On Saturday morning, he called his wife, Choi Ka Ping, from Shenzhen, across the border in the mainland, saying he was assisting in an investigation, according to Bei Ling, a writer based in the United States who has been following the case and who talked to Choi. Leung stressed that mainland officers do not have law enforcement powers in Hong Kong.
Advertisement
“I and related government departments are very concerned”, Leung Chun-ying told reporters.
Mighty Current and it’s bookstore Causeway Bay Bookstore are known for creating propaganda fueled titles regarding Chinese government scandals and other sensitive issues involving the mainland’s government.
The BBC said Lee “is thought to be in detention in mainland China”.
Hua Chunying, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told journalists at a regularly-scheduled press conference that she had no information about the case.
Hong Kong media reported on the latest development of the alleged “missing person’s” case of Lee Bo, a shareholder in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay Books, which clarify several key facts.
A Hong Kong woman who suggested last week that her husband had been abducted by Chinese police has withdrawn her missing person’s report. “Then, the whole security – personal security – of the people in Hong Kong is at stake”.
“Because I have some urgent matters to deal, which can not be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by interested parties”.
DOUBTS: Civic Party members protest outside China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong on Sunday after the disappearance of a bookseller who specialises in books critical of Beijing. Point is, this divide that is polarising a section of Hong Kong society where young people like Joel feel that they have to declare themselves HongKongers and not “Chinese” is being fed by such episodes. One of the publishing company’s owners, Gui Minhai, is a Swedish national who disappeared in Thailand in October, according to Hong Kong media and human rights groups.
Lee Cheuk-yan, a pro-democracy legislator, said Chinese law enforcement agencies had yet to respond to requests for information from Hong Kong officials.
‘We encourage the Hong Kong SAR government to honour its commitment to protecting the freedom of the press, and we hope the Chinese authorities will continue to make every effort to ensure that the environment in which the media and publishers operate in the Hong Kong SAR supports full and frank reporting’.
In the worst-case scenario being speculated about, the five were kidnapped by emissaries of Beijing and are being held in mainland China, to suffocate their voices and ferret out their Chinese sources.
Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho said Sunday there were rumours the publisher was preparing a book on an old “girlfriend or mistress” of Chinese President Xi Jinping and had faced pressure to scrap it.
Lee said he suspected his colleagues had been taken in an attempt to prevent the publication of the mystery tome.
China’s nationalist newspaper Global Times slammed the bookshop in an editorial Monday for “profiting on political rumors” and selling books with “trumped-up content”. Yet Lee’s work may be deemed unsafe by authorities as his books largely involve them: political gossip about Chinese leaders.
Advertisement
A “Closed” sign hangs on the door of the Causeway Bay Books store in Hong Kong, China, January 2, 2016.
