP has reached out to the Swedish foreign ministry to confirm the report.
Gui Minhai, a Swedish naturalised citizen who co-owns a publishing company in Hong Kong, has been missing for 103 days. He was last seen on Chinese state television “confessing” to evading a suspended two-year prison term over a drunk driving death 13 years ago. He is confirmed to be in Chinese custody but his exact whereabouts are still unknown.
Gui vanished in Thailand on October 17. Thai authorities have confirmed that they have no record of him leaving the country.
Gui, 51, was born in Zhejiang, China and went to Peking University to study history before heading to Sweden in 1988. In 2013, Gui and others established Mighty Current Media in Hong Kong. The company publishes politically sensitive books banned in mainland China. Gui’s four other colleagues have also gone missing and one was confirmed to be mainland China “assisting” in an unknown investigation.
The booksellers’ disappearances have sparked concerns that Chinese security force are illegally operating in Thailand and Hong Kong. In yet another suspected abduction, Chinese journalist Li Xin, who leaked a huge list of censored terms after fleeing China last year, also went missing in Thailand this month.
Update at 6pm: In an email reply to HKFP, a spokesperson for the Swedish foreign ministry said Swedish law enforcement authorities are working on the case. The spokesperson said the Chinese government still “has not given any clarification on what has happened” to Gui and has not responded to Sweden’s request for consular access to the bookseller.
