HONG KONG: The disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers has sent shivers through the semi-autonomous city as anxiety grows that Chinese control is tightening.
Bookshops are removing political works from their shelves, while publishers and store owners selling titles banned in mainland China say they now feel under threat.
The five missing men all worked for publishing house Mighty Current, known for books critical of the Chinese government, and are feared to have been detained by mainland authorities.
But it is the latest disappearance that has triggered the most outrage.
Publisher Lee Bo, 65, was last seen in Hong Kong -- the only one of the five men to have disappeared while in his home city.
"The biggest problem is if they really came to Hong Kong to snatch people. It has never happened before," Jin Zhong, a mainland-born, Hong Kong-based publisher of banned books, told AFP.
"If it becomes a norm and people can be snapped up anytime from here... it is a big blow."
The other four men are believed to have gone missing when they were visiting southern China and Thailand.
"As a free society, we are supposed to be able to provide an open platform for different voices in Hong Kong," said Paul Tang, owner of the city's People's Recreation Community bookstore, which sells titles banned on the mainland.
Tang described the disappearances as "white terror".
"None of us know how far it will go," he said.
There were new reports Thursday that mainland agents had threatened two more Hong Kong-based publishers involved in putting out books about political intrigue on the mainland, and had paid for some books to be destroyed.
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