Lam Wing-kee, a bookseller from Hong Kong who fled to Taiwan in 2019 after being arrested by China in 2015 for selling content considered critical of Beijing, died on Thursday at the age of 70.
Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency reported that Lam had died at Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei after a battle with cancer, citing an unnamed source.
“My friend Lam Wing Kee of #CausewayBayBooks died today of lung cancer in Taipei,” Hong Kong’s former pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo said in a social media post.
Last year, Lam told the media that his lung adenocarcinoma had recurred and progressed to stage four. Earlier this month, he closed his bookstore, due to health reasons.
He was one of five publishers selling gossip-filled tomes about China’s leaders who disappeared in late 2015, reappearing in custody on the mainland and making televised confessions.
Their disappearance caused widespread alarm in Hong Kong.
Lam was allowed to return to Hong Kong in June 2016, provided he took a hard drive with the bookstore’s customers and returned to the mainland.
But he instead skipped bail and went public with explosive testimony detailing how he was blindfolded by mainland police after crossing the border in Shenzhen and spent months being interrogated.
In April 2019, Lam fled to Taiwan after Hong Kong announced plans to allow extraditions to China, a move that sparked months of large and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in the financial center later that year.
He told AFP after flying to Taipei that “at the moment, Hong Kong is no longer safe for me”, adding that he was “enjoying the air of freedom”.
A year later, the dissident reopened his Causeway Bay Books store in Taiwan, where he described the self-governing island as “a country of freedom and democracy and we still have the right to read books”.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Thursday he was “deeply saddened” by Lam’s death, offering condolences to Lam’s family and friends.
Lam’s life “proved the value of freedom of expression and the fear and suffering caused by authoritarian repression,” Lai said in a Facebook post.
“He chose not to remain silent. Instead, he reopened Causeway Bay Books in Taiwan, turning it into a place where friends from Hong Kong could gather, talk and support each other,” he added.
“Taiwan will continue to stand firm in defending democracy, freedom and human rights, and will stand with all those who refuse to bow to authoritarianism.”
