Mr. Gui gave one such confession after he was first secretly taken to China in 2015, and now he has appeared in a sequel at a detention center in Ningbo. He told an online outlet for Oriental Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, that Swedish diplomats had duped him into boarding the train to Beijing.
“They wanted to get me to Beijing quietly,” he said of the diplomats. Mr. Gui also said he had been taken off the train by the police “in accordance with the law,” but did not say what law he might have violated.
“Now I’m very regretful about this whole affair,” Mr. Gui said. “Because in fact the Swedish side didn’t tell me specifically what would happen with my medical checkup in Beijing.”
Mr. Gui also said he had written to the Swedish ambassador in Beijing, asking Sweden not to “hype” his case.
According to The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, Mr. Gui said Swedish diplomats had visited him secretly in Ningbo before the train trip with “several proposals to get me to Sweden.”
The Swedish government had no immediate comment on Mr. Gui’s remarks. But his appearance immediately drew skepticism from human rights activists, who said it bore the hallmarks of a staged confession under duress.
Amnesty International continues to call for the release of Gui Minhai, and for him to be granted adequate medical care and access to consular officials and lawyers of his choice.
This sort of contrived video and media interview made in incommunicado detention is shameful.—
William Nee (@williamnee)
Feb. 9, 2018
Mr. Gui, 53, was born in eastern China, went to study in Sweden in 1988 and became a citizen of the country in 1992. In recent years, he became a co-owner of Mighty Current Media, a small publishing house in Hong Kong that specialized in unflattering and salacious gossip about China’s Communist Party leaders.
Mr. Gui appears unlikely to win his freedom soon. The Hong Kong news report said he was suspected of illegally supplying Chinese state secrets to foreigners. The report gave no details of those purported secrets.
Mr. Gui’s daughter, Angela Gui, who lives in Britain, has said she has no idea what secrets her father could have known.
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