It is a strong gesture that does not go unnoticed. Sweden’s two-time Olympic speed skating champion Nils van der Poel gave one of his two medals won at the Beijing Games to the daughter of an imprisoned Swedish-Chinese dissident, in a gesture of defiance of the plight of the human rights in China, the NGO Amnesty International announced on Friday.
Winner of the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, the Swedish skater, who had already strongly criticized the communist regime on his return from the Games, presented his medal for the longest event during a small ceremony Thursday in Cambridge (United Kingdom). Uni) to Angela Gui, the daughter of publisher Gui Minhai. This Swedish-naturalized Chinese publisher has been serving a ten-year prison sentence in China since February 2020, officially for “illegally providing information abroad”.
“I accepted his medal on behalf of my father, says Angela Gui on Twitter. I think he would be more than honored if he knew. Thank you Nils for being a great ally and friend. »
“The Chinese government has used our dreams as a political weapon to legitimize the regime,” Nils van der Poel said in a statement. I made it a personal issue and felt taken advantage of. I want human rights violations in China to decrease and Gui Minhai to be released. It’s a lot to ask, but it’s the only reasonable thing one could wish for. »
Before being arrested in 2018, Gui Minhai published books with salacious content about the leaders of communist China at a Hong Kong publishing house, taking advantage of freedom of expression and publication in the semi-autonomous territory.
He was sentenced in February 2020 to ten years in prison by a court in Ningbo, in northeastern China, for having “illegally disseminated classified information abroad”, without the Chinese justice specifying which. His case has been at the center of diplomatic tensions between Stockholm and Beijing for more than six years.
