04 Apr 11 | Asia and Pacific, China
Outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has joined the ranks of other dissidents who have irked the government. He has simply gone missing.
Police detained Ai at Beijing Airport on Sunday, as he was en route to Hong Kong. His Beijing studio was also raided on the same day. He has not been heard of since, and there has been no comment from the authorities.
The 53-year-old’s disappearance comes amid heightened tensions in China with the authorities jumpy about the (albeit remote) possibility of any Middle East style protests spreading to the mainland. Several rights lawyers, activists and bloggers have either been charged or disappeared since February.
The western media is sounding a forbidding note about this latest development. While Ai has frequently wrangled with the authorities because of his efforts to push human rights — he’s been punched by provincial police, held under house arrest, and prevented from leaving the country — this is the first time he has been missing for so long. This is Time magazine’s pessimistic take on the situation.
His prominence owes itself to the fact that as a leading artist, he would be globally recognized even without his activism. And for so long that had also been a shield. By holding him, the Chinese authorities are reminding the nation that no challenger to the rule of the Communist Party should feel safe.
Read Index’s exclusive 2008 interview with Ai WeiWei here
01 Mar 11 | Asia and Pacific, China
Censorship and its fear-fed sibling, self-censorship, frequently take on farcical qualities in China. One of the most eloquent speeches on this subject for a long time was given by a young Chinese writer, Murong Xuecun, last week. The 30-something author gave his talk after winning the 2010 People’s Literature Prize for his latest work in which he went underground to expose a pyramid scheme. Ironically he was blocked from speaking on the mainland, so he gave it several days later in Hong Kong.
In the speech he talked about how his prize-winning book, “The Missing Ingredient,” was delayed by several months because of a “rather peculiar editor” who in an effort to render the book politically safe required many farcical cuts and changes so much so that “readers of my book may think I’m mad,” he said.
Terms such as “Chinese peasants”, “stealth drone”, “Indian-flavoured farts”, and “South China” all, absurdly, had to go.
“I believe I am not alone; this is the situation faced by all of China’s writers,” he told his Hong Kong press audience. “The fear I feel is not just the fear felt by one writer, but by all of our writers.
“Our language has been cut into two parts: one safe, and the other risky. Some words are revolutionary, and others are reactionary; some words we may use, and others belong to our enemies.
“The only speakable truth is that we cannot speak the truth. The only acceptable viewpoint is that we cannot express a viewpoint. We cannot criticize the system, we cannot discuss current affairs, we cannot even mention distant Ethiopia. Sometimes I can’t help wondering: Is the Cultural Revolution really over?”
The speech in Chinese can be read on his blog here and in English translation here.
25 Nov 10 | Asia and Pacific, China
On 24 November the South China Morning Post reported that the milk scandal activist, Zhao Lianhai, may be released just weeks after he began his two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. It appears a back-room deal has resulted in Zhao’s application for medical parole being accepted by judicial authorities. According to the Post:
Public pressure from Hong Kong played a crucial role in yesterday’s dramatic twist in the case of jailed melamine milk activist Zhao Lianhai, who will probably be released on medical parole, his supporters say.
It is unprecedented for Beijing to release a mainland convict so soon following lobbying from Hong Kong. In an unusual move, Xinhua’s Hong Kong branch said yesterday morning that a medical parole application from Zhao was being processed.
Zhao was found guilty of “inciting social disorder” after he set up a website for families affected by China’s toxic milk scandal after his own son became sick. The activist has been on hunger strike ever since he was sentenced on 10 November. His wife, Li Xuemei is also on hunger strike. Earlier this week news broke that Zhao had fired his lawyers. In a letter supposedly sent from inside the prison, this, combined with the news he has dropped plans to appeal and sought medical parole raised hopes that he had made a clandestine deal with the authorities.
Hong Kong politicians have credited themselves with Zhao’s possible release — they say the u-turn is the result of public pressure on Beijing: Peng Jian , Zhao’s former lawyer said “Hong Kong is not only helping one person, but the conscience of China”.
As with other sensitive topics in China, the censorship organs, this time the Internet Management Office, has demanded that all mentions of “Zhao Lianhai” be erased from websites, including online forums, blogs and microblogs. Indeed, whilst Twitter is awash with mentions of the case, and a Twitter account for Zhao, its counterpart in the Chinese microblogging sphere, Sina microblog, has no mentions at all.
10 Nov 10 | News and features
David Cameron has extolled the virtues of human rights and democracy during his trade mission to Beijing but why won’t he raise the case of imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo? Dinah Goodman reports
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