24 January 2016•Update: 25 January 2016
By Max Constant
BANGKOK
Thai police said they have no information about the alleged disappearance of a Chinese journalist wanted by Beijing after leaking confidential documents and fleeing, the latest in a string of disappearances and forced repatriation by Thailand of Chinese critics of Beijing’s rule, local media reported Sunday.
Police spokesperson General Dejnarong Suthicharnbancha told the Bangkok Post that the wife of the missing journalist could file a complaint with police if she believes her husband, Li Xin, has indeed disappeared.
Thai foreign ministry spokesperson Sek Wannamethee told the Post that the ministry has not received any information about the case.
Li Xin’s wife Shi Sanmei, however, had told the newspaper Friday that police had refused to accept her report of her husband’s disappearance, asking her to contact the Chinese embassy.
Li Xin, who worked as a writer for the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, was accused by Chinese authorities last year of sharing information with Taiwanese authorities. He was threatened with imprisonment unless he worked as an informant, providing information about fellow journalists and activists to the Beijing government.
After working as an informant for a few months, Li Xin fled China last October and went to India where he tried unsuccessfully to obtain a visa for a Western country.
While in India, he leaked documents he had taken from his newspaper, including a government-written list of topics that were off-limits to journalists.
He arrived in Thailand at the beginning of January intending to ask for political asylum in a Western country.
Li Xin’s case comes after the disappearance in October of Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based publisher with Swedish citizenship, from his apartment in the seaside resort of Pattaya, 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Bangkok.
Gui Minhai, whose company ‘Mighty Current’ was publishing books on Chinese leaders considered gossip by Beijing, reappeared on Chinese state TV last week when he tearfully said he had returned to China voluntarily to answer charges over a hit-and-run car accident that killed a young woman.
His friends insist he was forcibly taken away, perhaps with Thailand’s complicity.
The age of the driver mentioned in the Chinese police report on the car accident does not match that of Gui Minhai.
Four other people connected to the same Hong Kong publishing company have also disappeared from other countries.
In November, two veteran Chinese dissidents officially registered as refugees by the United Nations, Jiang Yefei and Dong Guangpin, were arrested and repatriated by Thai authorities.
The UN High Commission for Refugees reacted with a statement saying, “this action by Thailand is a serious disappointment, and underscores the longstanding gap in Thai domestic law concerning ensuring appropriate treatment of persons with international protection needs.”
In July last year, Thai authorities forcibly sent to China 109 members of the minority Muslim Uighur community who had fled persecution in northwestern Xinjiang, provoking a wide range of international condemnation.
Ties between Thailand and China have grown much closer since the May 2014 coup that overthrew the elected government of former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, as Western countries condemned the putsch and suspended high-level visits to Thailand.
