Li Xin who disappeared from Thailand, told his wife he was being held by the Chinese police
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BEIJING – Chinese journalist, Li Xin, who disappeared while seeking refuge in Thailand told his wife by telephone on Wednesday that he had returned to China and was being held by the police, she said.
The 10-minute call was the first sign of life the journalist, Li Xin, had given to his wife, He Fangmei, since he disappeared near Thailand’s border with Laos last month.
Mr. Li had been trying for months to avoid returning to China, fearing that he would be persecuted there for having revealed that state security operatives had coerced him into becoming an informant, and for having described censorship in the state-run news media.
“He said, ‘Wife, it’s me, Li Xin,’ ” Ms. He said by telephone from her home in Henan Province, in central China. “He said that he’d returned to China voluntarily and was under investigation, but he didn’t say where he was in China.”
“He told me to celebrate the New Year holiday with his family and to make sure I kept healthy,” she added. The annual Lunar New Year holiday starts Sunday evening.
Mr. Li had been an editor for the website of The Southern Metropolis Daily, a popular and sometimes combative Chinese newspaper. Neither the Chinese nor the Thai governments had said whether they were holding Mr. Li.
Asked about the case on Wednesday, the Thai authorities said immigration records indicated that Mr. Li was still in Thailand. Sek Wannamethee, a spokesman for the Thai Foreign Ministry, said there was no “record as yet as to whether he has left the country.”
“There is no indication whatsoever that Mr. Li Xin was abducted from Thailand,” Mr. Sek said in a message, without elaborating.
But Ms. He maintained that the phone call from her husband indicated that he had become the latest in a series of Chinese citizens or foreigners with Chinese ancestry who have been impelled while abroad to go to China to cooperate with secretive inquiries.
Critics have said that these people are victims of illicit renditions by increasingly bold Chinese security forces, and Ms. He said she believed that Mr. Li would have returned to China only under force or threats, despite his assertion that he came back freely.
“His tone was like they’d given him guidance,” Ms. He said. She said that her husband sounded calm, but that he had told her not to interrupt him with questions.
“I said to him, ‘Where are you? Just where are you? Tell me. At the very least, I have to find a lawyer for you,’ ” Ms. He said. “But the line was silent for a long time, and I knew someone at his side was telling him what to say, and he said, ‘Don’t get involved. Don’t ask so much. I’m doing fine.’ ”
In the call, Mr. Li did not specify why he was under investigation, referring only to “that case,” Ms. He said, adding that she took that to refer to claims that Mr. Li made, after arriving in India in October, that Chinese state security agents had coerced him into becoming an informant against fellow journalists and friends who worked for civic groups.
In October, Gui Minhai, a book publisher in Hong Kong who was born in China and holds Swedish citizenship, disappeared from his vacation home in the Thai coastal town of Pattaya. He was shown on Chinese television last month confessing to having violated his probation in a deadly road accident by leaving China in 2003.
In November, two Chinese dissidents in Thailand, Jiang Yefei and Dong Guanping, were sent back to China despite having been recognized as refugees by the United Nations refugee agency. The Chinese police later said that the men were suspected of crimes involving illegal border crossing.
Mr. Li had first gone to India, apparently hoping to obtain a visa to the United States, where he intended to apply for asylum. Failing that, he hoped to extend his stay in India. He succeeded at neither, and decided to go to Thailand. There, he hoped to receive official status as a refugee and qualify for settlement in another country, Ms. He said. To do that, he had to leave Thailand and re-enter with a new tourist visa.
He did not say in his coversation with Ms. He if he had returned to China from Thailand or Laos.