Hong Kong – Hong Kong Free Press, Oct. 13, 2025
“Ten years on we still don’t know where my father is or how his trial was conducted,” Gui Minhai’s daughter Angela said. “We have to assume that he is still alive, but there’s no new information so we can’t be sure. Sweden and the EU must urgently renew the calls for his immediate release.”
The European Parliament has called on China to release Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, ten years after he went missing in Thailand. The bookseller was later seen in China “confessing” to a drunk-driving incident on state TV, before he was jailed for ten years on espionage charges.
Last Wednesday’s joint motion urged for the 61-year-old’s “immediate and unconditional release” and for “the Chinese authorities to end the practice of arbitrary detention and forced confessions, and to immediately release all those detained for exercising fundamental freedoms, including lawyers, journalists, artists, minority representatives and human rights defenders.”
This Friday marks a decade since the Hong Kong-based publisher was taken from his apartment in Pattaya, Thailand, by unknown men. He was among four men who went missing – each were associated with Causeway Bay Books which sold titles banned in mainland China. He is the only one still detained.
An ’emblematic figure’
NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has said Gui was likely abducted by Chinese special agents operating is China and remains an “emblematic figure among the 124 journalists and press freedom defenders currently detained in China.”
They say the charge of “illegally providing intelligence to foreign countries,” which Gui faced, is an accusation routinely used by Beijing to stifle dissent.
