Hong Kong bookseller's daughter dismisses Chinese TV 'confession'

The daughter of a previously missing Hong Kong publisher who specialises in tabloid-style books on China’s leaders has dismissed a state television broadcast showing her father confessing to a hit-and-run attack on the mainland.

Gui Minhai, 51, and four of his colleagues from Causeway Bay Books disappeared over the last few months, sparking protests against China’s security services which have been accused of carrying out the illegal abductions in order to silence critics abroad.

On Sunday night, a tearful Gui was shown on state broadcaster CCTV saying he turned himself in to Chinese authorities in October for his involvement in a fatal hit-and-run incident in the city of Ningbo in December 2003.

“I am taking my legal responsibilities, and am willing to accept any punishment,” state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying.

Gui’s daughter told the Guardian on Monday that she could neither deny nor confirm the crime her father admitted to, but dismissed the possibility that he had voluntarily returned to China, saying he was seized against his will while in Thailand in October.

“I do still believe he was abducted,” Angela Gui said by phone from the UK. “I still think it is suspicious that he and his associates went missing. Even if [the confession] is true, I don’t think that is why he is there.”

Gui, a Swedish citizen, was visiting his beachfront apartment in the Thai resort of Pattaya when he vanished, shocking family and friends.

His colleague Lee Bo told the Guardian at the time that he was planning to visit Gui with his wife for Chinese New Year, casting further doubt that Gui voluntarily handed himself in.

Lee, a 65-year-old shareholder of Causeway Bay Books and British passport holder, became the fifth bookseller to go missing this month, fueling the international furore.

During a visit to Beijing, the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said that if Chinese authorities were responsible for Lee’s disappearance it would be an “egregious breach” of the former colony’s supposed autonomy from the authoritarian mainland.

Asked about Gui’s reappearance at the weekend, a spokesperson for the Swedish embassy in Beijing said: “We are aware of the information published in news media. We are not commenting on it. Instead we continue to seek clarifications from the Chinese authorities.”

Angela Gui said she had spoken to the Swedish government, who had summoned China’s ambassador over Gui’s case and that of another Swedish citizen and rights lawyer who was detained in China.

“I’m going to follow up now. This is a game changer,” she said.

In his public confession, Gui warned off international attention and addressed Sweden directly.

“Although I now hold the Swedish citizenship, deep down I still think of myself as a Chinese. My roots are in China. I hope the Swedish authorities would respect my personal choices, my rights and my privacy, and allow myself to deal with my own issues,” he said.

Gui’s books, often ill-sourced gossip publications focusing on the sex lives of China’s Communist party elite, have riled the country’s leaders. His publishing house has produced several books on President Xi Jinping, who took power in November 2012.

China experts and human rights activists threw doubt over the public confession, saying it was a distraction from what they claim is an attempt to silence dissenters.

Xi’s administration has paraded a series of high-profile detainees on television to make public confessions, often focusing on regular criminal cases rather than political charges.

A Hong Kong-based publishing source said this month that Gui’s next project was a book called Xi and His Six Women, adding that Beijing abducted the five booksellers to end “a concerted smear campaign” against the leader.

Gui had last been seen on security footage outside his flat in Thailand, whose government is closely allied with Beijing. The building manager later told the Guardian that a Chinese man had waited there for Gui and got in a car with him before driving off.