Mainland police reject claims by HK bookseller
Print Edition
DETAILS of how Chinese mainland police handled the case of bookseller Lam Wing-kee were given to a Hong Kong delegation during discussions on a mutual notification system on Tuesday.
Lam, 61, was detained in the mainland last year for running an illegal book-selling businesses.
At a press conference in Hong Kong on June 16 this year, Lam, accompanied by local legislator Albert Ho, claimed he had been mistreated, banned from meeting relatives and refused a lawyer while placed under house arrest.
He also accused mainland police of breaking the “one country, two systems” policy.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the delegation was told that in 2015 police in Ningbo, a city in China’s coastal province of Zhejiang, found that books produced outside the mainland were being sold illegally in the city.
An investigation led to a woman surnamed Hu, said to be Lam’s girlfriend, in south China’s Guangdong Province. She was suspected of mailing books to Ningbo and other parts of the mainland.
Some buyers told police they had bought books from Lam’s Causeway Bay Books in Hong Kong.
In September 2015, Ningbo police launched a formal investigation and, between October 17 and 24, suspects including Lam and Hu were detained.
Lam and his colleagues were said to have attempted to elude regulators with fake book covers and either mailed books directly to mainland buyers or used intermediaries such as Hu.
Lam told investigators most of the books were filled with “made-up stuff.”
“The more horrifying the titles are, the more readers they draw, the better they sell. The content is mostly fabricated out of stories from the Internet or magazines. It takes about a month to put a book together,” he is said to have told them.
After confessing, Lam said he was elderly, in poor health, and fully understood his mistakes.
“I hope to be given leniency,” he said, promising never again to deal in illegal books.
Lam was released on bail in March. At his request, police helped him find a place to stay and a job in Shaoguan, a city in south China’s Guangdong Province. On June 2, Lam asked for permission to return to Hong Kong for personal reasons.
What Lam said at his press conference last month surprised many of the people involved, the delegation was told.
His girlfriend Hu, 37, said Lam had “brainwashed” her into sending books by courier, but had never told her it was illegal. She also repudiated Lam’s claim he had been forced to sign a document waiving his right to a lawyer or speak with members of his family.
Hu said they were both told of their right to contact family and hire lawyers but gave up the right because they did not want their families to know they were having an affair.
Lam was well treated during his stay in the mainland. Police sent him fruit, took his blood pressure every day and arranged for him to have his hair cut, video recordings provided by Ningbo police showed.
Chen Weiqing, curator of the library where Lam was given a job, said: “Lam claims he was confined in Shaoguan. That is totally inconsistent with the facts.”
Chen said he had offered him a job to show sympathy given his age. Everyone at the library can attest that during his stay in Shaoguan he was in good shape and even gained weight, Chen said, adding that they traveled together to a local resort and had many pleasant chats.
“As a facility open to the public, Lam came and went as he pleased, working and reading,” Chen said.
“How can he claim that he was not free? Is the library a prison?”
Police said that by declaring his intention not to return to the mainland, Lam had violated the terms of his bail.
Ningbo police urged Lam to return to the mainland, or they said they will be forced to take other legal measures.
“The Lam Wing-kee case had been handled in accordance with the law from beginning to end. During the process, (mainland authorities) respected the HK judicial system, strictly adhered to the stipulation of ‘one country, two systems’ and there was no so-called ‘cross-border law enforcement’ nor tracking or control of the suspect,” said a Ningbo police statement.
Law professor Song Xiaozhuang of Shenzhen University said he believed mainland police had jurisdiction as the acts and consequences of Lam’s crime occurred in the mainland.
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