Chinese authorities sentence foreign dissident

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A court in eastern China sentenced abducted bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison. The Chinese-born Swedish citizen operated a bookstore in Hong Kong for years that sold gossipy titles about China’s political leaders. In 2015, he disappeared from his seaside home in Thailand.

What was his offense? The Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court announced Tuesday it had convicted Gui of “illegally providing intelligence overseas” and stripped him of his political rights for five years. He is one of five booksellers connected with the publishing house Mighty Current who went missing in 2015. He surfaced in 2016 in a staged TV confession. Chinese authorities released him to house arrest but detained him again in 2018 when he boarded a train to Beijing with Swedish diplomats. The court claimed he applied that same year to restore his Chinese citizenship and would not appeal his sentence.

Dig deeper: Read June Cheng’s 2016 report on the kidnapping.

Onize Oduah

Onize is WORLD’s Africa reporter and deputy global desk chief. She is a World Journalism Institute graduate and earned a journalism degree from Minnesota State University–Moorhead. Onize resides in Abuja, Nigeria.

@onize_ohiks