David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia
BEIJING, China – In Ai Weiwei, the globalized contemporary art world has found its first true star. His arrest has sparked world-wide condemnation, while his international schedule of exhibitions continues to unfold. In London, two are set to open next month, one at the Lisson Gallery, and another in the Somerset House courtyard.
The artist has disappeared into the Kafkaesque black hole of the Chinese legal system.
Can China just shrug off outrage about Ai and his fate? Chinese has expressed indifference toward international opinion regarding Ai.
Ai has been missing since officials stopped him at Beijing airport on 3 April. Authorities say the 53-year-old artist is under investigation for economic crimes, but police have not notified his family of detention.
Several friends and colleagues have also disappeared, although his lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan returned home on Tuesday after several days’ absence. His friend Wen Tao, his driver and Cousin Zhang Jinsong, accountant Hu Mingfen and designer Liu Zhenggang remain missing.
Despite widespread expressions of concern from, among others, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not a word has been heard from him. His family, it was reported by the BBC, still don’t know where he is, whether he has been charged with an offense or even whether he has been formally arrested.
The social campaigns website Change.org has alleged Chinese hackers have launched a distributed denial-of-service attack on it, after it hosted a petition calling for the release of detained artist Ai Weiwei. The founder of the US-based site said the initial attacks had all been traced to IP addresses in China, although hackers often use several computers to disguise their whereabouts.
“We do not know the reason or exact source of these attacks,” said Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org.
On April 14, a state-backed publication in Hong Kong, the Wen Wei Po newspaper, stated that Ai was being investigated for tax evasion (crimes of bigamy and putting obscene images on the Internet also were mentioned).
“Ai Weiwei has had quite a good attitude in co-operating with the investigation and has begun to confess,” the report continued. Since then, nothing more has been heard about that.
This and other publication are believed to be state motivated articles to pierce the strength of protest behind Ai’s disappearance.
Ai is 53 suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes, according to his wife. Two years ago, in August 2009, he was struck violently on the head by a Chinese policeman, one of several who burst into his hotel room in the early hours of the morning. He asked for identification, and that was the reply.
Dozens of rights lawyers and activists have been detained or lost contact with friends and relatives since February, when fears of contagion from Middle East and North Africa uprisings triggered a crackdown by China’s domestic security apparatus.
A Chinese rock musician, Zuoxiao Zuzhou, was briefly detained by police after voicing support for prominent artist and rights campaigner Ai Weiwei, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Thursday.
During a gig at the 2011 Modern Sky Folk& Poetry Festival in eastern China, he displayed the words “Free Ai Weiwei” on a large screen, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement.
Critics say Hong Kong is under political pressure from Beijing to arrest the artists, potentially testing the limits of tolerance in the free-wheeling capitalist hub which was once a British colony but reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.
“The Ai Weiwei case, in essence, is not a human rights matter, nor is it about freedom of speech. No one is above the law. Just like in other countries, acts of violations of the law will be dealt with by the law,” the embassy wrote in the letter, carried in the English-language China Daily.
The China Daily said the letter had been written in response to an article in a British newspaper written by author Salman Rushdie calling on China to set Ai free.
For more information, please see:
Wall Street Journal – In Absentia, a Retrospective for Chinese Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei – 6 May 2011
Guardian.uk – Ai Weiwei campaign website ‘victim of Chinese hackers’ – 20 April 2011
Bloomberg – Ai Weiwei Won’t Be Intimidated by Chinese Thugs: Martin Gayford – 27 April 2011
Reuters – Chinese rocker reported detained after backing Ai Weiwei – 28 April 2011
Reuters – Pro-Ai graffiti in Hong Kong sparks warning by Chinese army – 29 April 2011
Reuters – China says Ai case nothing to do with freedom of expression – 29 April 2011
