Chapter 14 Reddening Hong Kong (2)

In June 2016, Lin Rongji was notified in Shaoguan that he was allowed to return to Hong Kong to visit his family on the condition that he must take out the data of the Causeway Bay Bookstore’s mainland customers’ book orders and to bring them back to the mainland. At 7 a.m. on June 14, he returned to Hong Kong via Shenzhen by a high-speed train in Shaoguan accompanied and monitored by the 2 task force agents. He first asked the Hong Kong police to cancel the case as arranged by the task force. During the two days in Hong Kong, the 2 task force agents were afraid to be photographed when walking with him and so they started to walk on separate roads. Lin Rongji used the cell phone provided to him by the task force to report his whereabouts by SMS all the time to keep him under surveillance.

On June 15, Lin Rongji went to Li Bo’s office to retrieve the data of his bookmaking client records as requested but found that the hardware he obtained was not a bookmaking record, and delayed until late at night to inform the special investigators that he had mistakenly retrieved data. In the afternoon, he decided to escape from the surveillance of the special agents and contacted Hong Kong legislator Albert Ho to hold an emergency press conference to reveal the truth about his abduction.

Lin Rongji’s courageous revelation of his persecution by the CCP during his abduction and interrogation has provoked public outrage at home and abroad. The United States, Europe and other countries have condemned Xi Jinping for using the mafia to persecute people in the publishing industry. Gui Minhai, who was kidnapped from Thailand to Ningbo by Chinese public security agents, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on February 24, 2020 by a Ningbo court for “illegally providing information abroad” after 4 to 5 years of detention.

The whereabouts of Li Bo, Lui Bo and Zhang Zhiping are still unknown till date.

Lin Rongji was the only abductee who escaped from Communist surveillance and returned to Hong Kong where he was unable to survive normally any more. He was forced to leave Hong Kong for Taiwan in 2019. Fortunately, the Taiwanese welcomed him and he reopened his bookstore in Taipei in 2020, still under the same name of Causeway Bay Bookstore. A few days before the opening, he was dining at an outdoor seat in a coffee shop near the bookstore when three black-clad men who were following him rushed at him and threw red paint on his head, upper body and hands, causing damage to his skin and clothing and backpack. In April 2021, a Taipei court sentenced the three black-clad men to 8 months, 7 months, and 6 months imprisonment respectively with a compensation of 300,000 Taiwan dollars to him.

Taiwan has been infiltrated by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front for many years and there is a small group of pro-Communist unificationists within the country who follow the baton of the CCP.

In early 2017 when Huang Zhifeng, secretary of the Hong Kong House of Representatives, arrived in Taiwan for a visit, he was also protested by more than 200 members of the pro-communist united front group “Patriotic Heart Association” at the Taiwan airport. When Huang arrived at the departure hall, several men in black suddenly rushed forward and attempted to beat him with their fists but he was quickly protected by police officers and he left without being injured.

In September 2019, Hong Kong singer Denise Ho Wan See arrived in Taipei to participate in a pro-democracy protest in Taiwan and was sprayed with paint by Hu Guangwei, a member of the pro-Communist Party for the Promotion of Chinese Unity. In late September 2019, the Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office placed Hu Guangwei under arrest for “public insult” and “defacement” with 200,000 bail.