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
26 Oct 10 | Events
Thursday 18 November 2010, 6.15pm
Hosted by the Department of Theatre, Film and Television on the Heslington East campus
Greg Dyke now chancellor of the University of York will chair a panel of leading industry experts, including:
- Ian Bloom (Partner, Head of Corporate and Media at Ross & Craig)
- Helen Boaden (Director of News, BBC)
- Dr David Levy (Director of the Reuters Institute for Journalism at the University of Oxford)
- Steve Richards (Chief Political Commentator at The Independent)
- Simon Singh (author, journalist, TV producer)
The debate will open to the audience, with opportunities for questions and input.
Reserve tickets by contacting Nik Miller on [email protected]
Location: Theatre Film and Television building, Heslington East
Telephone: 01904 432622
26 Oct 10 | Index Index, minipost
Juan Williams, a senior news analyst at National Public Radio (NPR), has had his contract terminated following comments he made on Fox News. Last Monday (October 18), Williams told Bill O’Reilly that aeroplane passengers “in Muslim garb” made him nervous. He also made remarks about the Pakistani immigrant who attempted to plant a car bomb in Times Square. Whilst Republicans have accused NPR of censorship, an NPR statement said Williams’ remarks were “inconsistent with their editorial standards”. In September, CNN sacked anchor Rick Sanchez after he suggested that everybody who ran the network was Jewish.
07 Oct 10 | Index Index, minipost
The co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party has been convicted of ‘propaganda for an illegal organisation’ and handed a ten-month prison sentence.
Selahattin Demitras was punished for making a statement about the detention conditions of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party, imprisoned in 1999.
Demitras’s lawyer Meral Danis Bestas said that her client’s statement should be evaluated in the context of the right to freedom of expression.
