Dateline: Oct 18

Five men linked to an anti-establishment bookstore in Hong Kong disappeared last year, with many suspecting Chinese involvement.

This week Dateline investigates their case and talks to the daughter of one of the disappeared men, who is speaking out for truth and justice.

“I am afraid that I won’t get to see my father again.”

“It’s something that I think about every now and then, but I try not to.”

Angela Gui’s father, Gui Minhai, is a China-born Swedish scholar and book publisher. On October 17, 2015 he disappeared, and his whereabouts has been unknown ever since.

At the time of his disappearance, he had been last seen in the Thai resort town of Pattaya, leaving his apartment building with an unidentified man who had been waiting and watching the building.

It was among a string of disappearances, all linked to a bookstore in downtown Hong Kong.

Causeway Bay Books is now empty and unattended, but for years it published books on China’s leaders, and other material considered transgressive by Chinese authorities and banned in the mainland.

Around the same time that Gui disappeared, two other men associated with Causeway Bay Books – Lui Por and Cheung Chi Ping – also vanished after crossing into mainland China.

A few days later, the general manager of the bookstore Lam Wing Kee, disappeared while on a trip in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

It wasn’t until the disappearance of a fifth bookseller that it gained international attention. Lee Bo, a British citizen, was taken on December 30. His abduction triggered a campaign and series of protests within Hong Kong, with people demanding to know where the men were.

9.30pm Tuesday, on SBS.