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Monday, February 29, 2016

Booksellers Arrested For Illegal Trading (China)

Hong Kong Booksellers Confirm Arrests for Illegal Trading in China

Four men reveal details of alleged offences on TV as report says three of them might be allowed to return to Hong Kong

The Guardian/Reuters | February 29, 2016



Four of the five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in October have appeared on television confirming for the first time they had been detained for “illegal book trading” in mainland China.
The five booksellers – including a British and a Swedish national – had been linked to the same Hong Kong publisher and bookshop that specialised in gossipy works on the private lives and power struggles of China’s Communist party leaders.
Their disappearances have prompted fears that mainland Chinese authorities may be using shadowy tactics that erode the “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong has been governed since its return to China from British rule in 1997.

A printout showing Lee Bo, specializing in publications critical of China, and four other colleagues who went missing, is displayed outside a bookstore at Causeway Bay shopping district in Hong Kong, China January 6, 2016. Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-booksellers-idUSKCN0W20LC

<more at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/hong-kong-booksellers-confirm-arrests-illegal-trading-china-tv; related links and articles: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/02/us-calls-on-china-to-clarify-status-of-missing-hong-kong-booksellers (US calls on China to clarify status of missing Hong Kong booksellers. State department spokesman John Kirby says the US is ‘deeply concerned’ over the fate of the men, who are assumed to be in detention on the mainland. February 1, 2016) and http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/world/asia/hong-kong-bookseller-gui-minhai.html (Hong Kong Bookseller Confesses on TV to Evading Rules on Shipping to Mainland. February 29, 2016)>

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