HONG KONG—A Hong Kong bookseller’s revelation of months spent in harrowing detention by mainland Chinese authorities is inflaming tense relations between the semiautonomous city and Beijing, with pro-democracy activists staging protests Friday.
Lam Wing-kee’s account to reporters a day earlier directly contradicted the official version of events surrounding the disappearance of him and four other men linked to a Hong Kong publisher of banned books on China’s Communist leadership.
His detailed testimony supports widespread suspicions that the five were seized by Beijing authorities as part of a campaign to silence critical voices, and had not willingly traveled to mainland China to voluntarily admit to crimes or help with investigations, as they had previously stated on Chinese television.
The saga of the missing booksellers underscores growing fear in Hong Kong that Beijing is tightening its hold on the city and eroding its considerable autonomy.
China’s Communist government took over control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, promising to let it retain civil liberties such as freedom of speech for 50 years under a system known as “one country, two systems.”
