Dissident poet turns sleuth to uncover disappearance of bookseller friend Gui Minhai
Bei Ling’s globetrotting investigation to protect freedom of speech
Dissident poet Bei Ling, a long-time friend of publisher Gui Minhai who is being detained on the mainland accused of running an illegal business there, is in Hong Kong to prepare an investigative report into the bookseller’s strange disappearance in October.
I don’t want this to happen again. I still want Hong Kong to enjoy freedom of speech
Bei, president of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, is planning to talk to booksellers and publishers in the city to find out as much about Gui’s business here as possible. He will also look into how the disappearances of Gui and his four associates may affect the publishing industry in Hong Kong.
“I am doing this because I don’t want this to happen again. I still want Hong Kong to enjoy the freedom of speech that it has always enjoyed. Another reason is that I was also arrested many years ago because of publishing matters,” Bei told the South China Morning Post on Saturday.
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In August 2000, Beijing police detained the poet for distributing a literary journal called Tendency, which he launched in 1993 to showcase young underground writers. He was expelled back to the US from Beijing about two weeks later – he migrated to America in 1998.
“I don’t want Hong Kong to become just another Chinese city. It appears to me that the ‘one country, two systems’ principle is being damaged,” said Bei, who has known Gui since the 1980s.
Since October, five associates of publishing house Mighty Current and its bookstore Causeway Bay Books started to disappear one after one. Gui vanished in Pattaya, Thailand, in October under mysterious circumstances. In the same month, Lui Por, Cheung Chi-ping and Lam Wing-kee went missing while in the mainland. In December, Lee Po disappeared in Hong Kong.