Missing bookseller resurfaces in Hong Kong, says he is allowed to travel freely between city and mainland China

One of the five Causeway Bay booksellers who went missing last year said he was allowed to travel freely between Hong Kong and the mainland after being released on bail. He also said for the first time that he was arrested by mainland officers in Dongguan in October for his role in the selling of banned books.

Cheung Chi-ping made the remarks to the Sing Tao Daily after an earlier report in the South China Morning Post that he had slipped back to the mainland just hours after he crossed the border into Hong Kong, deepening the mystery surrounding the booksellers’ disappearances.

The reporter who interviewed Cheung claimed to have “bumped into” the bookseller in Sha Tin on Wednesday.

READ MORE: Booksellers slipped back to mainland China after requesting Hong Kong police drop missing persons cases

Cheung was one of five people from Mighty Current publishing house and Causeway Bay Books who vanished under strange circumstances since October last year. Their disappearances sparked widespread fears that they were kidnapped by mainland agents because their companies specialised in books critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Sing Tao article stated that Cheung was taken away on October 14 in Dongguan, within a week of the disappearance of Gui Minhai in Thailand. Lui and Lam Wing-kee went missing while on the mainland the same month. Lee Po vanished from Hong Kong in December.

Gui has been accused of ordering his associates, including Cheung, to deliver about 4,000 banned books from Hong Kong to the mainland since October 2014.

To explain why he slipped back to the mainland on the same day he had returned to the city, Cheung said he had bought baby supplies in Hong Kong then gone back to Dongguan to take care of his pregnant wife. Their baby is due next month.