Protests held on Sunday outside Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong amid fears that five men may have been secretly apprehended by mainland agents
PHILA.SIU@SCMP.COM
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 03 January, 2016, 6:14pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 03 January, 2016, 6:48pm
League of Social Democrats (LSD) protest against the mysterious disappearance of bookstore staff from Western Police Station to Liaison Office. Photo: Felix Wong
Hong Kong police are seeking answers from their mainland counterparts over the mysterious disappearance of a Causeway Bay bookseller and his associates involved in publications critical of the Chinese Communist Party, amid fears they might have been secretly detained by law-enforcement personnel from across the border.
The case sparked protests at Beijing’s liaison office on Sunday as concerned parties expressed fears that mainland agents may have overstepped their bounds in apprehending the bookstore owner secretly in Hong Kong and then spiriting him across the border in a serious infringement of the “one country, two systems” policy.
Lee Bo, owner of Causeway Bay Books, and four of his associates went missing over the past few weeks in unexplained circumstances.
Acting Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu said on Sunday that the police Regional Missing Persons Unit of Hong Kong Island was conducting “a thorough and professional investigation” into this matter, including looking at CCTV footage from around the location where the missing men were last seen.
“Through an established mechanism, Hong Kong police can make enquiries to the mainland law enforcement agencies on whether any Hong Kong people have been detained on the mainland,” Lee said. “The Hong Kong police have already done this... We are waiting for a reply.”
Lee also made it clear mainland police should not be operating on their own in Hong Kong.
“In Hong Kong, the only people who can exercise the power of the law are our legal enforcement agencies of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. The law protects the rights, including the freedom and safety of everybody in Hong Kong,” he said.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China said if Lee Bo and the others had really been taken away by mainland officers, as Lee’s wife suspected, the city’s autonomy was being severely threatened.
“Hong Kong people are shocked and appalled. How can mainland officers come to Hong Kong and make arrests? This is terrifying,” alliance chairman Albert Ho Chun-yan said.
Ho’s Democratic Party colleagues held a small protest outside the liaison office in Sai Wan on Sunday to demand answers from Beijing.
A bigger protest by about 50 members of the League of Social Democrats shouted slogans and posted pictures of the missing booksellers at the gates of the liaison office in Sheung Wan.
Lee was last seen on Wednesday in the Chai Wan warehouse of Mighty Current, the publishing house that owns the bookstore. He was there to deliver books to a customer.
His disappearance is the fifth case related to the bookstore. Gui Minhai, owner of the publishing house, went missing while on holiday in Thailand in October.
Missing person reports were made about three others: bookstore manager Lam Wing-kei; general manager of the publishing house Lui Bo; and business manager, Cheung Jiping. Police classified them as “missing persons”.
Lee’s wife said her husband had called her from Shenzhen the night he disappeared.
“He said he will not be coming back anytime soon. He said he was assisting in an investigation. I asked him if it was about the previous cases, he said yes. It was about the missing [associates],” she told Cable TV.
“He later called me again and asked me not to make a scene. I guess it was the Shenzhen police.”
Mrs Lee found it strange that her husband had talked to her in Putonghua instead of Cantonese. She said the caller ID was a Shenzhen number. She suspected that Shenzhen officers had taken her husband from Hong Kong.
But a police source told the Post there was no record of Lee leaving Hong Kong.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1897784/hong-kong-demands-answers-mainland-chinese-police-after
