26 Apr 12 | Asia and Pacific
The artist Ai Weiwei’s outspoken views are gaining currency. Simon Kirby reflects on a change of mood in China as people lose faith in the Party
In June 2011, Ai Weiwei was released from detention to a form of home surveillance. He is confined to the city of Beijing and must inform the authorities of his movements. He may not make public statements nor comment on his detention and the terms of his release (a condition he has already breached); further investigations are pending and a prosecution may be pursued within a year. It is still far from clear what the implications are for Ai as a private individual, let alone for his capacity to continue to work as an artist. Just as he was never formally arrested neither has he been fully freed.
This shabby story takes place against a backdrop of heightened political sensitivity in China as the country braces itself for transition to a new, as yet unannounced, group of top leaders. This is scheduled to take place next year in the Great Hall of the People during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party. The Congress will certainly be a rigid spectacle of national purpose and will make numbing television viewing. Not least because it will be impossible not to speculate on the nature of the Byzantine succession struggle which is currently taking place behind firmly locked doors.
The detention of Ai Weiwei was based on intimidation rather than legal process — a pattern that is well established in China. In effect, he was kidnapped by the state and never informed which organ of the machinery was holding him, nor was he charged with a specific crime. Rather, his indictment was based on “confessions”. Even his release was justified on the spurious grounds of cooperative behaviour, willingness to make amends and poor physical health. As the threat of re-opening the case against him still looms, he is now being blackmailed into falling into line.
A few weeks after Ai Weiwei was released I had lunch with him. He talked frankly about the contradictions of his detention and the absurdity of his current position. He clearly intends to continue working and his remarkable personal charisma is undimmed. Yet he is, in my view, a person who is also deeply disturbed by what is happening to him.
Artists and the “Tiananmen contract”
Throughout the 90s, Chinese state-controlled capitalism ushered in a remarkable economic boom from which the fledgling contemporary art scene benefited. Artists, as potentially problematic figures, were heavily co-opted with a variety of sticks and carrots — there were rich rewards to be had and the freedom to continue making, exhibiting and travelling was granted to artists in exchange for creating non-critical work. In many cases, artists were understandably tempted to comply. Ever since the fearful events of the Tiananmen massacre on 4 June 1989, there has been an enforced accommodation between the government and society. I dubbed this the “Tiananmen contract” in an article for Index on Censorship that was published in 2008, ahead of the Chinese Olympics. The deal is that the Communist Party would steer the people towards individual prosperity and the country to greatness, through ensuring stability. In return, the primacy of the Party could never be questioned. Three years ago, the contract was widely supported — the level of basic freedom was greater than it had been in 20 years and living standards were rising. There was also pride at China’s leading role on the world stage. Today, I believe this consensus is much more fragile.
The daily reality for Chinese citizens is that living costs are rising fast and incomes are not keeping up. Working conditions for white collar workers can be demoralising, while those for migrant manual workers, who continue to have even basic rights denied them, are often shockingly exploitative. Commuting in the new, high-rise cities can be exhausting and alienating. People are deeply sceptical about the capacity of the state to protect them from (often deliberately) contaminated food and a toxic living environment, criminal scams, corruption in the medical profession and corporate exploitation of consumers. The Party is widely understood to be at the centre of many of these scandals and is often seen to be protecting wrongdoers. Most flagrantly, the new super-rich live effectively beyond the reach of the law, while ordinary people can in no way count on basic social justice for themselves and their families.
There are attempts to address these problems through draconian anticorruption campaigns which make examples of officials accused of vice and graft. There are also strenuous efforts to reform social and fiscal legislation and to professionalise the legal system. This year’s 90th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party saw an outpouring of congratulatory media stories featuring joyful ethnic minorities, good comrades and citizens and glorious historical deeds. Meanwhile Tiananmen Square, which is the heart of the great people’s revolution, was firmly sealed and off limits.
In March, I had dinner in a noisy Korean barbecue restaurant in Beijing with a favourite Chinese artist. Only 32 years old, he already enjoys a successful international career, is profoundly patriotic and the holder of an important teaching post. During the evening, my friend passionately expounded an opinion in full earshot of fellow diners and waiting staff that would have made me extremely uncomfortable even five years ago. Namely, that the Chinese Communist Party in 2011 is more fundamentally corrupt than even Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) of the 40s. The official history, tirelessly propagated in films and TV dramas, is that that the nationalist administration had degenerated into a kind of murderous gangsterism before the 1949 revolution. Yet my artist friend argued that pre-revolutionary society in many ways remained, for all its faults, a pluralistic one: an imperfect democracy. There was at least formal acknowledgment of the independence of the judiciary and channels to seek redress from injustice. The Communist Party of the 21st century, on the other hand, retains its monopoly on power through intimidation and force. It is deeply complicit in land grabs, forced evictions, endemic bribery and corruption. It even facilitates the enrichment of favoured businesses through official contracts and privileged access to resources and markets.
A new trend for speaking out
The legal system today, my friend told me, is explicitly in place in order to serve the interests of the Party above anything else. Citizens who attempt to petition the government to redress flagrant social wrongs can expect to be met at best with official obstruction. In many documented cases they will encounter thuggish intimidation and violence. This viewpoint is not unusual. In a way that is entirely characteristic of China, I then went on to hear the same, previously unimaginable, opinion expressed by three other, unrelated people within the course of as many weeks. If during the course of conversation with people in China, one digs just a little, it’s possible to encounter a profound and worrying cynicism in the integrity of the Chinese state.
It seems that suddenly these views are being expressed loudly and in public. Ai Weiwei, on the other hand, has been consistently and persistently making his views known. His father, Ai Qing, was one of China’s most eminent poets, but was a political prisoner for 16 years in the western desert region of Xinjiang. This is where Ai Weiwei spent his entire childhood and early adolescence. When Ai Weiwei returned to China in 1993 after ten years in the United States, his rehabilitated father advised him on his responsibility as a Chinese citizen to speak out, reportedly saying, “You are at home here, there’s no need to be polite.”
An intriguingly enigmatic artist, Ai Weiwei’s public personality is also complex and elusive. The true Ai Weiwei may well be a nuanced combination of the many faults of which his detractors accuse him. However, it has also now become clear, even to his harshest critics, that this artist has courageously maintained a highly principled position for which he is now paying a heavy price. It is my observation that many others are beginning to come round to his point of view.
This article appears in the “Art Issue” of Index on Censorship. Click on here for subscription options and more.
Simon Kirby is the director of Chambers Fine Art in Beijing
This issue is nominated for an Amnesty Award
26 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
A senior police officer has claimed that tabloid journalists picked up a suspect in the serial murder case of the “Suffolk Strangler” to interview away from police surveillance.
Supporting the claim made last week by retired criminal investigator Dave Harrison, Chief Constable Simon Ash from Suffolk Constabulary told the Leveson inquiry he had obtained information to support the claim that a surveillance team was employed to “pick up and interview” the first suspect in the inquiry into the Ipswich murder inquiry of 2006. Despite supporting information in Harrison’s written statement, Ash did not name name the Sunday Mirror.
Ash was not working at the force in 2006, when the “Suffolk strangler” case received intense press coverage, but the police officer told the Leveson Inquiry: “On the assertion that a newspaper picked up a suspect and took them to a hotel and interviewed them while under police surveillance, I have been able to find information to support that.”
In relation to further claims from Harrison that News of the World had spied on the police and jeopardised the case, Ash told the court that he had not been able to find any information to support the assertion that the News of the World were deploying surveillance teams.
Ash explained to the court that relations were “very good” between police and local press. He said that there is a “healthy” relationship between the two parties, and described meeting editors on an “ad-hoc basis – to resolve whatever the current issues are. We work together for the good of our community.”
The Chief Constable also explained that staff in Suffolk Constabulary are encouraged to pro-actively highlight the good work of staff. He added: “Bad news almost writes itself, we have to work hard to promote the good work officers and staff do day in and day out”
When asked by Robert Jay, QC, if he felt that the corporate communications department of the police force only dealt press a “party line”, Ash denied this: “I think we’re all of the view we take the rough with the smooth, but my overall objective is to create confidence in the police. As we all know, things don’t always go to plan, and sometimes we have to give an apology, explain what happened, and I think that is equally as important as promoting the good work we do.”
Also appearing before the court, Terry Hunt, the editor of East Anglian Daily Times stressed the importance of good relationships between the press and local police forces. Hunt described the key relationship between the two in relation to the Ipswich murder case, after the national press descended on the town, and suggested that the local media were more balanced than the national press.
The editor said: “We were very aware of what the national press were reporting at the time. It was part of our responsibility to put this into some kind of context because there was a great deal of concern about what was going on in a very fast moving, and frankly horrifying story.”
But despite describing the relationship between the two parties as “generally supportive,” Hunt labelled the speed of response from the police as an “area of frustration”.
Hunt told the court of an incident in which three potentially dangerous men escaped from a secure mental health unit. The editor explained that at the time, he had hoped and expected that Suffolk Police would have responded in a more timely fashion.
He said: “These three individuals escaped in the early hours of Sunday morning and were at large in Suffolk and were potentially dangerous. I would have hoped and expected that Suffolk police would have put some information on that into the public domain, so that when Suffolk awoke in the morning, members of the public were forewarned. I felt it very unfortunate that that information did not reach us until lunchtime that Sunday.”
Hunt described a “heightened sensitivity” with regard to the relationship between press and police, explaining that there have always been some police officers who have been reluctant to share “legitimate” information. He added that if the recommendation of recording all contact between the press and the police “if enshrined will be a step backwards for a number of people who are concerned that by talking to the press they might get themselves in trouble.”
Anne Campbell, the head of corporate communications for Norfolk and Suffolk Police, and chair of the Association of Police Communicators (APComm) also appeared before the court, and agreed that local media offer a more rounded view of news stories.
Campbell said: “The local and regional media are constantly covering the issues and the stories of the constabulary, so you build up a daily relationship. They’re more keen to build up a rounded view.”
She added: “We expect journalist will be fair, balanced and accurate. That’s what we work with the media to see reflected, even if the stories are not so good news.”
When asked if corporate communications is a way of controlling what is distributed to the press, Campbell disagreed, and said that communications is “a news editing role, not a control role”.
Campbell stressed that any briefing of police officers was also not to put a slant what was released to the press and public, but to ensure that the police officer has “in his or her armoury the most up-to date information”.
She added: “We’re managing a situation of a lot of demand from the media. We either let officers without any assistance deal with that, potentially in an unhelpful way which will potentially take up a lot of their time. Our role is actually to free up the officers so they can spend the time on what the public want them to do primarily.”
Campbell also suggested “overarching guidelines” would be beneficial for police forces, enabling them all to “sing from the same hymn sheet”
Relating to her second statement to the inquiry, described by Lord Leveson as the statement in which she was wearing her APcomm hat, Campbell told the court that she was not too concerned about leaks to the press, as long as the police were given the opportunity to give a balanced picture.
Anne Pickles, associate editor of Carlisle News and Star, and Nick Griffiths a reporter for the paper agreed that the relationship between the press and public was key.
Pickles told the court that her relationships with the police have been built on mutual trust and respect and that the two parties both serve a common purpose and community. She added that as they lived with those they were reporting on, their role and coverage within the region was crucial.
But the editor explained that national media worked in an entirely different way. She said: “It’s always been my experience that national media are able to sweep in and sweep out into some sort of black hole of anonymity.”
Griffiths added that local press an police worked to the same ends. “We’re trying to get certain information across to the public. There’s a trust there, and relationships are generally working quite well.”
During the high-profile news case of the Derrick Bird shootings in Cumbria, Pickles told the court that journalists from the Crime Reporters Association sought preferential treatment and off the record information.
She added: “We didn’t want to spend a lot of time harassing the victims families looking for big headlines. We didn’t want to cause them further distress. We worked very closely with the police liaison team, who were very helpful in gaining photographs, tributes, anything else we might need. For all it was a dreadful incident, it was, perversely I know, an extremely successful police/local media operation.
Both parties from the Carlisle News and Star felt it was unnecessary to “drive a wedge between local press and local police.”
Pickles told the court “The stain from what has happened to trigger this inquiry tends to spread across all sections of the media. It’s quite clear we’re in a bad place in some sections of the media, but I still think a lot of the media has to blame itself for that, and take responsibility for it.”
Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey, former Chief Constable of Cumbria Constabulary and Gillian Shearer, Head of Marketing and Communications also gave evidence.
Shearer described the massive pressure faced by the constabulary’s press office in the wake of the Derrick Bird shootings. She explained that an immense number of calls to the press office meant that they had to hire more staff. Shearer told the court that calls to the press office went from 30-50 a day to 300-500 a day.
She added: “In Cumbria the local media has a really unique role. They do a lot of reporting around crime and the people in Cumbria read and believe the newspapers.”
The pair described to the court instances of harassment by national media towards the families of the victims. Shearer explained that the families were “completely and utterly overwhelmed” by the press coverage, and told the court that some contact from the press was made before the police had informed the families of victims.
Shearer said: “We were in contact with the PCC over grieving families feeling harassed. They asked us to tell people to call them.” She added that print and TV media continued to doorstep the bereaved after a request to pull back.
Mackey added that the families felt anger and dismay at the way they were treated, and described “upsetting behaviour”, as rumours spread that money was available for certain photographs.
Colin Adwent, crime reporter for the East Anglia Daily Times told the court it was important to “be able to talk to police officers of all ranks without fear of favour.”
Adwent reiterated the belief that press and police should have a healthy, professional relationship. “If officers are responsible enough to deal with life and death, they’re responsible to know what they can talk to the press about.”
22 Dec 11 | Magazine
How are ordinary, decent people to react to the imposition of a repressive regime, how much should they risk in showing their opposition to it? These questions were raised by Ludvik Vaculik in a feuilleton he wrote in December 1978, which brought an indignant reply from Václav Havel, as well as a dozen other dissidents. The controversy was given a poignant twist by the arrest of Václav Havel, together with nine other Chartists. Prior to his arrest, he had been under virtual house arrest for several months.
Václav Havel died on 17 December this year.
On bravery
I sometimes wonder if I’m mature enough to go to prison. It frightens me. We should all come to terms with this problem once we reach adulthood, and either behave in such a way as not to have to fear imprisonment or consider what is worth such a risk. It is hard to be locked up for something that will have ceased to excite anyone even before your sentence is up. That, I think, is what happened to the people who were imprisoned for the pre-election leaflets in 1972. And that is why I was greatly moved and encouraged by Jifi Miiller’s message from prison in which he advised people to act in an effective way and to avoid arrest.
It is one thing if they imprison someone who knows exactly what he is doing and why, and quite another when a young, immature person lands in jail, more or less by accident. I was amazed, for instance, by the fate of Karel Pecka (a leading dissident writer who made his literary debut in the sixties), who frittered his youth away in the uranium mines. For someone to be able to pick up the pieces of such a wrecked life and to give it a meaning and value I believe requires a kind of courage he surely did not possess before his prison experience. A normal human being, even a relatively calm one, if he opens a chess game badly, feels like sweeping the board clean and starting again. You can do that in a game of chess, but you can’t do it in life.
Just to risk imprisonment is not in itself any kind of achievement, nor is it at all a good thing if during a dispute one side provokes the other to take a step which cannot be revoked without loss of honour, prestige, or authority. To do that can only make the situation worse. A man who suppresses the opinions of others is merely a censor; a censor, whom resistance to censorship leads to imprison people, becomes a dictator; the dictator who, in suppressing a protest demonstration, gives orders to fire at the crowd is a murderer. With the censor we could negotiate, and there was always a possibility that, as a result, his office would in time be abolished, and the censor himself would quietly accept some other desk job. In a murderer we have an enemy who cannot agree to any negotiation if he is not to end on the gallows.
However, where are the decent limits to such reflections?
No one can give a satisfactory reply to the question whether Charter 77 has made things better or worse, and how things would look today without it. Let us give up seeking such an answer, and let us add that the moral motives for our actions are only roughly parallel with political ones, the strongest impulses deriving from our character rather than our views. Charter 77 is today different from what it was in 1977. We have all had our share of trouble. I sometimes hear complaints that it is no longer as nice as it used to be. To this I would say that anyone who doesn’t agree with what those who remain active and committed are doing, should withdraw quietly and undemonstratively and not hamper the work of those who are left. Each and every one of us can try and find methods which suit him best. If some team of people under threat decides to re-define its internal structure and tighten its rules, it can hardly expect to be understood by the public at large. While, on the one hand, a free man is put off by demands for absolute unity, on the other, the majority of sensible people tend to regard the increasingly more heroic actions of an increasingly diminishing platoon of fighters as more and more their own personal affair. I mean this generally, as it applies to all shades of opinion.
Most people are well aware of their own limits and refrain from actions whose consequences they would be unable to bear. Anyone who, in a cool season, persuades people to take on more, should not be surprised when they break. An instinctive fear of hunger prevents a healthy and sensible person from feeling sympathy for someone who, in his own and the general cause, goes on hunger-strike. A matter of life and death? The sensible person gets cold feet and tries to find a way of dissociating himself from it at least a little. Psychologists and politicians cannot expect heroism in everyday life except when the whole environment is literally ionised by radiation from some powerful source. Heroic deeds are alien to everyday life. They are special events, which ought to be reported. They flourish in exceptional situations, but these must not be of long duration. A mass psychosis of heroism is a fine thing, provided there are in the vicinity some sober minds who have access to information and contacts and who know what’s to be done afterwards.
I make a distinction between heroism and the integrity of the ordinary man. The ordinary man has a reserve of good habits and virtues, possesses his own integrity and knows how to protect it from erosion. Just as he doesn’t like to see anyone acting in too dangerously defiant a manner, he also likes to reassure himself that quiet, honest toil is the best, even if it isn’t particularly well rewarded, and that decent behaviour will find a decent response. Today, the main brunt of the attack is not directed so much at heroes as against what we used to consider the norm of work, behaviour and relationships. I would go so far as to say that the heroes are being given only measured doses of repression, which the regime feels duty bound to administer. It is reluctant to do this because it doesn’t want to give publicity to any heroes. The war should remain anonymous, without any recognisable faces or data. That is why the real explosive charges are scattered among the crowd, the intention being not to destroy anyone but rather to cause him to change his norms. A kind of neutron bomb: undamaged empty figures carry on walking to and from work.
We sometimes argue whether things are worse now than in the fifties, or if they are better. We can find sufficient evidence for both contentions. A truthful assessment will depend on how much we can gain from our present situation to benefit the future. The fifties had their revolutionary cruelty as well as their selfless enthusiasm. Certain sections of the population suffered grievously. Today there is no sign of any enthusiasm and, except: in the case of a few excesses, no particular cruelty. Also, it no longer matters to which group anyone belongs. Violence has become humanised. The total surveillance of the entire population has been spread more gently over everyone and everything, it is devoid of the former spasms of hate. Is this better or worse? It is an attack on the very concept of normal life. I consider it more dangerous than in the fifties, yet we find it easier to live with.
Under these circumstances, every bit of honest work, every expression of incorruptibility, every gesture of goodwill, every deviation from cold routine, and every step or glance without a mask has the value of a heroic deed. Our opponent, in particular, should find us ready – not to die for some rotten sacred cause, but to understand its positive aspects and to hold on to them. While heroic deeds frighten people, giving them the truthful excuse that they are not made for them, everyone can bravely adhere to the norm of good bshaviour at the price of acceptable sacrifice, and everyone knows it. Prague, 6 December 1978 – on the occasion of Karel Pecka’s 50th birthday.
Dear Mr. Ludvik
You say: either one should act so as not to have to fear prison, or else consider whether it’s worth his while to risk imprisonment.
I agree: if one intends to burgle a supermarket, one has to consider whether the likely proceeds make the risk worthwhile.
But people aren’t locked up only for burgling supermarkets. They are locked up, for instance, for writing novels. A certain Vaculik was not locked up for his Guinea-pigs, but a certain Grusa was locked up for his Questionnaire.
According to you, Grusa evidently acted carelessly in writing The Questionnaire, since it is stupid to go to prison. Vaculik was more prudent in writing only The Guinea-pigs. You see, I trust, how absurd this is. After all, you know better than anyone that Grusa didn’t have to go inside for The Questionnaire but Vaculik might have gone inside for The Guinea-pigs. You know that the decision
whether to lock up Grusa or Vaculik has nothing at all to do with which one of them was better able to assess the risks, it is purely and simply a cold-blooded calculation on the part of the powersthat-be. Sometimes it is more tactical to arrest Grusa and thus try and intimidate Vaculik, at other times it might be better to arrest Vaculik and thus try and intimidate Grusa.
Grusa’s novel is a good one, and so to that extent the two months inside were worth it. But what if it had not been a good novel? Or what if he had spent two years behind bars instead of two months? Then no doubt it would be incumbent on us to pity Grusa, as we pitied those naive souls who, in the early seventies, thought they could get away with reminding voters of their constitutional right not to vote.
But don’t you remember that you and me both still have the 1969 indictment hanging over us? And surely you cannot be unaware that it could easily have been the two of us who spent all those years in jail instead of Sabata and Hiibl? Do you think that the text we both signed was worth it?
In a sense, nothing is worth it. Not leaflets, nor attendance at a ball, nor the writing of a novel. And what about sending the manuscripts of Czech authors to emigre magazines! Was it worth it where Lederer was concerned? Good job he is one of those cunning heroes who benefit from ‘measured doses of repression’ – after all, he might have got not three years but ten. The law under which they sentenced him allows for that.
Was it worth it for Messrs Simsa and Sabata that they behaved like men when humiliated? Of course not; all they had to do was to bend and people would at once have understood them better and they need not have found themselves among those repugnant heroes. And what about the Plastic
People – had they given concerts with Helena Vondrackova they would have taken their place among decent people within the limits of the law and needn’t have come a cropper.
I don’t know what you had in mind when you wrote your feuilleton. All I know is what effect it has. Divested of its stylistic elegance, it can be summed up like this: a decent bloke doesn’t pretend to be a hero and doesn’t insist on getting himself arrested. Because to be a hero is somehow anti-social; this isn’t the honest, everyday work which decent people respect and which keeps society going; people recoil from it and are frightened by it. Furthermore, heroes are dangerous because they only serve to make matters worse. After all, the secret police aren’t such bad chaps provided they are treated decently.
Why then provoke them needlessly by writing novels, making music, sending books abroad? This literally forces those decent chaps to beat up women and drag one’s friends into the woods and there kick them in the balls. We must have more regard for their prestige and stop invoking all these international treaties, we must no longer insolently copy the writings of people like Cerny, Vaculik, Havel, and others like them – no doubt you know that for this reason three boys of the same age as your sons are at present in a Brno jail. More heroes, who are only helping to make matters worse.
But now without exaggeration: none of us can know in advance how much we can bear, nor what we may be made to bear. That can only be known by your calculating model of a sensible, decent man within the limits of the law. None of us decided in advance that we wanted to go to jail, indeed none of us made a conscious decision that he or she wanted to become a dissident. We became dissidents without actually knowing how, and we found ourselves behind bars without really knowing how. We simply did certain things which we had to do and which it seemed proper to do: nothing more, nor less.
Happy are those who are decent and haven’t landed in jail. But why should those who had that misfortune be set apart from the others? Is it not usually quite arbitrary who lands in it and who doesn’t? Those whom you call heroes, suggesting that they are overdoing things, didn’t get locked up for their ambition to become martyrs – they were locked up because of the indecency of those who put people in jail for writing novels or for playing tapes with the music of unofficial musicians.
No one wants to go to jail. If people were to take your advice and calculate the risks involved in the fashion of a thief deciding whether to burgle a supermarket, there would for a long time now have been in our country not a single expression of solidarity with an unjustly persecuted person, not a single truthful novel or free song, not even a single feuilleton. For how can we be sure that tomorrow they won’t start putting people away for writing feuilletons?
Maybe all you meant to say was that the quiet and inconspicuous humiliation of thousands of anonymous people was worse than the occasional arrest of a well-known dissident. Undoubtedly. But the question surely is, why did they arrest the dissident? Mainly, if you think about it, just because he had tried to tell the truth about that quiet and inconspicuous humiliation of thousands of anonymous people.
Some of us have been experiencing this harsh and depressing confrontation with the secret police for two years, others for ten, still others all their life. Nobody can be said to enjoy it. None of us knows in advance how long he can stand it. And each and every one of us has the right, when he feels he can’t stand it any longer, to draw back, not to do certain things any more, to take; a rest, or even to emigrate. All this is understandable, normal, human – and I’d be the last to hold it against anyone.
What I do hold against people, though, is when they don’t tell the truth. And you – forgive me – this time are not telling the truth.
Yours
Václav Havel
This article originally appeared in Index on Censorship magazine in 1979 Issue 8: Volume 39
02 Dec 11 | Europe and Central Asia, Volume 39.04 Winter 2010
One of the writers championed by Index on Censorship and English PEN to mark 50 years of the Writers in Prison Committee, Uzbek journalist Djamshid Karimov was released from a psychiatric hospital on 30 November.
Djamshid Karimov, nephew of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, is an outspoken critic of the government, known for reporting on socio-political issues. He worked as a freelance journalist for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, and contributed to independent newspapers and online publications under the pseudonym Andrei Nazarov. After reporting on the Andijan massacre in May 2005, during a period when his uncle systematically sought to silence all independent voices of protest, Karimov and his family were subjected to intense police surveillance.
In August 2006, after applying for an exit visa to attend a journalism seminar in Kyrgyzstan, Karimov’s passport was seized by the authorities. The head of the regional administration in Jizak visited the family home on 31 August, and offered Karimov positions at two state newspapers, apparently in a bid to entice him away from independent journalism. He refused and shortly afterwards, on 12 September, he disappeared. Two weeks later, Karimov’s friends discovered that he was being held against his will in a psychiatric hospital in Samarkand, initially under a six-month detention order. The authorities would not specify the reason for his detention, calling it a “private matter”. His fiancée was permitted to visit him and found him distressed by his detention; he had reportedly been forced to accept unnecessary treatment and anti-psychotic medication.
Karimov’s detention order was “reviewed” in March 2007 and extended for six months, but authorities disclosed no further details. Since then, as far as his family knows, the court has not officially passed a decision to further extend Karimov’s treatment. Nonetheless, despite regular promises that he would soon be discharged, he remains incarcerated. Karimov has now been undergoing forced treatment for more than four years.
Beyond Bars
This article originally appeared in Beyond Bars: 50 Years of the PEN Writers in Prison Committee. To subscribe to Index, click here.
This shabby story takes place against a backdrop of heightened political sensitivity in China as the country braces itself for transition to a new, as yet unannounced, group of top leaders. This is scheduled to take place next year in the Great Hall of the People during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party. The Congress will certainly be a rigid spectacle of national purpose and will make numbing television viewing. Not least because it will be impossible not to speculate on the nature of the Byzantine succession struggle which is currently taking place behind firmly locked doors.
The daily reality for Chinese citizens is that living costs are rising fast and incomes are not keeping up. Working conditions for white collar workers can be demoralising, while those for migrant manual workers, who continue to have even basic rights denied them, are often shockingly exploitative. Commuting in the new, high-rise cities can be exhausting and alienating. People are deeply sceptical about the capacity of the state to protect them from (often deliberately) contaminated food and a toxic living environment, criminal scams, corruption in the medical profession and corporate exploitation of consumers. The Party is widely understood to be at the centre of many of these scandals and is often seen to be protecting wrongdoers. Most flagrantly, the new super-rich live effectively beyond the reach of the law, while ordinary people can in no way count on basic social justice for themselves and their families.
It seems that suddenly these views are being expressed loudly and in public. Ai Weiwei, on the other hand, has been consistently and persistently making his views known. His father, Ai Qing, was one of China’s most eminent poets, but was a political prisoner for 16 years in the western desert region of Xinjiang. This is where Ai Weiwei spent his entire childhood and early adolescence. When Ai Weiwei returned to China in 1993 after ten years in the United States, his rehabilitated father advised him on his responsibility as a Chinese citizen to speak out, reportedly saying, “You are at home here, there’s no need to be polite.”