ABFE T-Shirt Protests Arrest of Hong Kong Bookseller

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American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE) has created a T-shirt calling for the release of a Hong Kong bookseller who has been held for more than a year by the Chinese government. The T-shirt is part of an international campaign to free Gui Minhai, the co-owner of the Causeway Bay Bookstore.

Gui is one of five men connected with the bookstore who disappeared in the fall of 2015 and later resurfaced in police custody on the Chinese mainland. The bookstore is owned by Mighty Current, a publisher of gossipy and sometimes sensationalistic books about Chinese leaders. Gui, a Swedish citizen, is the only bookseller who remains under arrest. The others were allowed to return to Hong Kong after months of detention. 

Richard Howorth, the owner of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, suggested creating a shirt after hearing a recent interview with Gui’s daughter, Angela, who has been speaking out in an effort to garner international support for her father’s release.

“It’s great that ABFE and ABA are making available to us — booksellers in the free world — and to our customers this T-shirt that advocates freedom of speech and the release of Gui Minhai,” said Howorth.

Front and back view of Gui Minhai! t-shirtThe front of the shirt uses Chinese characters to demand Gui’s release. The back reads, “American independent bookstores and readers for the release of Gui Minhai.”

Individual shirts can be purchased online for $20. For orders of 12 or more, the price is $8.50 per shirt; it is $6.50 for orders of 72 or more. On orders of 12 or more, T-shirts can be customized with a bookstore name or logo, and there is no shipping charge. Profits will be donated to Free Gui Minhai, a campaign organized by Angela Gui.

Howorth said he is purchasing shirts for all the members of his staff and will be selling them to customers.

The Chinese government has not explained why it continues to hold Gui. He disappeared suddenly from his vacation home in Thailand in October 2015. In a video released by Chinese officials, Gui said that he had returned to the mainland voluntarily to face charges for vehicular homicide. However, there is no record of his departure from Thailand, leading to suspicion that he was kidnaped by government security forces. (Angela Gui said her father’s statement was coerced. He later called her and urged her to end her efforts to free him.)

Lee Bo, one of Gui’s colleagues, disappeared under similar circumstances, vanishing from Hong Kong and reappearing in China without passing through immigration. The other booksellers were already in China when they were arrested.

A recent report by PEN America — Writing on the Wall: Disappeared Booksellers and Free Expression in Hong Kong — suggests that the Chinese government engineered the arrests with the goal of undermining Hong Kong’s Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other civil liberties. China agreed to abide by the Basic Law as part of a treaty under which Hong Kong, a British colony, was returned to Chinese control in 1997.

Efforts to undermine civil liberties in Hong Kong increased after Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power in 2013. Mighty Current may have become a target because of plans to publish a book accusing Xi of committing adultery, according to published reports.   

According to the PEN America report, the government’s efforts to chill free speech are having the desired effect. Causeway Bay Bookstore and other stores that sold works that are critical of the government have closed. Many of them were located in the Hong Kong International Airport, where Chinese tourists found it easy to purchase books that are unavailable on the mainland. The bookstores have been replaced by others that are indirectly owned by the Chinese government.

Hong Kong publishers have also been affected. “It is impossible for independent publishers who produce books critical of China’s rulers to know how not to cross the line and become the next targets because it is unclear where that line is drawn. The only sure response is to take no steps at all,” the report says.

However, the report also points to recent demonstrations in support of the Hong Kong booksellers as evidence of growing political activism that may counteract government pressure.