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HONG KONG — Four Hong Kong booksellers who had vanished and later reappeared in Chinese police custody said they illegally sold books to customers in mainland China, according to televised interviews and a Chinese news report.
The interviews with the men, which aired Sunday night, were the latest development in a saga that has raised concerns among Hong Kong politicians, activists and foreign governments who believe the arrests threaten the city’s autonomy from China and violate norms of due process.
Televised confessions by individuals in police custody have become increasingly common in China under circumstances rights groups and observers say are coercive. While state broadcaster China Central Television has frequently aired confessions, this appears to be the first instance of a non-state-owned Chinese news outlet broadcasting these types of confessions.
The four men, and one other who also disappeared late last year, are all affiliated with a Hong Kong bookstore and publisher of political gossip. Two of them, who hold European Union citizenship, disappeared from Thailand and Hong Kong. The other three vanished while in mainland China.
Selling the books in the mainland was “against Chinese law,” Gui Minhai told Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television, which portrayed Gui as masterminding the alleged crime. “So we looked at ways of evading official Chinese inspections.” Those included changing the books’ covers and using nylon bags to conceal mailed packages’ contents, Gui said.
Under Hong Kong’s separate legal system, the territory’s bookshops are allowed to sell books that are banned on the mainland. The Chinese territory hosts publishers of material ranging from salacious gossip on leaders’ personal lives to serious critical commentary and histories of Chinese politics.
