Sweden – Dagens Nyheter (DN), August 13, 2024
Exactly today, August 13, but six years ago, Swedish publisher, poet and Tucholsky Prize winner Gui Minhai had a smile on his face: his homeland Sweden had not yet forgotten him, despite China’s attempts to hide him in a small cell with the light on twenty-four hours a day.
Six years ago today, a Swedish doctor examined Gui Minhai in a hospital in the city of Ningbo, Zhejiang province. The freedom fighter was driven there in a seven-seater van from prison.
Exactly today but six years ago was also the last time there was a sign of life from Gui Minhai.
And every time I think of Gui Minhai’s last contact with Sweden, I find these lines in his poetry collection “I draw a door on the wall with my finger”:
“It can’t be because my name comes from too far away?
It can’t be because my skin is too yellow?”
By now, the fate of freedom of expression campaigner Gui Minhai is well known in Sweden. Gui Minhai – who turned 60 in May – was kidnapped almost nine years ago in the Thai resort town of Pattaya and taken overland through several countries to China without any international protest. Since then, Gui Minhai has been held in detention only because he published literature critical of the regime. The powerful leaders in Beijing are terrified of all dissidents, but they seem to be most afraid of Gui Minhai. I can find no other explanation for the fact that all four of Gui Minhai’s colleagues were released in the fall of 2015, shortly after their kidnapping, but not Gui Minhai.
Gui Minhai is not allowed to have contact with anyone – not even Swedish diplomats – in violation of international conventions. All we know is that the Communist Party of China (CCP) announced in a short press release that Swedish citizen and publisher Gui Minhai has been sentenced to 10 years in prison “for providing intelligence to foreign powers”.
The perpetrator and offender China has no scruples. Playing the victim is the country’s trademark. Every time someone brings up Gui Minhai’s fate in the Swedish media, the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm claims that we are interfering in China’s internal affairs and hurting more than a billion Chinese people. This accusation is nothing but a lie. Gui Minhai is only a citizen of Sweden. Kidnapping a Swedish citizen in Thailand and hiding him in a prison in China for several years is interfering in the internal affairs of Sweden and the European Union. It is important that those in power in Sweden immediately abandon quiet diplomacy and impose sanctions on China’s leaders.
