Sweden – Aftonbladet, September 26, 2024
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Gothenburg Book Fair. For several years, the book fair has reserved two armchairs for the Swedish publicists Gui Minhai and Dawit Isaak, both imprisoned for exercising one of the most fundamental human rights: freedom of expression. On the Freedom of Expression Stage (what a beautiful name for a stage!), right next to their symbol-laden chairs, I am moderating today the important seminar “Who will bring Gui Minhai and Dawit Isaak home?”
My panel guests, who will try to answer the question, are Aftonbladet’s head of culture Karin Pettersson, Svenska Dagbladet’s deputy head of culture Anders Q Björkman and Gui Minhai’s daughter and historian Angela Gui. Angela Gui’s participation carries extra weight. She is the one who can best tell us about the fight against the great power China. What does a young woman do when her father is suddenly imprisoned in a third country for his thoughts, opinions, books or articles and kept in isolation year after year?
To be honest, I feel shame and sadness every time I organize or participate in demonstrations at embassies, poetry programs or seminars about Gui Minhai and Dawit Isaak. It is impossible not to be ashamed of the fact that two innocent Swedish citizens together spent almost thirty-two years in prisons on other continents for free speech. Not to feel sad about decades of inaction in Sweden’s work for the freedom of two Swedish intellectuals. It is beyond all common sense that neither left nor right-wing governments have done anything active and concrete to bring their citizens home.
The fates of Dawit Isaak and Gui Minhai are well known, but as long as they have not been reunited with their families, there is reason to remember them. In September 2001, the Swedish journalist and Gothenburg resident Dawit Isaak was detained by the Eritrean security police. For 23 years he has been held in complete isolation from the outside world. He is denied an indictment, trial and visits from his family. Not even Swedish diplomats have been granted consular access to Dawit Isaak. The likely reason for his brutal detention is that he has written articles calling for democracy in Eritrea.
The fate of Swedish publisher Gui Minhai is broadly similar to that of Dawit Isaak, except that China claims Gui Minhai has been “sentenced” to a 10-year prison term for providing “information to a foreign power”, but China refuses to show the so-called “sentence”. In October 2015, Gui Minhai was detained during a vacation in Thailand. Since then, he has been held in solitary confinement in a cell somewhere in China, simply for engaging in anti-government publishing in Hong Kong and succeeding in the difficult art of selling the publisher’s titles in mainland China.
