Mighty Current and Causeway Bay Books associate wants to start afresh
PHILA.SIU@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Friday, 25 March, 2016, 1:00pm
After returning to the city, Lee Po said he did not need help from police or the Hong Kong government. Photo: Edward Wong
The Causeway Bay bookseller at the centre of the missing booksellers mystery is putting the past behind him and starting afresh, he said on Friday.
With a group of reporters hot on his heels outside his North Point home, Lee Po urged the media not to follow him anymore.
“I have already said what I wanted to say. Today I just want to tell everyone that I hope you can leave me and my family alone. Don’t push me that much,” Lee said, smiling the whole way.
“I want to forget the past and start afresh. I am starting another page in my life,” he added.
He also said he was allowed to travel freely between Hong Kong and the mainland. He planned to do tomb sweeping on the mainland with his wife Sophie Choi Ka-ping in the next few days.
“I did not dare to go to the mainland for a while previously. I heard that people had got into trouble for their [banned books] business. I was afraid. But after I went [to the mainland] and solved all the problems this time, I can finally feel at ease now,” he said.
Lee was escorted by a man into a car with a cross-boundary plate and left. The man refused to identify himself. The car was seen crossing the border via the Lok Ma Chau control point.
Between October and December last year, five associates of the Mighty Current publishing house and Causeway Bay Books store disappeared one after another under mysterious circumstances. Gui Minhai vanished in Pattaya, Thailand, in October. Lam Wing-kee, Cheung Chi-ping and Lui Por disappeared that same month while on the mainland. Lee vanished in December from Hong Kong.
Their disappearances led to widespread fears that they were kidnapped by Chinese agents because their companies specialised in books critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Gui has been accused of ordering his associates to deliver about 4,000 banned books across the border since October 2014.
On Thursday, Lee returned to Hong Kong and asked police to drop the investigation into his missing person case. He also said he did not need help from the force or the Hong Kong government.
He made the same request as his two associates – Cheung and Lui – did when they returned to the city earlier this month, baffling human rights activists.
In an interview with Beijing-friendly media on Thursday, Lee said he would never run a bookstore business again.
“I will never publish and sell those books [containing made-up things] again. Freedom of publication and of speech does not mean that people can make things up,” he was quoted as saying.
“Like I said earlier, there are still people doing this business in Hong Kong. I hope they won’t do it any more,” he added.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1930513/ill-never-publish-banned-books-again-hong-kong-bookseller
