Daughter seeks US help over missing Hong Kong publisher

WASHINGTON (AP) — The daughter of a Hong Kong-based publisher believed abducted by Chinese authorities eight months ago appeared Tuesday before a U.S. congressional commission urging Washington's help to win his release.

Author Gui Minhai, a Swedish national, is one of five men associated with a publishing house whose disappearance late last year raised international concern that Beijing is clamping down on the semiautonomous Chinese city's freedom of speech.

Twenty-seven years later the Chinese government is increasingly brazen in its repression," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., "no longer limiting its reach to China's territorial boundaries, but instead seeking to stifle discussion of its deplorable human rights record both at home and abroad.