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It is today Saturday, exactly five years since the Swedish-Chinese citizen Gui Minhai disappeared without a trace from his vacation home in Pattaya, Thailand, in the company of a stranger. They are also five years that have been characterized by a magnificent failure on the part of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where delfacit is a fired Swedish ambassador and the uncertainty about where the Chinese have Gui Minhai imprisoned.
The case goes straight to the top of China with President Xi Jinping.
Gui Minhai’s mysterious disappearance
But before continuing the story, let’s go back in time, more specifically to January 17, 2016, three months after the demise of the Gui Minhai publisher from Thailand. It then appears on the Chinese state-controlled CCTV television channel. Gui Minhai stared at the camera and said almost apathetically that he had returned to China voluntarily due to a traffic violation in which he had allegedly caused the death of a person.
On the television segment, Gui Minhai stated that he did not want outside help. It was not a wild assumption that he was drugged before being placed in front of the television camera. The television segment, however, looked like something out of a worse spy movie with a drugged victim saying “the right things.” The image that emerged around Gui Minhai’s mysterious disappearance in Thailand was that, in practice, he was abducted by Chinese agents and taken to China.
The latest sign of life from the authorities is the harsh sentence on February 25 this year when Gui Minhai was sentenced to ten years in prison for having provided intelligence to foreign powers. No Swedish diplomatic personnel have been allowed to visit him.
Gui Minhai has turned 56 and Ambassador Anna Lindstedt was never allowed to reap the diplomatic victory she hoped for until failure at the Stockholm Sheraton in January 2019.
Anna Lindstedt’s Mission: Save Gui Minhai
When the government appointed Anna Lindstedt as its ambassador to Beijing in the spring of 2016, it had a high priority act in its luggage for Beijing: the case of Gui Minhai. The mission was to try to get the Chinese to free him. At the time of the appointment, Anna Lindstedt served as Sweden’s climate ambassador and lead negotiator in international climate negotiations and was assigned to the Ministry of Environment and Energy.
Her list of merits also included that she had been an ambassador to Mexico and Vietnam, and the government deemed Lindstedt qualified for the position.
But after the accident at the Sheraton luxury hotel in Stockholm, Anna Lindstedt’s career crashed and she became a suspect in a crime, prosecuted and later acquitted by the Stockholm District Court.
Difficult to place
The acquittal by the district court sparked panic among decision makers at the Foreign Ministry who were awaiting a conviction, which then allowed them to open the hatch for her to be fired.
Today, the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not know where to locate Anna Lindstedt. The acquittal means that she will return to service, despite the fact that she was hit hard by the Foreign Ministry in the internal investigation into her actions in relation to the now infamous meeting in late January 2019 at the Stockholm Sheraton, between Gui Minhai’s daughter. , Angela Gui, 26 years old. and two international businessmen: Chinese Kevin Liu and Sri Lankan citizen John Meewella. The men claimed to be able to help free Gui Mihai.
Anna Lindstedt has lost the title of ambassador, but not yet.
– Anna Lindstedt works as a chancellor and today she can call herself an ambassador as a former head of a foreign authority, says Sara Brynedal, press release of the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The criticism of Anna Lindstedt
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as an employer, totally cuts Anna Lindstedt in the internal investigation, but without firing her. In the internal investigation, the Ministry of Foreign Relations states:
Anna Lindstedt had not informed the relevant officials at the Foreign Ministry that she had traveled home from Beijing to “facilitate” a meeting at the Sheraton and that she herself would be attending.
The risk analysis surrounding the meeting was insufficient.
Anna Lindstedt had ignored the close interaction that the Foreign Ministry and the embassy had in the Gui Minhai case.
Anna Lindstedt had not alerted the Foreign Ministry that the meeting had gone off the rails. The key people involved were completely unaware of the change until her daughter Angela raised the alarm after returning to the UK, where she is studying.
Anna Lindstedt has always claimed that she acted correctly, which she also repeated in the internal investigation.
Millions of cost to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
For the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the case has become costly. In addition to the human failure in which both Gui Minhai and her daughter Angela Gui were severely beaten in various ways, the case has become costly for the state. Anna Lindstedt has been paid for the entire period without having to work.
On February 15, 2019, just over two weeks after the Sheraton drama with the two employers, Anna Lindstedt was released from work with full pay. There was no requirement that she be reassigned during the process. In a meeting with employers on December 12, she was forced to hand over her diplomatic passport to the legal director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Carl Magnus Nesser. Four days later, Nesser and Lindstedt signed a continuous work leave agreement with no change in pay. Then he has marked month after month, where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid 84,800 SEK a month before the taxes that fell on his account. The total sum of the salary is now almost 1.7 million SEK.
When the Foreign Ministry completed the interrogation on September 9, it was noted that he would rejoin the Ministry of Foreign Affairs shortly.
But the Foreign Ministry has not found a suitable job for Anna Lindstedt. The human resources department just doesn’t know where to put it. According to information from Expressen, she has declined any offer.
– It is not so easy to find a job given the employer’s distrust of her in the Gui Minhai case. It is enough to see the conclusions of the investigation for it to be understood, says a source from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Expressen has been in contact with Anna Lindstedt, who declined to be interviewed.
See also:
Anna Lindstedt was acquitted of charges of violation of national security by arbitrariness in negotiations with a foreign power.
Expressen reporter on why Anna Lindstedt was charged.
The Swedish citizen was kidnapped and detained by the Chinese authorities.
