Episode
China detains Hong Kong booksellers
- Podcast
- Witness History
- Published
- Jun 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 633
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct8r3g
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Summary
It's 10 years since a Hong Kong bookseller who was detained for selling material critical of China’s leaders, was released and went public. In 2015, Lam Wing-kee and four other men who published and sold books went missing. The case of the booksellers raised international concerns that Hong Kong's judicial independence and freedom of speech were being eroded. Protests followed. On 21 June 2016, Mr Lam was released after eight months in detention on the Chinese mainland and he returned to Hong Kong. He tells Josephine McDermott that he took the decision to hold a press conference because “If I didn’t speak out, Hong Kong’s freedoms of speech and press would suffer in silence”. Lam Wing-Kee left Hong Kong in 2019 fearing new extradition rules. In Taiwan, he reopened Causeway Bay bookstore. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: the moment Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines’ life and Omar Sharif’s legendary movie entrance in Lawrence of Arabia. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, like the invention of a stent which has saved lives around the world; the birth of the G7; and the meeting of Maldives’ ministers unde…