Followed by strangers, bookseller Lam Wing-kee pulls out of July 1 march fearing ‘serious threat’ to personal safety
Meanwhile, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office director Wang Guangya accuses Lam of ‘destroying one country, two systems’
A top Beijing official for Hong Kong has accused bookseller Lam Wing-kee of “destroying one country, two systems”.
Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office director Wang Guangya said he had done so by “publishing books in Hong Kong attacking the mainland’s political system and then selling them on the mainland”.
Meanwhile the bookseller, whose revelations about his eight-month incarceration on the mainland shocked the city, has pulled out of Friday’s July 1 march for reasons of personal safety, as he feels that he is facing a “serious threat”.
Democratic Party lawmaker Albert Ho Chun-yan, who had been assisting Lam, said the latter decided to pull out because he had been followed by strangers over the past few days.
“This morning, I got a telephone call from Mr Lam Wing-kee. He told me personally that he observed in the past few days he had been followed by strangers,” Ho told the press at 2.50pm in Victoria Park, ahead of the march.
“He became increasingly concerned about his personal safety, so he made a personal decision this morning not to attend the July 1 march.”
Ho said they had already notified police, and Lam had found a safe place to stay.
The development was a further blow to freedom of expression in the city, he said.
Ho’s colleague James To Kun-sun added that Lam had submitted “relevant information” regarding the threat to the police through him.
“I believe that serious threat is from the central [government],” Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit, convenor for rally organiser Civil Human Rights Front, said, adding that there had been a great deal of attention paid to the annual march since the announcement that Lam would head the procession.
“Why the sudden high interest? ... We believe that the central government really minded Mr Lam heading this rally,” he said.
Sham said Lam’s personal safety was by far the top priority.
During Lam’s third meeting with the police on Thursday, it was revealed that the department was considering offering him protection.
Meanwhile, speaking in Beijing, HKMAO director Wang described how “Lam Wing-kee’s actions in themselves destroy one country, two systems”.
“The books they publish aren’t about Hong Kong affairs ... but about the mainland’s affairs. He publishes ... books in Hong Kong and brings them back to sell on the mainland. This is his understanding of ‘one country, two systems’ – this ‘one country, two systems’, we’d rather not have it.”
Wang also said that he had never heard of “central investigation unit” – the outfit to which Lam had said his abductors belonged.
Lam, the store manager at Causeway Bay Books, is one of the five Hongkongers associated with the bookstore and publishing house Mighty Current who went missing one after another last year. Four have since returned to Hong Kong.
Lam endangered himself by revealing how he was blindfolded and handcuffed after being stopped and taken away at the border, then whisked away to Ningbo in Zhejiang province, where he was kept in a tiny room and interrogated.
The bookseller said he was released last month only because his interrogators wanted him to bring back a hard disk containing information on Causeway Bay Books’ customers.
