Sweden has asked China to explain what happened to a Hong Kong bookseller with Swedish citizenship who was taken from a train. But China is not talking.
BEIJING — China on Tuesday publicly rebuffed demands by Sweden for information on the fate of a Swedish citizen who was snatched off a train in China by plainclothes officers despite being under the protection of Swedish diplomats.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry insisted that it had no knowledge of what had happened to the seized man, Gui Minhai. Instead, it issued a warning to all diplomats not to break Chinese law, without making any specific accusations against Sweden.
“This is not a matter that falls under the purview of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” a spokeswoman for the ministry, Hua Chunying, told reporters at a regular news briefing in Beijing when asked about Mr. Gui’s seizure from the train. “I don’t understand this specific matter.”
On Monday, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would treat the incident with “utmost seriousness,” and the Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, pressed the Chinese government to provide information about Mr. Gui, who could be gravely ill.
“The Swedish Government has deep knowledge of what happened and I have summoned China’s ambassador to the ministry, and I have been promised news of Gui Minhai’s fate,” Ms. Wallstrom said in Brussels.
Mr. Gui was one of five Hong Kong-based publishers who were abducted and taken to China in 2015, setting off international condemnation. The five specialized in books that offered critical and often lurid, poorly sourced descriptions of Communist Party elite.
Mr. Gui was released in October but has been kept in China. He was living in an apartment in Ningbo, an eastern coastal city, when he traveled to Beijing for a checkup, his daughter said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s public reticence about Mr.
