GUI Minha

A poet, author, publisher, bookseller and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC), Gui Minhai is a Swedish citizen serving a 10-year prison sentence imposed after his conviction of national security charges on 24 February 2020 (see Case Lists 2015 – 2023/2024).

Gui is one of five Hong Kong booksellers who were forcibly disappeared in late 2015.  He was taken from his vacation home in Thailand by the PRC security services and was not seen in public until three months later, when PRC state media aired a forced confession video where Gui Minhai claimed he had voluntarily returned to China to turn himself for a 2003 traffic offence. Briefly released while under continued surveillance in late 2017, Gui was subsequently detained by plain clothes police officers on 20 January 2018 whilst in the company of two Swedish diplomats on his way to Beijing for medical testing, after showing symptoms of a neurodegenerative disease. On 4 July 2024, PEN International called for Gui Minhai’s release during the adoption of China’s Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Gui Minhai, born on 5 May 1964, was the owner of Mighty Current Media and joint owner of its retail arm, Causeway Bay Books. Mighty Current Media was a Hong Kong-based publishing company best known for its sensationalist books about private lives of China’s political leadership. Causeway Bay Books had a similar reputation before its closure following the forced disappearance of its staff and was a popular destination for those seeking to buy books that were banned or otherwise unavailable in China’s mainland. A prolific author before his arrest, several poems written by Gui during his initial detention were published in 2020 as a poetry collection titled, I draw a door on the wall with my finger (2020). In 2019, Gui Minhai was awarded PEN Sweden’s Tucholsky Prize.